Latest / Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360 / #447: Noodles & Company Builds Loyalty by Honoring the Noodle—and the Customer

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#447: Noodles & Company Builds Loyalty by Honoring the Noodle—and the Customer · Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: In today's rapidly evolving landscape, where marketing technology, ai and customer experience converge, brands face both opportunity and complexity.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Success now hinges on delivering the right product and the right channel, creating meaningful experiences and building true customer loyalty.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Noodles Company is rising to meet this challenge.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Amid shifting customer expectations and a major menu launch, the brand is sharpening its focus on what matters most the customer.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: The strategy is meant to drive stronger engagement and deeper brand relevance.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: At the helm is Steve Kennedy.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: He's the Executive Vice President of Marketing and he's a proven leader in customer loyalty and brand experience.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: His cross-industry expertise is accelerating noodles and company loyalty evolution, allowing product experience and personalization to build lasting customer relationships.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Thank you very much, steve, for taking the time to join us today.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: It's great seeing you.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: It's been a while.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: How are you?
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: No, I'm doing great, mark, it's great to see you again.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Great to see you as well.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: It's been a while.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: How are you?
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: I'm doing great, mark.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: It's great to see you again.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Great to see you as well.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: It's been a while, but looking forward to this discussion for sure.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: First, off.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: For those who may not be familiar, can you give us a brief introduction to Noodles Company?
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, look, we've been around for 30 years.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: So Noodles Company is a fast, casual restaurant chain.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: We've got over 460 locations.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: We were founded back in 1995 out here in Broomfield, colorado, and really just focused on bringing together.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: You know bold flavors from around the world.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: You know that comfort and satisfying noodle meal that only we feel like we know how to deliver.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: You know, when it comes to noodles, like that's what we do right, we're kind of the authority in noodles and we take a lot of pride in that being something that we can bring to everybody.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, excellent.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: And when you look at the brand, what's led to its success, you know the hundreds of locations do excel in, kind of the noodles pasta arena.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: You know what's led to its success.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you know what's led to its success.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you know first and foremost always focus on the customer right, trying to deliver that best customer experience as possible.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: But, you know, really kind of owning what we do.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: You know we're kind of one of the very few chains that live in the noodle space, right, and so we focus on crafting all of our dishes with real ingredients you know, serve fresh to order, sauteing the ingredients in the back and really just kind of maintaining that guest first mindset throughout all of it.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Excellent, be great to know a little bit more about your background.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: I know you're going back all the way to Domino's so I would love to know a little bit more about your role and currently with Noodles Company and you know what led you to this role.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Currently with Noodles Company and you know what led you to this role?
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Were there propositions that kind of led you to your?
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: You know significant expertise in customer loyalty and you know the restaurant side.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, like Steve Jobs says, you can't really connect the dots going forward, you can only connect them looking backward.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: And so you know I can draw a straight line through my career to this job.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: But it wasn't as if it was, you know, a well laid out plan.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: By any means, you know, prior, prior to here, I spent some time on the agency side of digital transformation agency called Bounteous, but prior to that, four years running a large portion of the center of marketing excellence for Nestle USA.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: So four years in food and packaged goods industry.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: And then, before that, as you know, spent 10 years at Domino's Pizza running everything from digital marketing, digital innovation strategy and insights and, of course, loyalty marketing there.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: So it was a big, played a role in the launch and in-housing and so forth of the Piece, of the Pie Rewards Program at Domino's.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: So a long, long time spent in loyalty there.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: And then my loyalty experience goes back, go all the way back.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: I'll date myself, mark, how old I am.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: My first job was online marketing coordinator for bordersbookscom, and so I was at Borders Books and worked on the launch of the Borders Rewards Program back at the beginning of my career.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: So Borders Rewards Program, the Walden Books Preferred Reader Program.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: So I've been in and out of the loyalty space for quite some time.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: When you look at your current role, what kind of keeps you up at night?
