It all started when a restaurateur friend called and asked for marketing help. He was spending a lot on marketing – TV, local newspaper ads, search engine marketing, social media – but he had no idea if any of the tactics were working or which ones were most effective.

We thought there should be a better way for restaurants to get new customers and keep them coming back, and to know exactly what’s working and how to measure the results.

After talking with lots of restaurateurs and their customers, we realized a few simple truths about restaurant marketing. For customers, food is a social experience. They love to talk about food, tell their friends about it, and dine with them. For restaurants, there wasn’t an easy way to encourage word of mouth or to measure marketing results.

That’s why we built Punchh as a social loyalty platform for restaurants – to drive more repeat customers, word of mouth, and referrals.

Punchh’s social loyalty platform is not a network, or a one-size-fit-all solution. It works for restaurants so they can create their own rewards program and social incentives for their loyal customers. Punchh works with their existing marketing systems, analytics tools, point-of-sale (POS), and payments technologies.

We’re a group of foodies who are passionate about solving everyday business problems by using the best technologies. For us it’s not about just cool apps but about delivering measurable results, aka ROI.

Punchh works for both restaurants and customers.

For restaurants, Punchh provides an easy way to engage customers – we provide restaurant customers tools to spread the word of mouth, and reward them for repeat visits and referrals. Most important, restaurants can track and measure what’s working and what’s not; and run campaigns to keep customers coming back.

For customers, Punchh puts the punch cards of all their favorite restaurants on phones so that they never have to carry stacks of them. Customers can write reviews to tell their friends and the restaurants about their experience. And unlike other loyalty programs, Punchh provides customers rewards when they eat at their favorite restaurants and when their friends show up to eat.