#525: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Brand Stories | How Firehouse Subs’ Mission Has Strengthened Emotional Loyalty With Its Guests

Welcome back to our Leaders and Customer Wolfie Podcast Thursday. So another edition of our brand stories. Thank you. As always, for joining us for Thursday.

When a brand heritage is rooted on social responsibility and sustainability, authenticity tends to follow. And that's exactly the case for today's feature brand. For them, listening to customers and truly understanding their mind is a talking point. It's truly a core focus of the organization.

Brand purpose is built directly into the program. There's an emphasis on simplicity, on creating value, and on responding to customers in a way that feels thoughtful and genuine. Personalization also plays a very critical role unlocking and engagement opportunities for the brand while also presenting some very real challenges when it comes to getting it right at scale. Today we're excited to explore how these ideas come to life for Firehouse Subs.

I'm joined today by Alex Archangel Skya. She's a senior product manager of digital experiences at Firehouse Subs. She's going to share how the brand approaches purpose-driven loyalty, customer-centric design, and meaningful personalization across the digital experience. Let's go ahead and dive in.

Welcome, Alex. Thank you very much for taking the time to join the Leaders and Customer Loyalty Podcast. It's great to have you here. How are you?

Doing good. Really glad to be here. So we have a lot going on at Firehouse this year. So yeah, excited to be having this conversation.

Excellent. Looking forward to the discussion as well. For those who may not be familiar, which I'm sure everyone has and is, uh, can you give us a brief introduction of Firehouse Subs? How was it started?

Why was it started? And what was the genesis? Yeah, um, so Firehouse Subs, for those who may not be as familiar, is a quick service sandwich brand. Um, we're known for our hot subs.

It was founded actually by two firefighter brothers right here in Jacksonville, Florida. Um, the brand is actually part of the restaurant brands international ecosystem. Uh, so alongside Burger King, Tim Hortons and Popeyes, other brands that you may know and be familiar with. But um, you know, I think one really interesting thing about Firehouse Subs is really about our mission.

Um, we support the Public Safety Foundation. A part of every single purchase of Firehouse Subs um goes toward that foundation and our mission, um, which I think is really great. Okay. You know, when you look back, uh, been around for a while, I think uh I think you guys are in the process of going public soon too, correct?

No, no, no. Let's strike that. Strike that, sorry that's like no. Let's go.

So when you look back, you know, what's led to its great success? I think a couple of different things. I think the first thing really is the product. So hot subs are our differentiator.

Um, I think the sandwich category is mostly within cold subs. So I think that definitely gives us um a pretty big edge in the market. And then the other thing is definitely the purpose. So, like I mentioned, our public safety foundation um over the years has provided over $100 million uh to first responders to help fund life-saving equipment.

Um and then the third, I think, is like the guest is at the center of everything that we do. We do tons of research and we talk to our guests on a on a daily basis just to ensure that everything from our menu to our digital experience is all kind of based on the feedback that we get from our guests. Okay. When you talk about the guests being at the center of everything you do, that's something that everyone strives for.

And I think you guys do an exceptional job. I go to Firehouse subs quite often. Um, you know, how do you do that? Because everyone wants to be able to do it, to have feedback, listen to feedback, action on feedback.

Um, but oftentimes it's not necessarily internally aligned uh from an organizational perspective. Yeah, I think that's a really great question. I think one thing that I love about Firehouse is like our commitment to testing. So everything that we do is tested, like every single sandwich that we release, whether that's new or whether it's like a revamp of an already existing sandwich, we do tons of testing in various markets and actually like gather feedback from the guests and kind of similarly on our digital experience as well, we kind of A-B test everything and make sure that we have like data to back that up before anything goes live as well.

Okay. Can you tell us a little bit more about you, uh, your current role at Firehouse Subs, what you do on a daily basis? Yeah, uh I'm a senior product manager here and I oversee our growth and loyalty team. So our mission is essentially um digital sales growth, and loyalty is really like the engine that kind of um gets at that.

So I own our firehouse rewards program from end-to-end um across our digital experience and also our in-restaurant flow. Um, so yeah, I think our program has kind of three main pillars, which I'm sure I'll go through in this conversation, which are our rewards, our offers, and our challenges. And my job is to kind of make sure that all of those work together um to kind of drive that guest frequency, revenue, and guest experience. Okay.

You know, you look at your role. Uh, customer loyalty is very important, customer experience is very important, uh, some economic headwinds now in certain industries. You know, what's the biggest uh challenge or maybe opportunity you face in your role? Um yeah, I think I think probably the biggest challenge is that um we have a really large loyalty base of guests.

