Radar, a leading geofencing technology provider, announced its partnership with Whataburger, a beloved fast food chain with over 800 locations across the southern United States. With Radar’s geofencing capabilities, Whataburger is able to improve its customer experience by leveraging location-based data.

In recent years, Whataburger has witnessed a significant surge in off-premise sales following the introduction of mobile order-ahead capabilities in 2019. However, the challenge for Whataburger lay in maintaining their commitment to food quality and service excellence while scaling their operations to meet the increasing demands of off-premise ordering. They recognized that integrating off-premise ordering with on-premise operations required a solution that leveraged location-awareness to optimize efficiency and enhance the customer experience.

To address this challenge, Whataburger turned to Radar, a comprehensive and developer-friendly infrastructure that could support a wide range of use cases and seamlessly integrate into their existing architecture. Radar provided Whataburger with real-time pickup estimated time of arrivals (ETAs) and automatic arrival detection, enabling the company to streamline operations within their restaurants while optimizing the overall experience for customers.

When a customer places a mobile pickup order and opts into location tracking, Whataburger utilizes Radar to track the customer’s journey to the pickup destination. Radar continuously calculates the ETA and sends real-time updates to Whataburger’s systems through webhooks. These ETAs are displayed on kitchen display systems, alerting restaurant staff when Radar detects the customer’s arrival. With each order made to order, this real-time arrival information helps staff efficiently sequence order fulfillment, ensuring orders are prepared quickly. Once the order is ready, Whataburger concludes the Radar Trip to cease tracking and generate an estimated wait time for the customer.

Seamlessly integrated with Braze, Radar enables Whataburger to deliver timely and proactive communications to pickup customers. When Radar detects a customer’s arrival, Braze triggers a push notification with real-time pickup instructions, reducing the need for customers to call the restaurant and fostering trust between Whataburger and its customers.

Thanks to Radar’s flexible APIs and user-friendly dashboards, Whataburger was able to launch the minimum viable product (MVP) in under two months. The accuracy of Radar’s ETAs, coupled with positive feedback from restaurant operations, made the decision to roll out the solution across all locations an easy one, and it was accomplished within the quarter.

“We’re thrilled to work with Whataburger to enhance their customer experience through location-based technology,” says Nick Patrick, CEO of Radar. “Our geofencing capabilities allow Whataburger to engage with customers in a personalized and timely manner, providing a seamless experience for users and ultimately driving business growth.”

Whataburger’s Senior Digital Solutions Manager, Kristen Addington, echoes this sentiment. “We wanted to create a more seamless order pickup process for customers that would deliver the highest quality food every time they arrived for pickup. Radar’s Trips feature allows us to provide our back-of-house staff with insights into customer arrival times to increase kitchen efficiency, reduce food waste, and give our customers the highest quality food with minimal wait times.”

By optimizing order fulfillment efficiency and minimizing wait times, Whataburger has succeeded in delivering improved customer experiences and cultivating customer loyalty. Since implementing Radar, Whataburger has observed consistent growth in pickup order volume and order frequency. In the first quarter of 2023 alone, location-tracked orders increased by 25 percent, while repeat orders grew by an impressive 27 percent.

The value that Whataburger customers place on location-aware experiences is evident, with over 80% of users opting into location services and experiencing a 12x higher engagement rate compared to non-opted-in users. Radar has enabled Whataburger to provide seamless pickup and on-premise experiences, resulting in heightened customer satisfaction and positive business outcomes.

Whataburger’s partnership with Radar has proven to be instrumental in overcoming the challenges of integrating off-premise ordering with on-premise operations. With Radar’s geolocation capabilities, Whataburger has significantly improved operational efficiency, enhanced the customer experience, and achieved notable growth in sales and customer loyalty.