Carl’s Jr. finally launched an app

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Carl’s Jr. finally launched an app

Post by Bagels »

Carl’s Jr. finally launched an app where you place an order, earn points and redeem coupons. Everybody started doing the points thing last year, but McD’s launched its app with digital coupons like 8 years ago, and Wendy’s / BK / JITB about 4.

Point redemption is similar to its peers (you need to spend $50, not including bonus points), to earn a free burger) but the digital coupons are weak. This is a disappointment - we stopped going to Carl’s Jr. when we stopped receiving paper coupons (my city deems the ad package they were included in to be litter). All of their combos are at/near $12, and the coupons would bring them down to $5-7…. IMO, Carl’s Jr. isn’t worth $12 status quo
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Re: Carl’s Jr. finally launched an app

Post by storewanderer »

Carls still issues coupons but the prices are terrible.

I think the reason they could not get online ordering going is because they did not have a unified point of sale system for their locations. Over the years they seemed like they kept screwing around changing what system they wanted to use; they seemed to try to have a unified solution but it never worked.

In their corporate units they at one time used the system KFC and In N Out currently use. Some franchisees used it too. They ditched that a long time ago and went to an NCR system (the one NCR was pushing before it got Radiant/Aloha control) which is used by various others- Jack in the Box, Panda Express, Panera, Whataburger, some Dennys, etc. That is a robust system with good online ordering abilities. But then Carls started selling corporate units (with those NCR registers) and basically quit supporting the NCR registers but just about everyone they sold corporate units to just kept those registers. Also larger franchisees in places like Boise and Utah were on those NCRs. So really that should be their chainwide POS solution mandatory for all locations to use. (Carls didn't even do an upgrade to them for EMV card acceptance, it was up to the franchisees to figure that out, and there have been a variety of solutions from stand alone terminals, one central pinpad for the entire counter, pinpads at every register, etc). Then in the few corporate units Carls has (maybe it is had at this point) left, they switched to some in-house POS system that was actually the old Hardees register system but updated it so they can hook a pinpad up to it and accept Chip cards. I think that system is an offspring from the system McDonalds and Taco Bell used in the 80's and 90's. Carls was trying to get franchisees to move to that system recently, but it seems like they had limited success; they got the Reno franchisee to move onto it (who had been using some awful PAR registers that also couldn't process credit cards or coupons) but most in Northern California use either the NCRs, the PARs, or some other system I am not familiar with. Now more recently the Reno franchisee has moved off that system and onto yet another system I have not seen in any other Carls units- I am not familiar what system it is called but I notice the same system is used at MOD Pizza, Boston Market (recent change there), and Five Guys (also somewhat recent change there).
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