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: What are the things that you're excited about, some of the challenges or opportunities you face within your position, especially in kind of this turbulent market, this era of a little uncertainty.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think the uncertainty you kind of nailed it right the current kind of macroeconomic trends, of navigating the waters around consumer confidence and inflation and value proposition is a real challenge in the industry.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: You know, obviously increasing commodity costs and trying to just find that right value equation is always a challenge.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: And then it's a crowded space.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: You know consumers dollars.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: So when consumers dollars get tight and there's a lot of options for them to choose from, right that's.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: That's an increasing challenge on our end to be differentiated and deliver a better experience for folks, to make sure that when they, they do spend those hard earned dollars and you know if they're hanging on too tightly now that it comes to us.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: That makes sense.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's definitely an interesting last few months, the last few weeks and hopefully we settle down a little bit and can go forward.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: But it's interesting to speak with brands, especially as our brand membership has grown and just about you know the challenges they have right there.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Some are challenged even making sure they're going to have product in the store this week, right, just with the tariffs and everything else but Noodles and Company great leadership that you'll bring.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: But it's definitely an interesting time all the way around.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then obviously, you have the challenges with just the pace at which marketing is evolving.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: Right, there's more data now than there's ever been, and it doesn't necessarily mean that it's easy to use.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: Right, it's data in and of itself is worthless unless you can, you know, turn it into something powerful and so keeping up with the pace of technology, pace of data, ai and so forth, as it all has a huge impact on marketing, it's just, you know, an ongoing and growing challenge, absolutely, knowledge.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Absolutely so.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: When you look at customer loyalty a great foundation there, going back to your auspicious start way back when, in the book arena, you know what does customer loyalty mean to you personally and to Noodles and Company holistically.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, look, I think you know customer loyalty for me is first and foremost.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Loyalty is not a program.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: It's not a program, it's not an activation, it's not a promotion, right?
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: Customer loyalty to me is something that you earn day in and day out with the brand experience that you deliver to customers right, all of those other things are just means to an end right Customer loyalty is what gets earned.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: So I knew as a company really try to reinforce that right, believe it's it's loyalties that result of kind of consistently delivering a great brand experience, both from, you know, a digital experience side, from an in-store team member perspective, and then of course, obviously through the food that we sell.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: When you look at the Noodles Reward Program, how does that fit into your vision from customer loyalty?
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Or, in general, how can a loyalty program fit into kind of that more holistic perspective of customer loyalty for brands?
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's really a tool to enable better building that customer loyalty right.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: It enables us to make that experience feel personal, make it consistent, feel genuinely rewarding.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of it is.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: You want to make sure that that loyalty program is not fully transactional and it is, you know, using that data to show that appreciation, personal kind of engagement that it unlocks for you, right?
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: So we've got other things that we've got, like kind of our extra goodness, daily offers and perks, right, that are there to just try to help bring a little something new every day for folks that they've always got an offer available.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: You know it's always going to be there.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: But at the end of the day it's really not about offers, it's not about the program, it's about, you know, creating connection, and I think the loyalty programs obviously enable you to do that at a different level.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: And one of the things that we've talked about over the last year with our advisory board and some of the peer meetings we've had is prioritization within the organization around customer loyalty.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: You coming into a new brand, it's a great time to understand what people know about the program, what they like about the program, what they like about the approach to customer loyalty.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Holistically, when you look at customer loyalty with your deep roots and focus, how is it prioritized within your organization now, especially with senior marketing leaders, and do you plan to bring maybe a different focus to it going forward?
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say it's always been a big priority here and I think again because the priority was mainly set on the customer, but for me it needs to be a priority here.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: We've got the support of the organization Right.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: The whole organization knows the importance of the loyalty program, down to the fact that you know great, great relationship with our operators and you know they know that the team members are always talking to the customers about it and pushing the benefits of the program when they're engaging with customers in store.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: I don't I don't have to walk around the office going hey, what about loyalty?
