Quick Service Restaurants (QSR) Benefits & Perks

If you own a coffee shop, ice cream or pizza parlor, deli or any other quick-serve-restaurant, you should take a minute to read below and make sure you're receiving all the benefits afforded to your industry. 

Even if you're a vendor to any of these merchants, banks, restaurant supply, chamber or trade association, a partnership with FDIS to help serve your clients in these areas could prove valuable.

You will have to go back about ten years to remember a time when fast food restaurants like Taco Bell or Wendy's only accepted cash.

There were two big obsticles hindering the QSR owner from accepting plastic payments.  First, when your average ticket and margins are small, the fees associated with accepting credit cards was simply cost prohibitive at one time.  More importantly the QSR owner simply could not allow their lines to be slowed down by having to go through the steps to process a card at the point of sale.

First Data & McDonald's were two of the strongest advocates who persuaded Visa & Mastercard to make special allowances in regards to the specific needs of the QSR, resulting in special pricing & other benefits for this segment.

Unfortunately for some merchants, not all payment processors have programs that allow their clients to avail themselves of all of these special perks.

SPEED

First, speed is king!  That's why QSRs are able to bypass obtaining a signature on tickets below $25.00.  You only have to provide your customer with a receipt if they request one.  When you combine this with the speed of an IP or WiFi point-of-sale device you can process a sale up to eight times faster. 

Picture the difference under the old scenario:  your customer hands over their card, your cashier swipes it and waits for the system to dial for an authorization, once it's approved they hand the ticket to the customer to sign.  After signing the customer returns the ticket to the cashier and she returns their card and their receipt.

In constrast, today the customer would present their card, your employee would swipe it and ask the customer if they want a receipt.  If the customer declines your employee says, "Next customer may I help you?"

If you're not already using IP or Wifi equipment the time it takes to connect and obtain an authorization on dial can take as long as 8 - 15 seconds compared to 1 - 2 seconds on IP.

SECURITY

FDIS provides full chargeback protection to the QSR on tickets below $25.00 even though the merchant is not required to obtain a signed receipt.

To protect the QSR from being attacked by hackers and having your clients' credit card data stolen, the new TransArmor solution offered by FDIS will effectively encrypt the data during the authorization.  More importantly it will replace the real card number with a randomly generated "tokenized" number while the data sits in your point-of-sale system throughout the day, rendering the information useless to criminals.

SAVINGS

Now let's talk about pricing.  It's no secret that a QSR has small tickets and a fairly large overhead.  The last thing you need is to have your processor taking 2% plus 20 - 25 cents out of every transaction.  Visa & Mastercard have special interchange categories for the small ticket QSR so providing you have a processor like FDIS who has a QSR program in place, you can pay as little as 1.37% and 15 cents depending on the size of your average tickets. 

Since the typical QSR will process more than 1,000 small tickets each month, many times for less than $10.00, reducing your fees by as much as 11 to 12 cents on every transaction can mount up to substantial savings.  It's common for a restaurant to lower their monthly fees by as much as $250 just by being correctly placed on a QSR program.

SERVICE

Visa & Mastercard, along with FDIS have made payments faster, cheaper & safer for the merchant but it doesn't stop there.  FDIS has gift card programs, business cash advances, and local QSR experts to guide you in all the options afforded QSRs to help your business grow.

Studies prove that as fuel prices increase so does the volume of the QSR segment over the "sit down" or "fine-dining" establishments.  Your place in the economy is important.  Be sure that your payment processor is treating you like the VIP that you are.

Jason Banther, CEO

Dynamic Payment Innovations, Inc.
A First Data Independent Sales Agency
FDIS - QSR Program

In Chattanooga, click here for more information about FDIS' QSR program.

Jason can be reached at 423-648-9877

Business Branded Gift Cards

Business Branded Gift Cards

Sell Dozens (Or Hundreds) of Gift Cards For Father's Day!

If you've never tried some of the ideas below, you just might sell more gift cards next week than you've ever sold before!  

Unfortunately, Father's Day gets less attention than it deserves.  A typical celebration for Mother's Day lasts two hours longer than that of Father's Day and we are much more likely to skip getting dad a gift than we are our moms.  Estimated spending for Mother's Day is $16 billion compared to $9.9 billion on Father's Day.  For every dad who stayed, worked, provided, played catch, taught us to drive a car and all the other wonderful things that our fathers do, we should celebrate them.

Many Americans are going to Google the phrase "ideas for Father's Day gifts" this weekend and guess what most of the articles are going to recommend.  You guessed it!  1.) Gift Cards to his favorite restaurant  2.) A Gift Card to his favorite retail store  3.) A Gift Card to a place that has items he likes but ordinarily wouldn't buy for himself.  (That's how I got my Ipod.)

Did you know that over 32% of the gifts purchased for Father's day will be gift cards?  That's more than electronics and tools combined!  That's a massive chunk out of the $10 billion being spent over the next few days.