So I think whenever we want to make a meaningful change to the program, um, you know, unlike some brands, we can't always move as quickly because we have like a large loyalty base that is used to certain things, used to how things um have been. So we try to really do that like deep testing and research um and have a real business case before we kind of change anything. So I think for us, we probably are slower to launch, but more deliberate when we kind of make any changes to our loyalty program.

Okay. When you look at uh your industry, uh big discussion right now in our community, uh, you know, we meet with our brands every week to talk about different topics pertaining to customer loyalty. Customers changing, industries changing. Uh so if you look at the the quick service restaurant, restaurants in general, fast casual, you know, how are how is that industry changing and and you know, how are you adapting some of those changes?

Yeah, um, I think the first big thing is kind of that growing shift to digital. So now like more and more users are engaging with us on our digital channels, and um, that's where we are trying to like focus more of our efforts, whereas a couple of years ago it was all in restaurant. Um, and I think the second is really like probably sensitivity to value is is growing, and you know, guests are smart about kind of which brands and which programs they engage with. They really look at um kind of pricing and value.

So one of the things that we're doing differently, I think, is just investing heavily in personalization, just to ensure that you know, each guest gets the right messaging, the right targeting, everything that's made for them, and kind of the value that makes sense for that guest as well. That makes perfect sense. So when you look at value, another perfect discussion uh topic right now. Some brands are doing a good job, right?

Different sizes potentially, uh, offering an ability to redeem points differently, maybe to use uh if you only have 10 points, use that to get 15 cents off an order, whatever it may be. That's uh obviously uh kind of a uh strange exception, but you know, doing things to make the program more flexible. But getting back to that listening we talked to earlier, you know, how are you looking at value uh, you know, holistically within the organization? Um, yeah, I think I think that's a great question.

I mean, I think like, of course, we are always looking at pricing and just ensuring that our pricing is, you know, up to date in terms of like the market and what makes sense. So that's definitely one area. I think the other area um we are investing in is making our offers smarter and and more targeted. So just ensuring that, like I mentioned, like, you know, our offers are targeted to whatever makes sense for that guest based on their past purchase behavior and what they're going to use.

And kind of similarly, we're also looking at like our loyalty mechanics and rewards if there's anything worth changing there, just to ensure that guests can earn rewards faster. That's like one of the biggest feedback that we've heard from our guests to date is that they'd like to earn rewards faster than they do today. So we're doing a lot in terms of you know, challenges, double point days. Like, how can we get them to get more points and kind of get to those rewards as fast as possible?

Okay. Customer loyalty, we've been talking about it uh for 10, 15 minutes now, very important. Uh, but we also always like to understand how those who are in the industry define customer loyalty. So, you know, what does customer loyalty mean to you and to firehouse setups?

Yeah, I think for us, loyalty is really the combination of guest preference and their frequency. So it's really about how do we get the guests to kind of keep choosing us over time. Obviously, like the kind of mechanics that we have in our loyalty programs, such as you know, the points offers challenges. Um, you know, we we definitely use that, but we use that to like kind of help change and drive the behavior that we want.

So I think that's one piece of it. And then of course, like our mission as well. Our loyalty, our guest loyalty also supports our public safety foundation. So, like within every visit, um, they're contributing donations towards um first responders.

And I think that definitely gives guests like a tighter connection to our brand and to our mission and makes them kind of more more likely to come to Firehouse again and again. Okay. You talked about personalization uh a little bit, make sure you're the right offer and the right channel, uh kind of to the right customer. Very important.

And technology is a big piece of that, right? So technology can be challenging sometimes to get uh to work together because one of the things that firehouse subs always seems to be it's uh they know you a little bit, right? So if you go there more often, but oftentimes that can be a challenge. So how do you how do you look at personalization?

How do you you know potentially leverage technology and use technology as an attract and kind of a uh you know a lever to drive uh the personalization at scale? Yeah, uh yeah, I think that's a great question. And I think like we have a lot of, for example, in restaurant, we have a lot of messaging in restaurant about our loyalty program. So like every time a guest comes and visits in restaurants, our um employees will ask them, like, hey, are you a loyalty number with us?

What's your phone number so that we can make sure we get you the points? Like every one of those store visits, um, we have the data from that user, like what store they visited, what did they order, et cetera. And obviously, you know, when they place an order on the app or the website, we have that data as well. So I think it's just that data capture allows us to get all the relevant information about the user.

Um, and then that kind of helps our personalization algorithm in terms of determining, like, okay, like this user came here to these specific restaurants. They typically order these things, they typically come at this time. Like, here's how we're gonna target them. And also depends on our business goals.