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: With a little loyalty sign right.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: I think there's a great amount of buy-in in terms of the priority that it takes and the benefit that we know that comes from it.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: That makes perfect sense.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: In the last month, Noodles Company kicked off a new beginning with a reinvented menu.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit more about the menu and what went into that process to redo the menu?
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, look, I mean, like I said, we've been around for 30 years, you know, over 30 years has almost been delivering delicious, comforting food for quite some time.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: But you get to the point where you know you got to kind of up the game a little bit Right.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: Like I mentioned earlier, this is a very competitive industry that we live in and we got to make sure we're bringing the best experience possible.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: So we took a hard look at the menu, uh, over the past you know, 18 months or so uh, we looked at where there's white space, um, in our menu for for some new dishes.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: We looked at, um, where there are existing dishes that could be kind of uh, upgraded a bit, if you will.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: We overhauled close to 70% of our menu, um, whether, when you add up all the dishes that we either upgraded or added, so just to just kind of bring more craveable sauces, bring more bolder flavors, tweak some ingredients like, change out a type of a tomato and things like that where we knew we could do a little bit better.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: And so this isn't a, this isn't a transformation by which we're, you know, trying to save costs and trying to find a cheaper version of an ingredient.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: This was fully focused on delivering a better experience through our menu, and so we recently rolled that out about a month ago now.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Okay, so now, like I said, it goes from various new dishes to a dedicated mac and cheese lineup.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: We've got a lot more to offer customers now.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: Ok, excellent.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: When you look at the new menu that you rolled out you talked about, it's not necessarily focused on kind of cost minimization.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: It's really about bringing more flair, more kind of different types of products offerings, I would assume, because you know, as you know, kind of that that made to order fresh, more boutique and potentially bougie, as my kids would say offerings seem to be the restaurants that are doing quick.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: You know, over the last year we've seen other brands, like Cracker Barrel, you know, try to redo their menu as well to make sure it resonates not only with their current audience but their audience going forward.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: How did customer feedback influence, you know, the introduction of new dishes and kind of the reimagining, should I say, of existing flavors?
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it was customer-led the whole time.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: You know we work with, you know, a third party to collect customer satisfaction feedback from all of our restaurants and we as an executive level we spend a lot of time working with that feedback.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: And so we took all the feedback on the existing dishes.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: We did plenty of research around the innovation that we did, of course you know everything from sensory panels to qualitative research to, you know, central location testing of all of the new dishes.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: A lot of the things we rolled out, we rolled out in pilot markets and got that feedback, uh, that that feedback from those markets as well, and we tweaked.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: You know we built and tweaked along the way.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: We didn't, uh consider it done when we got it out there.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: You know there were some things we we put out there where maybe the spice wasn't enough, um, maybe the feedback was a bit around, you know, breaded chicken versus grilled chicken, um, on some things.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: And so we listened, we reacted, we increased increased amounts of sauce on some things, decreased in the amount of sauce in one place, ultimately just trying to find that right, right taste of food level that gets us to best in class.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: So constant state of listening to customers and just trying to, you know you can't make everybody happy.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: Of course you know when you change, when you change something people have been eating for a while, you're going to get some naysayers there too.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: But you've got to take it in all context and when you know you've done the diligence, that it's going to be better overall, be confident with it.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: That makes perfect sense.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Another discussion point that's fairly salient within industry right now is this idea of customers changing right, understanding their expectations, understanding their experience, needs and interests and making sure you kind of align around that.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: You know how do you see your customers changing and did you see anything in the feedback and you know how are you adapting to that, those changes going forward.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, look, I mean, you know customers changing.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: You know, first and foremost, their view of your brand experience is set by their last best brand experience, and that's not necessarily within the context of even our industry, right, like you know, when you, when you place a digital order from from noodlescom, you're not evaluating that.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Well, how, how was it versus, you know, one of our qsr competitors?
