One of the first major restaurant chains to delve into the location-based rewards game, Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s now let their customers earn rewards for checking in at their restaurant locations.
The Happy Star Rewards app, available for iPhone and Android, allows you to take a spin on “The Wheel of Awesome” on your first and fourth checkins, giving you the chance to win discounted and free menu items, gift cards and merchandise. The more you check in, the higher the potential value per spin on The Wheel of Awesome.
So why use a proprietary app? Carl’s Jr felt that they could control fraud-protection by creating their own app. But that meant outfitting 3,000 stores with POP-displays and software to enable the check-ins. And that’s a big initial cost to warrant. But if their numbers respond in the same way McDonalds did when testing a Foursquare check-in solution last year (33% increase), you can bet a lot more company’s are going to join them.