In 2012, TGI Fridays, refreshed America’s most iconic bar and grill by returning it to its roots as a highly sociable bar. To reintroduce the iconic Americanized brand by refocusing its efforts back to the bar, we went straight into the palm of our audience’s hands – their smartphones. In an industry that is constantly changing, TGI Fridays wanted to provide customers with a world-class mobile app experience.

The key objectives were to deliver a visually appealing app to keep customers engaged and interested on Fridays and to provide users an efficient way of paying their tab directly from their device. The application allows for mobile payments, and includes a store locator, integration with social media and full food and drink menus.

After starting our launch effort on April 25, 2012, we were able to generate a significant amount of downloads in a short time. On June 28, 2012, we exceeded our initial year-end goal of 83,725 downloads; the app had only been live for 64 days. This download goal was accomplished 34.5% of the way into the app’s duration for the year and used approximately 38% of the promotion media weight. Apple devices account for a majority of downloads at 64.1%, and Android accounts for 35.9% of downloads.

In June 2012, we were tasked to integrate Fridays’ robust and proven rewards program, Give Me More Stripes, into the app in six weeks. This new functionality enables an existing member to check their balance, request Rewards, view and show Rewards certificates to their server and request Stripes credit via a barcode scanner or manual entry from information on their receipt.

Our continuous updates give users a reason to engage with the app. We launched an exclusive offer from September 5 to October 15 that incentivized app downloads and drove traffic: receive a free appetizer when you download the mobile app. The promotion drove an increase of 71.2% for downloads, and 20% of those who downloaded the app redeemed the offer. Because of the success of the campaign, we decided to launch “App for an App” again on February 4, 2013, and are receiving identical results to the initial promotion.

On May 3, 2012, the TGI Fridays app was the #1 most downloaded app in Apple’s Free Lifestyle Category, and the #1 app in the iTunes “Food and Drink” category on July 31, 2012.