Defining loyalty principles that outlived the program
Within a month of joining ezCater, loyalty became a key priority under the assumption that tiered rewards would increase retention. I scoped a series of sprints to define the opportunity, align a new team's roadmap around quarterly goals, and inform a build-or-buy decision.
The proposed program was ultimately paused, but the research outlived it: the same findings went on to define loyalty principles still used in compensation, meal programs, and referrals today.
Generative Sprints / Behavioral Psychology / Risk Remediation
Flagging a $17M Risk Before it Shipped
January 2024 - March 2026
sequencing a year long roadmap
competitive analysis
foundational research
concept synthesis & ideation
generative program design
tier design & evaluative research
defined rewards ecosystem
meal program rewards proposal
referrals program redesign
I was responsible for...
The Ask
Upgrade the existing rewards program with a tiered loyalty structure that increases conversion and retention. The catch: you can't roll back live rewards, so we needed to get it right.
Approach
I aligned a new team around iterative sprints to deepen our understanding of the problem, validate the opportunity for a tiered loyalty program, and guide its evolution.
When do rewards actually influence loyalty?
The Story Arc of Loyalty
While it was assumed that rewards drove loyalty, they were just the cherry on top.
Across 18 interviews at different points in the lifecycle, the story was consistent. If loyalty is a storyline's rising action, earning a customer's trust, it's built from smaller plot points: a customer-service call, a late delivery, an impressive setup. Each one shifts whether someone likes or dislikes the product, long before a rewards program enters the picture.
Where a customer is in their journey, determines behavioral promoters (rewards) and inhibitors
Rewards are a lever to outweigh "reasons not to order," namely time, money, and fear. The real opportunity was nudging customers toward valuable features and onboarding them into other offerings across the ecosystem.
Co-creating the "Perfect Loyalty Program"
Our challenge then became designing a program that targeted early customers without neglecting our most loyal customers.
Stakeholder workshops triangulated customer needs against a competitive analysis and business constraints, to ideate and align on concepts worth pursuing. Concept cards were designed as exaggerations, each targeting one variable we wanted feedback on, so participants could pick and choose the elements they liked most.
What we found reframed future initiatives and paused funding on the tiered program, redirecting investment toward incremental improvements with measurable opportunity size.
The credibility built over this engagement let me document the financial risk before launch and escalate it through a structured chain of leadership, avoiding 7.5x rewards multipliers and up to $17M in non-viable payouts.
What research actually recomended:
Increase Awareness First
Early customers were largely unaware of the program's benefits, or didn't understand its value even when they recalled it.
+13% engagement per user
Allow Redemption Flexibility
Orders are placed on a company card, so rewards that offer both personal and professional value reach more customers.
+10% on-site redemptions
Reframe On-Site Redemption
Spending rewards on an order the company already covers falls flat. Free delivery or personal vendor trails support something customers actually negotiate: budget and vendor choice.
Revisiting in 2026 Pricing
Align Tiers to Gated Features
Early customers respond to monetary incentives; long-time customers respond to upgraded services and features. A flat spend-more-earn-more model wouldn't scale with the product ecosystem.
Revisited as a 2026 initiative
Results: expertise that outlived the engagement
The lifecycle frameworks and core loyalty-experience principles lived on to inform cross-product and cross-business initiatives.
Strategic Referrals Redesign (Product & Marketing)
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Diagnosed why conversion lagged on the platform's highest-retaining acquisition channel
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Proposed a restructured give/get model, reframing the fix from "more referrers" to incentive structure
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Referred customers retain at 36% vs. 15% (four-order rate), nearly 2.4x, yet the channel converted under 100 new customers a week
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Research reshaped referral economics within a single quarter, reaching the board and Finance directly
Unsubsidized meal programs (Product & Marketing):
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Diagnosed why fewer than a quarter of 37 unsubsidized meal-program drops since 2024 were still active
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Authored the research behind a four-lever go-forward strategy: pricing, eater incentives, adoption, supply operations
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Utilization lags at ~10% vs. ~40% for subsidized programs, despite being a core expectation in corporate RFPs
Promotion desirability (Supply & Demand):
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Supported the shift toward restaurant-partner-funded promotions instead of ezCater-funded rewards alone
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Ran a dyadic survey comparing customer-expected discount value against what partners would actually offer
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Found percentage-off reads as risk compensation while dollar-off reads as reward, a distinction that shaped how promotions are framed
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Established the viability behind the sponsored listing program now live
Fulfillment compensation (Supply & Demand):
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Ranked 23 fulfillment-issue types by perceived severity and surveyed 40+ recently-compensated customers
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Found where automated compensation feels like convenience vs. loss of a trusted human safety net
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Directly informed the standardized cancellation policy: support contacts fell 43% against an $824K payout and $2.7M cost baseline
What started as a case for a tiered rewards program became the evidence base for how ezCater designs loyalty, referrals, and compensation today.
So what?
The team's instinct was that any rewards program would drive loyalty. The research showed that instinct was only half right: timing and framing mattered more than the reward itself, and the proposed structure carried more financial risk than anyone had priced in. Rather than let a well-intentioned, unvalidated program ship, I built the case to pause it, and made sure the research behind it didn't pause with it. Those frameworks now anchor how the company designs referrals, meal-program incentives, and compensation, three reorgs later.
Lauren is the loyalty queen 👑
- Pillar Lead for Demand Research
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