In our app-happy age of head-spinning technological advancement, where more and more consumers have goods and services under their thumb—literally—thanks to their mobile devices, big data is a big deal.

According to the Pew Research Center, 77% of U.S. adults overall and 92% of young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 say they own a smartphone.¹ What’s more, Pew survey data shows that upwards of half of 18- to 29-year-olds live in a household with three or more smartphones, and around half of all U.S. adults surveyed use their smartphones to make online purchases.¹

Millennials can’t get enough of snacking; and foodservice operators can never seem to get enough information and insight about millennial snack preferences to feed their bottom line. With millennials often snacking four or more times per day,¹ it makes sense to want to get inside their heads and figure out the best ways to serve their insatiable snacking appetites. 

More and more restaurant operations are serving up loyalty programs to help drive sales and build customer loyalty.¹ As technology-driven innovations such as app-enabled takeout transform the foodservice industry, restaurant loyalty programs are experiencing a surge in popularity worldwide.¹

In a poll last year of 6,500 internet users in eight countries, multinational computer technology company Oracle found that 65% of respondents in the U.S. belonged to foodservice loyalty programs.¹ The popularity of such programs was highest in respondents from the States, with Brazil (64%) and Mexico (62%) close behind.¹ In Great Britain and Australia, more than half of consumers surveyed said they were foodservice loyalty program members.¹

Millennials are social beasts with a ravenous appetite for interaction – online, on their phones and in-person. That can be a heady recipe for success for foodservice and restaurant operations, provided they tap into the power of social media to leverage millennial snack trends and their taste for social sharing.

Before you can whet people’s appetite for your menu, you need to grab their attention—and that involves marketing. But with so many promotions circulating through today’s amazing array of marketing channels, from social (a huge smorgasbord in itself) and mobile to print and broadcast—it’s hard to keep pace with trends and zero in on what works best.