Fans who frequent The Greene Turtle to follow sports have more to cheer about with the debut of a new mobile app feature that lets them get more involved in the game and earn rewards for playing well.
All 37 franchise and corporate locations of the sports-themed casual dining restaurant in Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, New York, and Washington, D.C., are participating in the rollout of the new games component of the “Turtle Rewards” app, which allows both Android- and iOS-based smartphone users to earn rewards that can be applied toward purchases of food and beverages at any Greene Turtle location.
Players can currently participate in any of three (soon to be four) different games using the app.
Two of the games are traditional pick games. In the first, a player selects five teams and if all five teams win their respective matchups that week, the player receives a $10 Turtle Reward on his or her account. In another game, participants pick five individual players and if they go five for five, the guest earns a $10 Turtle Reward.
The third game pits app users against each other with one winner from each location. Participants pick a dream team of nine players from any college or professional sport and earn fantasy points each time any of their athletes’ teams win. Point leaders at each location at the end of each week receive the $10 reward.
The Greene Turtle has been steadily amassing a group of about 1,000 weekly gamers since quietly introducing the games through its Turtle Rewards app a few weeks ago. Now that the chain has made a few tweaks in early use, the games are ready for a formal rollout, says marketing director Nick Kegg. He expects user counts to grow quickly.
“We have 37 locations across five states cutting across a long list of college and professional teams in a number of sports,” Kegg says. “When you combine that with The Greene Turtle’s reputation as a home away from home for sports fans and the fact that the next few months include bowl games, the NCAA basketball tournament, spring training and more, we’ve hit on the perfect new feature to engage with our guests and the perfect time to introduce these games as an enhancement to our loyalty program.”
The Turtle Rewards program evolved quickly since its introduction at the beginning of this year. The Greene Turtle collaborated with Paytronix to develop the loyalty and payment components of the app, and Gamescape, which customized its mobile games tool to fit in with the existing Turtle Rewards app. Additional games and features are planned for 2015.
“We want to be an overall lifestyle for our guests, not just a place to buy food or beer,” Kegg says. “In fact, while our goal is definitely to draw players back into their favorite locations, we built in the ability to access and play the games even when Turtle Rewards users are not on-site. We think that will make The Greene Turtle a bigger part of everyday lives and will help us reach more people as they observe our participants playing the games throughout the community.”
