Sparkfly, an Atlanta-based adtech company, has scored a major partnership with fast-casual restaurant chain Chipotle to run its loyalty program and digital customer experience.
Sparkfly will use its technology to run Chipotle's in-app ad campaigns, rewards program, tech intelligence in the stores and online ordering. The company originally partnered with Chipotle in 2017, where it began implementing a promotions management platform.
The woman behind Sparkfly, founder and CEO Catherine Tabor, said she and her employees were excited about their progress and the full-on partnership with a big brand like Chipotle.
"What we enable is a very scalable, sophisticated and reliable data feed between any store or loyalty program," she said.
With Sparkfly’s technology, Chipotle has established: a rewards loyalty program that collects transactional data, applies loyalty rewards and processes personalized discounts; mobile app campaigns offered to customers in the Chipotle mobile wallet to be used in-store, online and via in-app ordering; single-scan technology to collect data analytics; a platform that manages discounts and offers through online ordering or in-store.
"What Sparkfly is doing is providing a very simple way for brands like Chipotle to implement these programs … we’re giving the power back to them," Tabor said. "There are companies that want to sell an all-in-one solution to these customers, and I think that if you have an infrastructure that allows you to plugin and unplug vendors based on their performance … then you’re never held captive. I think that’s something they were very interested in. We caught them at the right time during a developmental phase of their cycle."
Chipotle partially credits its recent digital customer experience and sales success to Sparkfly. The company reported sales increased by 10 percent from the first quarter of 2018 to the first quarter of 2019. Chipotle also saw an increase of digital sales by more than 100 percent in 2019.
“Just as we are committed to using high-quality, real ingredients in our restaurants; we knew using top-tier technology providers was critical to the success of our digital experience,” Curt Garner, CTO of Chipotle, said in a statement. “Sparkfly allows us to dynamically interface with both in-store and above-store technology and provides all of the capabilities we need to meet our long-term goals.”
Though Sparkfly also partners with large companies such as GreatClips and Culvers, Chipotle is its biggest partnership to date, Tabor said.
"For them to have taken a chance on us, obviously its very important because what we [can do] with this partnership is prove that we can scale," she said. "Customers as a follow-on aren’t worried that we can manage millions of millions of transactions and scale across thousands of locations."
Sparkfly provides an offer management and point-of-sale attribution platform to connect marketers and third-party technologies to customers in-store, online and via mobile apps. Tabor said the company has not raised venture capital but initially started with angel investments when the company was first established. The company is hiring developers and customer engagement representatives.
Tabor got her start in the tech world running employee benefit and discount programs for large corporations in Atlanta, including The Coca-Cola Company, Delta Airlines and SunTrust Bank. She said she wanted to use technology to bridge the online and offline world. After purchasing a company that had some technology and intellectual property related to the POS business, Tabor started on her journey to form Sparkfly.
"I realized about 10 years ago that the online coupon space, which is really how all these employee deals were being served to those employees, was very commoditized," she said. "And with companies like RetailMeNot and the internet’s ability to search for coupons, there wasn’t anything really special about an online offer. And what merchants were really wanting to understand was the value of a promotion that they might have out digitally and if someone took action on it and brought it into the store."
The partnership, Tabor said, is a great move not only for Sparkfly, but for the Atlanta tech community as a whole. Unlike other tech communities like Silicon Valley, Atlanta grants tech companies some autonomy, she said.
"For me personally, being a female tech entrepreneur in Atlanta is a great thing because there aren’t many of us," she said. "It’s great to be able to be a part of that ecosystem and help other female entrepreneurs."