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: Right, you're just thinking what was the best e-com experience I've had?
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's where consumers' minds are set, so they're set on their best experience and, basically, their patience.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: Consumer patience is like an all-time low right.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: Everybody wants everything immediately and so you know we got to balance how quickly we can do what we do within our restaurants without sacrificing the work that goes into creating a fresh, ready of made to order a dish Right.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: And so making sure that customers understand that you know if you're going to wait an extra 30 seconds to a minute for that order is because there's literally a cook back there with a saute pan, over a fire, over a burner, making that for you.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: So making sure that customers and our business processes are aligned in terms of what they're getting for what they're putting into it.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: How do you streamline or simplify that process right, because that's a big challenge.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: It's one of the things we're trying to go through at Loyalty360 is putting yourself in that customer's view and, you know, making sure things resonate.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: So you know that 30-second wait time can be fine for some and may be, you know, quite offensive for others.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: How do you, you know, kind of educate them as to the changes that you're making and the benefit that it's going to bring to them and to their brand and to the experiences?
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean what we found is, you know, obviously customers are, you know, a little bit more patient when they know that somebody is making it right, versus pulling it off a shelf or out of a warmer, like a, you know, made to order, ready to go, type of an entree.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: And so making sure that we're building a brand story that we're clear about.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: You know that we're chopping our vegetables daily, we're prepping this.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: You know we're sauteing it for you after you order it, not before, and so, ultimately, making sure that we're starting to build that understanding of what goes into that freshly made dish that they've ordered, you know.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: And then, obviously, on the back end of the house, we're very operationally driven, you know, trying to trying to keep track all the steps and all the seconds, trying to find ways where you can, you know, be more efficient with the process, but never at the at the cost of that dish or the outcome that's going to be there for the customer.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: That makes perfect sense.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: That's great.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: When you look at the macroeconomic trends we talked about it a little bit to kind of kick this off you know what are you seeing with regard to the QSLR industry.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: What trends are you seeing?
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Maybe technology or a search for value?
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: And you know how are those macro trends in fact, you know, impacting your customer loyalty efforts.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we mentioned earlier.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: But you know customers are more value conscious than they have ever been.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: Right now.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: Consumer confidence is starting to get extremely low, with inflation uh continuing to tick up and that discretionary spending um, in general kind of economic uncertainties is really shaping how guests view, uh, the value of the money they spend and how often and where.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: You know where they spend it, right, and so, um, you know one of that.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: You know everybody's got tracking studies and they look at all the attributes that you measure in research and things like that.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: But one of the measures I always like to look at is the rate at which people say I made a good decision after they bought from somewhere, right, and after they bought from noodles and company, because that takes into consideration that entirety of that value proposition.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: Right, if you made a good decision, it means I felt good about the money I spent, I felt good about the experience I spent, I felt good about the trade-offs and the choice that I made and all of that.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: And so you know what you're trying to do with consumers and environment and landscape like this is make sure that when they finally decide to give you their hard-earned money, right, that they feel after the fact, like yep, that was a good decision.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: That's what that really is, kind of the genesis of customer loyalty, as you know.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: Right, if every time I do that, I feel like I'm making the right decision, that's where loyalty is at right.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: Loyalty is not the lack of a better option, right, it's it's.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: I felt good about what I did because I had lots of options and I made the right decision.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: And again, when you look at a effective customer loyalty program or more holistic customer loyalty strategy within an organization, you know how can you know?