So how do you get your share of the $3 billion that will be spent buying gift cards next week?  I'm glad you asked.

First, think about the fact that most of us have more than one father figure in our lives that we want to recognize.  However, we typically want to show the greater appreciation for the father who raised us.  You can give us a great opportunity to do something really nice for Dad and still remember those step dads, uncles, mentors, grandfathers, etc. who have meant so much to us.

Father's Day Gift Card Ideas:

1.) Offer a Father's Day Special where your customers can buy one card for $100.00 and receive two $20.00 gift cards free!   (If your store has higher or smaller average tickets feel free to tweak this to suit your business.)  A restaurant could do "Buy a $50 gift card for Dad and get two $10 cards free".

This puts several hundred dollars into your cash flow next week prior to any merchandise leaving your store and you'll increase your traffic.  You probably have customers who were going to spend $60 or $70 but because of your promotion they go ahead and spend $100 to receive the free cards!  (We've seen this happen over and over with our clients.) 

And if you're worried about losing money, it's impossible.  Gift card recipients only redeem 61% of the value on the card.  So for every $100 you sell, $39 is going directly to your bottom line, making it easy for you to afford marketing promotions like this to increase traffic.  If giving away two cards is unreasonable for your particular business you might offer a "Buy 1 Card For $50 & Get ONE $10 Card Free".

2.) Tweak that first idea a little and offer to anybody who spends X amount of dollars (i.e. $100) on any item in your store and they receive two $15.00 gift cards free.  This works great for the customer who sees exactly what they want to purchase for their father, it's $79.95 and now they have an incentive to spend just a little more to hit the $100 mark for their free gift cards.  You just increased your revenue and planted two "miniature billboards" in a couple wallets out there.

3.) Let's say you own an auto parts store.  You've put together some car cleaning kits made of of a few different items and you've put a sign up that reads "Great Father's Day Gift - Car Cleaning Kit - $24.95".  I think that's a great idea for my uncle or father-in-law but I want to do something a little more for my dad.  Offer your kit for free to anyone who buys a $100 gift card. 

4.) Make sure that your gift cards and any promotions you're offering are displayed prominently throughout your store. 

If you're like many of my merchants the ideas listed above will not be the exact plan that will work for you.  But after reading these ideas and thinking about your particular business and the items you sell you will easily be able to create a plan that will work.

Your customers will appreciate you for solving their challenge of what to get their dad, uncle, and football coach for Father's Day.  You'll reap the nice cash flow and gain a few new customers.  Ask yourself what you spent on advertising last year compared to how many new clients you gained.  For a fraction of that amount you can add dozens of new customers next week by being creative with your gift card program. 

You'll also be doing your part to make sure that fathers everywhere are remembered this Father's Day.


Jason Banther, CEO
Dynamic Payment Innovations, Inc.
A First Data Independent Sales Agency
http://www.fdis-chatt.com

Jason can be reached at FDIS Chattanooga, 423-648-9877

What's In A Name?

If I asked you to make a list of things that you know to do in order to grow as a human being, to be a better person, more successful or to improve your business you could probably write your own book on the subject.

At the very least you could fill up two or three pages of wise & practical strategies, tips and pointers we could all benefit from. But if I then asked you to tell me the ways that you’re actually implementing those things into your daily life I would be willing to wager that your list would become much shorter.

One of those skills you know you should improve is to remember and use the names of the people you come into contact with.   Most people hide behind the worn out excuse, “I can remember faces but just can’t remember names.” 

Now there are plenty of good courses and good books out there that teach systems for improving your memory.  The thought that led me to this post is not so much “how” to remember, but rather what it means to remember names.

I believe it goes further into our innate desire to be important, to matter, to think that somebody actually notices that we’re taking up space on this planet.  To remember someone’s name, if done for the right reason, says to that person that you’re actually interested in the person behind the name.

If you’re in business it says to your client, that you see more than just a dollar sign on their head when they walk into your store. Taking the time to memorize names is, in my opinion, just the beginning.  It’s the first step to making an effort to get to know the people who share this space in time with you.

If you can remember that much you can also remember details about their family, the fact that their son just started his first year playing baseball or that their daughter just won a prestigious award at school.

Whether you own a retail store, restaurant, service air conditioners, own a dry cleaner, install phone systems or detail cars for a living, how much impact do you think it would have if you took time to get to know the people you come in contact with every day?  How would that make someone feel as they walked away from your business?

What kind of feeling would they associate when they think of you or your store? Of all the things we know to do but fail to practice I challenge you to make some effort today to practice this simple but extremely important of all social graces and see what kind of difference it makes.

Jason Banther, CEO

Dynamic Payment Innovations, Inc.

A First Data Independent Sales Agency

http://www.fdis-chatt.com/

Jason can be reached at FDIS Chattanooga, 423-648-9877.