Firebirds Wood Fired Grill Drives 7% Traffic Increase in 60 Days
Firebirds had a thriving loyalty program. It still couldn't reach the regulars who never signed up. Here's how payment data closed the gap.
As a restaurant franchisor managing a portfolio of nearly 30 distinct brands, including household names like Cold Stone Creamery and Baja Fresh, Kahala Brands operates in a uniquely complex environment.
The Challenge
Firebirds' Inner Circle was a strength, not a weakness. The problem was scope. Reservations and online orders flowed cleanly into the database, but the bar, the patio, and every guest who simply walked in stayed off the radar. Without that data, the brand was leaning on an increasingly fatigued email list to drive an entire restaurant business.
"What we're doing with DataDelivers fills in a big gap where we have a set of guests that we couldn't pull into our CDP, or we don't have the right to message them. It gives us an opportunity to reach people that we otherwise wouldn't be able to."
— Christine Lorusso, VP of Digital Marketing, Firebirds
Firebirds also knew that any solution had to fit a lean team. They didn't have the bandwidth to drive a heavy IT integration project — they needed a partner who could take the technical work off their plate.
Email Fatigue
The Inner Circle list was strong, but over-reliance on email meant diminishing returns from the same engaged audience.
The Invisible Majority
The Inner Circle list was strong, but over-reliance on email meant diminishing returns from the same engaged audience.
Lean Team, Heavy Lift
A small in-house team didn't have the bandwidth to take on a complex, IT-heavy data integration on their own.
The Solution
A Turnkey Path to First-Party Data
Firebirds chose DataDelivers because they needed more than software — they needed a partner willing to do the integration work. DataDelivers stood up the connections directly, seamlessly linking Firebirds’ payment processor (FreedomPay) and loyalty provider (Fishbowl) without pulling internal IT into a multi-month build.
“All I needed to do was make the introduction, and then they handled the rest to make sure that the data was flowing in seamlessly,” says Lorusso. “Now, every time a guest swipes, we’re collecting that information on them. We can see what percentage of our guests are loyalty members and targetable, what percentage are not targetable, and what their buying and frequency patterns are.”
With the data unified, DataDelivers executed targeted campaigns aimed specifically at non-loyalty guests, driving frequency among lapsed visitors — handling everything from HTML builds and testing to send-time optimization and subject-line recommendations.
From Vanity Metrics to POS-Tied Truth
The Firebirds team didn’t just want lift — they wanted proof of lift. DataDelivers’ campaigns are measured against a global control group, isolating the actual incremental impact of every send. The result is attribution that holds up in a boardroom: open rates and click-throughs are no longer the headline. Store visits and check amounts are.
Continuity matters, too. The same DataDelivers team has been on the account since day one, building deep brand familiarity that shows up in every campaign Firebirds ships.
"We chose DataDelivers because we have 100% faith and trust that the data they're collecting for Firebirds is accurate and we can rely on it."
— Christine Lorusso, VP of Digital Marketing, Firebirds
Key results at a glance
7%
Traffic Lift
Increase across test locations on the DataDelivers platform vs. control group, measured in 60 days.
5%
Loyalty Conversion Growth
Higher lifetime value for loyalty members compared to non-loyalty guests
60 Days
Time to Results
New Inner Circle members acquired through campaigns aimed at non-loyalty guests.
100%
Confidence in Attribution
Every campaign ties to point-of-sale transactions and exact check amounts — no vanity metrics.
Measurable marketing
With DataDelivers in place, Firebirds is no longer marketing to a list — they’re marketing to a complete picture of their guests. Walk-in regulars, bar patrons, and patio diners are no longer invisible. Every campaign carries hard attribution back to the register, replacing open-rate guesswork with provable, incremental sales.
“We can track actual guests who opened an email, saw the email, and came into the restaurant,” Lorusso says, “and we can actually track that back to the point-of-sale transaction and an exact check amount that they spent. That is the best metric that you can look at.”
For a brand built on hospitality and the surprise-and-delight of its Inner Circle, the partnership is doing what every modern marketer wants their data to do: turning a beloved loyalty program into a measurable engine for growth.
Related Content
Ready to Transform Your Guest Data?
See how DataDelivers can help you unify your customer data and drive measurable growth.