Introducing Buffalo Burger

Buffalo Burger is Egypt’s biggest Burger chain, founded in 2008 by four brothers who challenged the idea that fast food must be “junk food.” Their focus on natural ingredients, high-quality beef, and elevated culinary experiences has won over the Egyptian market. After 15 years of growth, Buffalo Burger now operates over 50 branches across Egypt with expansion underway across the MENA region. The chain is 100% Egyptian-owned, serving pure beef burgers from their own manufacturing facilities employing over 3,000 workers, with over 1 million total customers and 2,500+ daily orders.

Known for continuously launching new products and creative collaborations, Buffalo Burger uses Gameball as a flexible layer that adapts to their fast-moving marketing calendar. Whether it’s a new menu item, a limited-time collaboration, or a themed campaign, loyalty is consistently woven into the experience—allowing customers to earn more, engage more, and feel closer to the brand with every launch.

Challenges

Buffalo Burger faced a challenge common across the food delivery industry: dependency on third-party aggregator apps. While platforms like Talabat provided order volume, the commissions cut significantly into margins. The business needed to incentivize customers to order directly through Buffalo Burger’s own website and mobile app—where margins are substantially better—but where the convenience and habit of aggregator apps created a difficult behavioral barrier to overcome.

Beyond the channel shift, the team wanted to increase order frequency among existing customers and reduce acquisition costs by turning satisfied customers into active referrers. The challenge was to create a loyalty program compelling enough to change deeply ingrained ordering behavior—getting customers to choose the direct channel over the convenience they were already accustomed to.

Solution

Buffalo Burger partnered with Gameball to implement a comprehensive loyalty program spanning digital, retail, and social channels. The program was designed to be central to their mobile app marketing campaigns—not an afterthought, but the core value proposition driving downloads and direct orders.

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Simple Points-Based Loyalty

A straightforward earning system—one point for every pound spent—makes it easy for customers to understand their value and mentally calculate rewards. Points are displayed throughout the customer journey, from browsing to checkout to receipt, reinforcing the incentive at every touchpoint.

Integrated App Experience

The loyalty program is deeply embedded in Buffalo Burger’s mobile app. From the home screen showing offers and point balances, through checkout where a single toggle applies loyalty discounts, to the profile section with dedicated Loyalty Points access—customers interact with the program naturally throughout their ordering journey without any friction.

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Website Experience

The loyalty program is fully integrated into Buffalo Burger’s website at buffaloburger.com. Customers see a prominent “My Loyalty Points” button in the top navigation, and the Gameball widget opens directly on the website showing their points balance, tier progression, referral link, and earn options. A real-time congratulations notification confirms point awards after each order. The website also prominently promotes the mobile app—ranked #6 in the App Store’s Food & Drink category—driving cross-channel adoption.

QR Code Retail Integration

For customers dining in at any of Buffalo Burger’s 50+ branches, the loyalty program works just as seamlessly. Customers log into the website on their phone and access a personal QR code page. They show this QR code to the cashier, who scans it to award points on the in-store order. The same QR code can be used to redeem points at the register. This bridges the digital-physical gap—ensuring that whether a customer orders through the app for delivery or walks into a branch, their loyalty experience is identical.

4-Tier VIP Structure

A Basic, Bronze, Silver, and Gold tier structure creates aspirational progression. Each tier unlocks differentiated benefits and entry rewards—Bronze at EGP 510 spent, Silver at EGP 2,510 with 700 bonus points, and Gold at EGP 5,509—giving every customer a visible path to better rewards and a strong incentive to consolidate orders on the direct channel.

Referral Program

A referral program turns satisfied customers into brand ambassadors. Each customer gets a unique referral link worth 150 points (EGP 4.5) for every friend who signs up and places their first order. The referral experience is built directly into the Gameball widget and surfaces proactively as a popup on the home screen, making sharing frictionless and tracking transparent.

Smart Point Multipliers

To create recurring purchase habits, Buffalo Burger leverages Gameball’s points multiplier feature with Triple Points Sundays—offering 3x points every Sunday to drive planned, intentional ordering. Rather than relying on one-off promotions, this approach ties the loyalty program to the weekly calendar, turning points into a behavior-driving mechanism that customers actively plan around.

Loyalty-Centered Marketing Campaigns

Gameball helped brief Buffalo Burger’s creative marketing team on the loyalty program, enabling targeted campaigns through TV ads, Instagram Reels, and in-store materials. Rewards became the core message of their mobile app marketing campaign, driving downloads and first-time orders. Their TV ad campaign alone generated over 4.8 million combined views across three creative executions, with Reels reaching 14.5K+ and 21.1K+ views organically.

CRM Campaigns via Gameball Messaging

Buffalo Burger makes extensive use of Gameball’s communication and messaging module as a core growth lever. Rather than relying on default templates, their team sends deeply customized email campaigns almost daily—whenever there’s a menu update, a new sandwich, a new offer, or a promotional event. The content, messaging, and timing are all tailored to match their brand voice and customer behavior, turning loyalty communications into one of their most active outbound channels.

The Results

The loyalty program delivered strong, measurable impact across Buffalo Burger’s core business objectives. The redemption rate reached 53% (up 1.42% YoY)—a clear signal that customers see real value in the program and are actively motivated to return and use their points rather than letting them sit idle. Average order value grew to EGP 413, a 37.5% year-over-year increase, indicating that point incentives and multipliers are encouraging higher spend per visit without relying on heavy discounting. Total order revenue from loyalty-active customers grew 24.7% YoY, confirming that the program is contributing meaningfully to top-line growth driven by repeat customers—typically the most cost-efficient growth channel.

Beyond the core metrics, the TV ad campaign promoting the loyalty-centered app generated over 4.8 million combined views across three creative executions, while Triple Points Sunday campaigns drove consistent weekly engagement spikes with Facebook posts reaching 1.4K+ reactions and video content accumulating 247K+ views. The mobile app reached #6 in the App Store’s Food & Drink category. Together, these results show a healthy, self-reinforcing loyalty cycle: customers engage with the program, spend more per transaction, redeem their rewards consistently, and return more frequently—all through the direct channel where Buffalo Burger captures full margin.

Key Takeaway

Buffalo Burger’s loyalty program demonstrates that for QSR brands competing against aggregator platforms, the path to direct-channel growth isn’t about matching aggregator convenience—it’s about creating value that aggregators can’t replicate. A simple, visible points system combined with omnichannel earn-and-burn mechanics, tiered progression, and smart multipliers gives customers a tangible, growing reason to choose direct ordering.

What makes this case particularly instructive is the true omnichannel execution. The same loyalty experience works identically whether a customer orders delivery through the app, places a pickup order on the website, or walks into a branch and shows their QR code to the cashier. This consistency—combined with rewards-centered marketing campaigns that generated millions of views and pushed the app to #6 in the App Store—means loyalty isn’t a feature buried in a menu. It’s the reason customers open the app, visit the website, and choose Buffalo Burger over the aggregator.