Restaurant spotlight: How Renegade Burrito conquered the Denver food scene
Meet Renegade Burrito
Renegade Burrito was founded in 2017 by Brad and Tiffani Harris and fellow entrepreneurs Brenda and Lenny Garner.
It didn’t take long for them to start winning awards. A few years after their start, Renegade was awarded the title of best breakfast burrito, best taco, best Mexican food, and more—the list goes on and on.
“I started my restaurant career working at a Subway sandwich shop while attending the University of Northern Colorado,” Harris recalls. “Fast-forward 30 years, and my wife and I have owned 35 Subway locations as well as 10 more franchise locations across seven other regional and national brands.”
“But something was missing,” says Harris.
For Harris, running a franchise was simple: You have a playbook that you follow to reach success. But sometimes, his goals didn’t align with the brands he was working with. While the franchisor always pushes for more sales, the franchisee is more concerned with unit profitability and sustainability.
“A successful business provides a high-quality product or service at a fair price,” Harris says. “This has been the key to Renegade’s success and can be shown through numerous awards, growing sales, and profitability increases—as well as high Google and Yelp ratings.”
How ChowNow + Boostly transformed Renegade’s online gameplan
Renegade was looking for a cost-effective way to offer online ordering and boost their sales—all while maintaining a healthy profit margin. This is where ChowNow and Boostly stepped in.
ChowNow built Renegade their own branded app and optimized their website for ordering. It gave Renegade control over profitability and their online ordering experience without having to pay commissions on any order. The result? Renegade saw a 167% boost in average orders.
Renegade also uses the ChowNow Pro suite for marketing tactics, branded collateral, and more to encourage users to stop ordering through expensive platforms like DoorDash, Uber Eats, or Grubhub, which charge hefty commissions, don’t share customer data, and don’t drive diner loyalty. When those diners migrated to ChowNow, Renegade didn’t have to pay any commissions and was able to capture all their data to better understand their customers and build more effective marketing campaigns. That data isn’t available through those other apps.
Next, Renegade used the ChowNow and Boostly integration to build and send text marketing campaigns with personalized text offers and updates directly to diners’ phones. The system utilizes a built-in counter so that once the offer is accepted, it is only valid for 60 minutes. This encourages immediate action and keeps the offer from being used multiple times. On just a single text campaign, Renegade saw a 17X return on investment. Their next campaign helped them build up their Google reviews, driving 89 five-star reviews in just a few days.
For Harris, having access to customer data was the biggest advantage. “Other ordering platforms keep customer data to themselves and won’t share it with restaurants,” he says. “With ChowNow, the customer data is mine, and I can use it to market to my customers and know who they are. The ChowNow and Boostly integration goes beyond just orders. It creates a smooth and unified experience, a positive customer journey that keeps diners engaged and coming back to us.”
Combining their ChowNow data with Boostly’s text marketing tactics was vital to optimizing Renegade’s process and building more effective marketing.
“Previously, my databases didn’t interact,” Harris says. “I’d have to download my ChowNow data on a regular basis and send the Excel file to my previous text marketing company. This process was cumbersome and painful. Now that the databases are integrated, it’s seamless and happens in real time.”
All about the results
Renegade’s success is a beacon for restaurateurs looking to break free from the ordinary. It’s a reminder that great food, creativity, and genuine connection are the true ingredients for building a thriving independent restaurant business. By owning the customer journey with tools like ChowNow and Boostly, any restaurant can write their own Renegade Burrito story.
Since partnering with ChowNow and Boostly, Renegade saw:
- 6X increase in orders with their branded mobile apps
- 21% more orders after adding images to their online menu
- 167% increase in average orders by enabling Flex Delivery
- 31% more orders after turning on automated emails
- 17X return on investment in a single text campaign
- 89 new five-star Google reviews
- 30.5% engagement rate on a single text
All of this was made possible by partnering with ChowNow and Boostly. If you’re ready to write your own success story like Renegade, sign up for a quick demo to see how you can take your online ordering to the next level.