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: Those two pieces, you know, address the macroeconomic trends that the brands are facing today the macroeconomic trends that the brands are facing today.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so a lot of it is.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: Obviously you want to be mindful of those macroeconomic trends with the value proposition that we're providing.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: Obviously, giving discounts and the promotions, making sure your loyalty program has a good value exchange right, the base level program, but also keeping folks engaged, making sure that they feel heard, making sure that they feel a personal connection and engagement with the brand, those are all the things that make you feel like, yeah, this was a good decision.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: And then, specifically for our program, you know, like I mentioned earlier, we do have this kind of extra goodness every day value offer.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: So there's surprise offers, you know, kind of accessible point redemptions, things like that, personalized incentives that make sure that our loyalty members know that there's always something there for them when they're thinking about eating with us.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Excellent.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: You know, one of the things I touched on a little earlier and what we hear pretty consistently right now in most industries, but particularly in restaurants, fast, casual, qsr and in hotels as well, there's a big push for value right now.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: When you look at value, it definitely seems to be evolving.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: It's not just value for price right, it's more.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Do you value me as part of your customer, being part of your customer set?
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Does the program resonate and have value within the organization?
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: But when you look at a value perspective from the QSR perspective, is it affordability, is it quality, is it convenience?
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: What are your customers searching for in the quest for value?
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, look, I think value oftentimes is used synonymously with just discount or dollar off or things like that.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Really, I mean value.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Is that relationship?
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: between what I experience, right, what I get and what I paid for, and the weighting of those things is just shifting a bit more, right?
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: So how important is this now in a very kind of stressed macroeconomic environment?
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: Well, the what I pay for part starts to have a little bit of a higher coefficient in that value equation.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: But value overall is that total equation.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: And so when we look at the loyalty program right, we look at, okay, well, what do you get for being part of this loyalty program?
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Right, what are you paying for?
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: But ultimately then, how does that loyalty program enhance your experience as a noodles customer?
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: So, if it's not enhancing the overall experience, then the value equation just becomes what you pay for, what you get, and that's not the entirety of what you need to focus on.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: And so, again, that's where you get into using the data, using the information that you get out of loyalty program to make sure that you're able to personalize your offers, personalize the experience a little bit more.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: And so you get into a little bit of a better engagement with customers, and so what they get from it isn't just the food and the outcome of what they paid.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: That makes perfect sense.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: When you look at kind of the customer loyalty piece investment or cost there's a big push around that as well.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Right, there seems to be a bifurcation between brands who view the customer loyalty program as an investment and those who view it as a cost and obviously cost.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: You want to minimize it at all chords, right.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: And when you look at that, how should brands be looking at the customer loyalty program?
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, look, it's an investment, right, it's an investment in your customers.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: It's an investment in driving incremental traffic and dollars to the bottom, you know, to the bottom line, and it should be viewed as an investment, unless you're doing it wrong.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Right, if it's only a cost, then something's not, then something's kind of out of whack with the way that you're going about it.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: It is an investment.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: I think it is how you look at it, how you use the data, how you analyze the promotions, how you analyze the base program to make sure that it is having an incremental impact on your customer's behavior, whether it's visits or spend.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: The loyalty program needs to be driving that.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: So we spent a lot of time focusing on how do we make sure we're doing the right analyses on whether it's base program or whether it's promotions that we run or the campaigns that we run, to make sure that they're having an incremental impact on a customer's behavior, and that's done through the data.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: Right, and you know this because you've been in this game a long time.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: Right, you roll out your base program and that gets you some incrementality right away.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: Right, people join up and they're like cool, and they start buying more often because of the base program.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Well, after that year goes by, you know that incrementality from the base program wears off and the power is in how well you use the data from the program to keep driving incrementality out of the program and incrementality out of the program.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: And that's where we're really focused on and that's why we view it as an investment.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: You know I'll go back to you know I use this as an example because everybody's like oh well, the value of a loyalty program is in the data, right, and everybody.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: It's easy to say that and everybody kind of sometimes will question that, depending on the organization you're in.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: It's like I go back to Borders the last thing, that one of the last things they sold, uh, other than like the furniture when we went out of business, um, was the data from the borders rewards program to barnes and noble for like 14 million dollars or something like that.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: So a significant amount of money was spent on the data from a rewards program from a competitor that was going out of business.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: That was no longer a threat, but the value of that data was still significant.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: Um, it's just it's a very tangible point for me to say like, look, there is value in the data.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: you know that's evidence to to support that and also uh, you know, one of the things that we see, uh and hear a good deal about is uh, you, generations, younger audiences.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: We hear that some of the younger audiences may not necessarily engage in the loyalty program right away but once you get them involved in the program they can be bigger advocates for the program holistically and they can be your best customers.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: But they also can be a little irrational.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: They want simplicity, right, they don't want to necessarily have to redeem 800 points to get that free meal.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: You know, when you look at navigating kind of engaging a more holistic audience, you know how are you looking to engage the younger customers and how?