Like, are we trying to kind of push these specific sandwiches, or are we trying to like increase, you know, get more users to come at a specific time that may be low? So, yeah, I think it all depends. Okay, that's awesome. Can you tell us a little bit more about the customer loyalty program, you know, how it works, uh, some of the benefits of being a member, and uh, you know, uh how you've kind of kept it current throughout the years.

Yeah. I think right now our program is pretty straightforward. So guests will earn 100 points for every dollar that they spend. Um then they can use those those points to get free menu items.

So anything from a cookie to a sub to maybe a catering platter for big group orders. So um, you know, like I mentioned, in addition to that, we also run like double points days. We also run various challenges, which allow users to earn more points um kind of throughout the year, depending on um different things. I think when the program was originally designed, the goal was really more around acquisition just to get a lot more members enrolled.

Um, now that we've done that, we're kind of moving towards more towards like retention and frequency and just for the users that we have, just getting them to come back more and more frequently. So we're trying to kind of do all these events to make our program more engaging and you know, get them to get their rewards faster. Okay. Yeah.

And obviously the the quicker you get into that first redemption opportunity or uh it the better it is for the program, short and long term. And I'm sure you're quite aware of that. So when you look at your program compared maybe the competitive set uh in the quick uh service restaurant, you know, what makes the loyalty program unique compared to others in your industry? Yeah, I think um, like I mentioned, like our brand purpose is built into the program.

So when a guest kind of engages with us, part of their purchase is supporting first responders through our public safety foundation. So I think that is like a really meaningful differentiator compared to some of the other QSR programs. And then I also think, like in general, we are trying to keep our program very simple, very easy to understand. Like a guest should really be able to understand the program in under 30 seconds.

Um, and you know, we're really trying to make it like super easy to join. Once you're a member, super easy to redeem, super easy to understand your benefits, um, and just continue growing with the program. That makes sense. Uh uh brand purpose, uh, CSR is another area that uh, and you guys do it quite well uh from a corporate social responsibility perspective.

They have a hard time getting that message across, and sometimes it's not always sincere. But you know, your purpose, uh, why the company was started, does that help it resonate a little more just because it's kind of the foundational aspects of one of the foundational aspects of the brand itself? Yeah, I think I think definitely like that is really how the brand was started. Like the founders have a connection to the community and public safety.

And I think like when we designed the loyalty program and and our loyalty mechanics, like we wanted a way to like help our members um directly connect to that. So, you know, different and you know, activations that we have, Roundup, you know, in-store um activations, like promotions that we have for International Firefighters Day, which is coming up. Um so yeah, I think I think it's definitely well when you look at uh how do how do you balance simplicity and value when encouraging and engaging experiences?

Because personalization, getting to that one-to-one, one-to-many, uh can be a little more complex, but also uh you want to keep it simple. So when you look at uh the customer, the customer experience efforts, how do you balance simplicity and value while while creating engaging experiences? Yeah, I I think where we start is with the simplicity layer. Um so I think like with everything, if a guest doesn't understand the offer in two seconds, like they're not going to use it, they're not gonna redeem it.

So we try to make everything as simple as possible so that like later on that value can land. So we really start with the simplicity and then I think like the value follows. And then that kind of helps us drive in terms of like, you know, our offers, our challenges, personalization, anything. Once like simplicity and value are solid and play together, it really helps um, really helps with the engagement of our guests.

That makes sense. Yeah, younger generation, kind of that next generation customer loyalty potentially, kind of what they're interested in. Many brands oftentimes struggle getting uh, you know, Gen Z, some millennials involved in the program, but once they do, they find that it can be quite advantageous to them. So, you know, how how do you engage younger generations, younger customers and understanding kind of you know what they have a value in and how you can you know personalize or just create uh you know engaging opportunities for them?

Um yeah, I think we try to set a bar high on our digital experience and have it, you know, fast, no bugs, you know, clean interface. Um, so we kind of try to start with those basics and then we sort of layer on the personalization aspect on top and you know, make sure that those personalized offers actually are relevant, make sense to those guests as well. And then also going back to like our brand purpose and like really trying to make that as authentic as possible because I think like the younger generation especially can tell when something is inauthentic and and you know they're using tons of apps.

Um, so I think just keeping it super simple, clean, and as authentic as possible, I think really has been key to earn and keep that relationship. Okay. Um emotional loyalty, uh very important topic as well. Uh I think obviously having that that CSR uh kind of perfection or at least uh the how you honed in on CSR and how the mission are very important.

