The Gift Cards into the FoodTech Revolution: some possible future scenarios

During the pandemic period, one?of the most suffering industry was the restaurant and the food service. The first concern of this industry during that period was to protect as much as possible their cash flows and to keep engaged the customers until the partial or total reopening of their businesses.?

So that, the industry had to find quick solutions to create a backup plan within this worst case scenario. The first one was to enhance the food delivery industry and to reach as many new that customers through that platforms; a second interesting strategy implemented was to create gift cards (often they were handmade) and to push?them to the market for B2C purpose with a 20% to 50% discount:?some remarkable examples for the italian market were “sconto e torno” from Amilon and the gift card program from Unipiazza to support the small retailers.?

On behalf of this second strategy, also few big players decided to surf deeper the European Gift Card market also in the B2B side since H2 2020, sometimes with a “restaurant support claim”: Deliveroo as a first mover into the food delivery companies, TheFork as a first mover for restaurants and “on site food service”.?

In 2021 the industry took the awareness of the potential of the Gift Card for creating a new business streamline, positive cashflows, upselling opportunities and higher customer engagement:?within the food delivery segment, Uber tested the market for half an year to improve its technical Gift Card assets, Just Eat and Glovo started to inquire the market to be ready for 2022. On the other hand, TheFork expanded the number of restaurants in which to use the gift card in Europe, Mc Donalds started to propose the Gift Cards into their shop and Starbucks expanded its Card model (worthing more or less 1.5 bn $ per year worldwide) to a lot of new European countries.?

After so much talk about the recent past, I think another question is needed to be answered: what are the possible future scenarios for the gift card business developement related to this industry??

As much as I can underline from a vantage point within the Gift Card market, I can see 3 important business streamlines and a forth related to the partnership that this player could apply for into the gift card market:?

• Keeping the leverage on the food delivery brands’ gift cards; within the resaturant chains perspection, that gift cards could be also an useful markteting and media tool to do customer acquisition putting the right claim into the food delivery partner’s gift card.?
• Enforce the leverage on Companies aggregators (TheFork, Opentable, etc...) to use the network power within the market, with the objective to create a stronger and high competitive product.?
• The creation of “local networks” within cities or defined areas, with the objective to tie the customer not only to the shops, but also to the territories. That streamline could be covered by simple solution as the Unipiazza’s one, or with something new on the target by companies like Spiiky or Tilby, basing on the number of the shops and of the potential customers available in defined region.?

All this three streamlines could be partnerred very well with some other industries to increment the customer engagement and to create new bundles on the market: for instance, some of the shared mobility companies, electrical mobility and micromobility (eg. Dott)?are looking for restaurants and companies related to this industry to distribute promo codes or voucher that could be delivered easily through a The Fork or a Deliveroo Gift Card as an incentive to the purchase of the food industry gift cards.?

The last few years taught a lot to this industry, capable of developing an incredible sense of adaptadion, thanks in part to a very flexible tool like the Gift Card.