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: What success or you know outcomes have you been seeing?
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, obviously younger customers can be a little bit more fickle in terms of what they're willing to put up with in terms of the experience and their patience levels as well.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: I think we spend a lot of time making sure our app experience is easy to use and try to simplify it as much as possible.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: From that perspective we've got, I would say, a strong part of our customer base is in that younger customer.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: You know teens and early 20s group as well, and I just was in my local noodles and company on Friday, went in and picked up some catering for a daughter's JV soccer team that I had over at my house and so, like you know, 24, 14-year year old girls were ecstatic to have some noodles and company and when I went and picked it up, there was two more teams of the water polo team in the noodles and company eating, and so there we were very much a destination for a lot of that younger demographic, and so we try to make sure that we are conscious of that, you know, make sure we're playing in spaces and social and so forth and speaking that, speaking that language if you will, and engaging them and meeting them where they're at.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, when you look at customer loyalty for a new design company, you know what's the next big thing for customer loyalty, customer experience for your brand.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I think we've our program's been in place for quite some time, right, so we're taking a look at you know what are the benefits that we're offering.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: You know to your point, you know, being new to the organization, kind of flipping over some of the rocks to make sure that you know, are these things still incremental?
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: You know what are the promotions that we run that are working well, what are the experiences that we're providing and where there's maybe some white space within that experience that we can improve on and really starting to try to identify some of those opportunities for improvement.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: You know, because I think once you've had your program in place for a little while, you can't rest on your laurels for too long, if you will.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Employee engagement is important, especially with some of the changes you went through.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Maybe longer wait time potentially, and then, you know, getting them educated on the new menu offerings as well.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: You know, how does employee engagement, employee loyalty, fit into that larger customer loyalty discussion?
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: Are you training your employees different, looking at the program in a way to get it in front of them more frequently?
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: You know, and what do you see and maybe how do you see that going forward?
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: So you know we go out of our way to make sure that we've trained our employees so they fully understand the program, they understand.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: We go out of our way to make sure that we've trained our employees so they fully understand program, they understand they can speak to it, they understand the benefits from it, you know.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: And then we work with them to make sure that they're asking everyone that comes in.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: You know, are you a loyalty program member?
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: Are you a loyalty member?
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Did you do you need to check, check in?
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: So when folks come into our stores they can check in on the loyalty program, make sure they get credit for the in-store orders on their account.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: So we make sure that we ask everyone that comes in and if they're not, we make sure we try to give them the benefit script so they sign up and become a member.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Excellent, and when you look at it and you bring that up, you know, when you look at the restaurants and locations that you know have a higher kind of penetration of loyalty members and so forth, yeah, restaurants and locations that you know have a higher kind of penetration of loyalty members and so forth, yeah, like, what's what's working?
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: What's working?
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: They ask and they ask everyone and the stories and team members, that and that, do the locations do a better job of doing that?
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: You see?
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: You see the loyalty penetration tick up.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: So it really is about getting everybody bought in, getting everybody educated, um, and then just getting everybody asking, having that discourse with the customer, no, no, absolutely.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: Last question what are two or three things you're most proud about your program?
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: I know you're relatively new with the organization, but when you look at the customer loyalty program, the customer loyalty focus within the organization what are you most proud of?
