THE MILESTONE GROUP

THE BRAND BEHIND THE RECENT OPENING OF NORTHERN ENGLAND’S LARGEST INDEPENDENT FOOD HALL ANNOUNCES PARTNERSHIP WTH LOKE

The Milestone Group, the brand behind Sheffield’s renowned restaurants, including The Milestone, Craft & Dough, INC Rooftop Bar and most recently, The Cutlery Works - a 14,000 sq ft hive of food and drink businesses, making it the largest independent food hall in Northern England, has today announced its partnership with LOKE, the loyalty, ordering and payment app for the hospitality industry.

LOKE is Australia’s No.1 tailor-made loyalty app and its recent launch in the UK will see it providing customers of The Milestone Group with the means to not only place food and drink orders from their mobile phones, but also pay for items in the same easy, quick and simple way.

The Milestone Group has launched the app with the objective of driving speed of service, ease, convenience and ultimately increased footfall with customers. Its other core objective is to remove pressures from its front and back-of-house teams for them to feel completely free to focus their attentions on delivering a totally engaged customer experience.

In order to drive footfall and repeat business, the Group is incentivising customers with a pre-loaded £5 credit which they can top-up and use as payment across any venue. Additionally, customers will earn points on all purchases made via the app – so for example 10 loyalty points for every £1 spent, plus gain access to exclusive offers and rewards.

Speaking of the partnership Matt Bigland, Director of The Milestone Group commented “Our teams are intrinsic to the continued success of our business. As an operator, our core focus is the happiness of those teams and delivering on a truly engaged customer experience – LOKE has enabled us to do this. For our customers, it’s safe, secure and simple. In terms of results, I have a happy team who now have the head space to focus on delivering a brilliant experience. Operationally, the app has enabled us to completely streamline across front and back-of-house and from a sales perspective, we increased footfall by 53% and upsells by 16% in month alone.”

Matthew Khoury, CEO, LOKE commented: “We’re really excited to be working with such a forward thinking brand as The Milestone Group across their estate. Competition is now so fierce in our industry, with innovation making the tech route so accessible that the strongest brands are emerging as those who are taking their dining digital. Increasingly, we’re seeing consumers expect technology to be part of their dining out occasion and the operators who provide that digital dimension will ultimately be the ones who come out on top. At LOKE, we’re completely focused on removing the pain points for an operator in the eyes of a diner to deliver on their expectations of an incredible journey and ultimately experience. Loyalty plays a key role in this journey and especially loyalty that customers want, but not at the detriment of de-valuing an operator’s brand.”