You know, how do you define emotional loyalty at firehouse subs uh when you look at uh driving emotional loyalty? Yeah, yeah, I think like like we've talked about our emotional loyalty is really anchored to our public safety foundation. Um, so I think we we try to expose that as much as we can. And, you know, our guests can see like which local fire stations, you know, received equipment they can read about, like, you know, who received the gear that was funded by their donation.

So I think all of that, like making that as tangible as possible to our guests really help drive that loyalty as well. Okay, awesome. Um, when you look at partnerships, that's another area of a pretty significant impact. How do you look at partnerships from a firehouse subs?

That could be with the CPG providers, like your software providers, or uh, you know, the you know, your chip providers as well or others, um potentially, you know, uh in the community. How do you look at maybe partnering with schools and what does partnership mean to your brand? Yeah, yeah, definitely. We have tons of different partners that we work with.

Um, and I think like going again, going back to that CSR piece, like our public safety foundation partners with tons of organizations, whether that's like local fire stations, schools, hospitals, like kind of anyone that needs that life-saving equipment can apply for a grant with our public safety foundation. And um, you know, really like our board um kind of works really hard to ensure that you know we have all these partnerships and you know, can can donate um and fund and fund that equipment.

Okay. Uh wrapping up here, a couple other questions that can seem to align as well. You know, when you look at AI, new technologies, uh, can it help or how do you envision it helping with regard to customer experience, customer loyalty? Yeah, I think um right now our biggest AI investment is in personalization, like I mentioned.

So we are moving um our promotions away from kind of this like past legacy, one size fits all model, really towards this like AI-driven targeting solution that really tailors offers for each guest based on their behavior and and their preferences. So I think that's really um like our our biggest focus right now. That's awesome. Okay.

And and we know what's next? What's the next big thing that you are looking at, Firehouse is looking at from a customer loyalty, customer experience perspective? Yeah, I think we are definitely trying to revamp and improve our loyalty program overall. Um, like I mentioned, we're we're kind of trying to move away from like a standard like one size fits all approach, kind of across the board and um, you know, not just on the offer side, but really again, also like on the rewards, challenges, kind of everything, like making everything hyper-personalized and specific to the guests and have like even a different app experience for different guests and kind of making that all more targeted to those guests as well.

Okay. When you step back and look at the customer multiprogram, what are two or three things you're most proud of when when you look at it uh in total? Yeah. Um I think like I mentioned that like we're very close to our guests and our customers.

You know, we listen to their feedback, to we take the data and we act on it. Um, you know, like one example that I mentioned was like we had all this data that told us that our customers were saying that rewards were taking too long to earn. Um, so that's something that we're we're working on optimizing right now. And um, I think I'm definitely really proud of that.

Well, I think that's good. I mean, because a lot of times there is kind of this dissonance right now between the CFO and the CMO, where if the program may not be driving the exact metrics it needs to, maybe we need to devalue the program, right? And they don't often come out and say, Oh, we're devaluing the program. We're giving this new benefit.

Instead of getting free sub, we're gonna give you a uh pen. Like, well, I don't want a pen, right? I want a free sub, right? So, and that can have some uh fairly negative independent.

Serious impacts on the brand, on the program, and then it gets out in the ether, right? And everyone's complaining about it. Uh, so I think that that's great that you heard that and you're trying to react, even from a communication perspective. Maybe you're not able to do it all, but you can do some things to help assuage some of the that consternation.

It's great to hear. And a last question, you know, what can loyalty 360 do to help you and your team and your customer loyalty efforts? Yeah, I think definitely connecting us with peers who are working on the same problem. Um, you know, I think quick service is uh very specific and probably very different than other um industries like retail or travel.

Um, you know, we have franchisee economics in the mix as well. Um, so I think, you know, having that tactical playbook of like other peer brands, um, you know, and having that connection with, you know, whether working sessions or their their studies specific to QSR, I think that would definitely be super, super helpful in helping us smooth the needle. That's great. Well, Alex, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today.

It's always a pleasure uh catching up with the team at Firehouse Subs. Uh, your focus on corporate social responsibility, how you're personalizing offers, but more importantly, how you're listening to them, uh, understanding what their uh interests are and how you can help them from a value perspective. But you know, it was great to hear today. Yeah, awesome.

Thank you so much. Absolutely. And well else, thank you for taking the time to join us today. Make sure you join us every Thursday for our Leaders and Customer Loyalty series.

Uh make sure if you haven't, follow us on all the social media channels that are listed below and tune in every Thursday. Until then, have a wonderful day.