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: two or three things.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, look, I think we've.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: In the last few months, we've re-doubled down on where we're at as a brand and who we are as a brand.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: Our new campaign came out a month ago and we're really talking about this idea of we know noodles and basically taking that authority position that this is what we do.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: We're dedicated to making wonderful noodle dishes and we're putting that story at the forefront, right, like I mentioned earlier, we're making these dishes fresh to order.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: You know we've got folks sauteing dishes in the back and we need to make sure that our members and everybody understand that's the quality that they're getting from us, and so delivering on a better experience through the way that we do it, through the new menu, is really how we're going to build customer loyalty and you know the program is an enabler of that right.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: It enables us to know what dishes people were ordering and if we've changed them, how can we proactively communicate that to them before they find out in the restaurant and maybe they're not happy about it, right?
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: So how do we take proactive communication and leveraging loyalty data and so we know what they were ordering?
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: We highlight some of the new dishes that we know, uh, kind of fit in that flavor profile.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: So this, this new menu, our new brand strategy are really, you know, are going to transform noodles and company and the loyalty program has been a key conduit and kind of enabler of making sure that that's successful okay, okay, excellent.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: And what can Loyalty360 do to help you and your team, man, like I said, you guys have always been helpful to me, mark, over the years, and I think it's getting that holistic kind of category competitor view of what's happening in the loyalty landscape, not just within QSR or within restaurants, but just across the board.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: Right, because, like I mentioned, customers' expectations are set by their last best experience, right, and that's true for loyalty, right.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: And so they're not just looking at Noodles Rewards in relation to some other QSR's rewards program.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: They're thinking about, well, the folks at Delta that have my membership number, what do they do for me, and so forth.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: And so to me, loyalty360 has always been super important, enabling us to get that cross-category loyalty-specific view of what is the best-in-class loyalty experience, because that's where the bar needs to be set.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: Excellent, okay, perfect, and looking forward to seeing what you guys do with the program going forward.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: I know we have our wonderful quickfire questions now, so we'd love to get your response to this.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: We'd like to keep them short, one word or a few word phrase.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: First off, how would you describe your work life?
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: Fast paced but fulfilling.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: Excellent.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: If you have a day or a week off from work, what are you doing?
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: Catching up or spending it with my kids.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, and if you could live in any city or country, where would you live?
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: Am I working or not?
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: working, working.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: If I'm working, probably where I'm at, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: Okay, If I'm not working find me a beach hut in Aruba, please, Okay there you go.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: If you could go back to school, what would you study?
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: Probably global economics.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, and is there a facet of the job that you'd like to be more involved with than you are now?
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: I don't want more involved, but more knowledgeable, probably like the food science.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: It's fascinating to me.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: Excellent, and is there a facet of the job that you currently are doing that you'd like to know less about?
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's ever beneficial to know less, but if I could do less of it, probably legal things.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, there you go.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: You know what motivates you in tackling challenges at Noodles Company.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: Unrealized potential that I see here.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, and what do you draw inspiration from generally?
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: What lights your fire?
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: Creativity.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: Excellent.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: And what is your favorite sport and or hobby?
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Soccer.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Okay and last question what do you typically think about at the end of the day?
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: It's not going to be one word answer, two things.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: One, not every day is great, but there's something great in every day, and so I try to figure out what that was that day.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: And then two, at the end of the day, usually rehashing the things I did and what I still have left to do, kind of prepping the brain for the next day.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, perfect.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Well, Steve, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: It was great catching up with you.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: It's been a while and looking forward to hearing more from you and your team at Noodles and Company going forward.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: Great Mark.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: It's great to see you again.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: Look forward to the partnership and staying connected.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, and thank you everyone for taking the time to join us today.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: Make sure you join us every Thursday for our Leaders in Customer and Low-Wage Brand Stories edition.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: Until then, have a wonderful day.