Solution

The restaurant brand initially engaged W. Capra to evaluate the current state of its gift card program and manage a formal request for proposal (RFP) process. As the project evolved, W. Capra remained onboard to advise contract negotiations, develop the implementation roadmap, and ultimately helped lead the end-to-end conversion to a new gift card provider. Working within an accelerated timeline, W. Capra’s support helped ensure the chain was fully prepared for the next holiday season.

The project spanned four key phases:

1. Market analysis and RFP process: Assess the current program and identify the right long-term provider.
The work started with a detailed discovery of the restaurant brand’s existing gift card environment, business requirements, operational pain points, and future technology needs. The research culminated in a highly granular 20-page RFP covering provider functionality, reporting capabilities, integration requirements, scalability, operational support, and peak transaction performance. W. Capra evaluated responses using a proven scoring methodology with active input from a cross-functional team of the company’s stakeholders. Following vendor presentations and a final benchmarking and cost analysis, W. Capra delivered recommendations to support provider selection.

2. Contract negotiations: Support discussions and ensure continuity.
The restaurant brand ultimately selected a new provider for its gift card program that was already supporting other areas of its payments environment, allowing the organization to maintain some operational continuity while significantly upgrading capabilities. W. Capra supported negotiations focused on pricing, incentives, contract structure, and long-term scalability to help balance improved service levels with the realities of transitioning away from highly favorable legacy pricing.

3. Implementation planning: Build and coordinate an accelerated conversion roadmap.
Once the provider decision was made, the project timeline compressed significantly. Beginning in mid-May with a late-September conversion target, W. Capra coordinated detailed implementation planning across all providers, POS environments, third-party distributors, and internal stakeholders involved in gift card activation, redemption, reporting, and reconciliation. The team developed comprehensive project plans, mapped every conversion milestone, identified opportunities to streamline development and testing, and worked closely with vendors to ensure all required software changes, integrations, and exception management processes could be completed on time. Executive-level alignment early in the planning process helped maintain accountability, keeping the aggressive timeline on track.

4. Implementation and conversion support: Execute a seamless transition with minimal business disruption.
The restaurant brand turned to W. Capra to manage communications, issue resolution, testing coordination, and ongoing support throughout the conversion process while its internal teams continued managing day-to-day operations. Weekly status meetings and twice-weekly sessions with POS providers helped quickly identify and resolve issues as they arose. Teams completed the final conversion – including the migration of millions in active gift card balances down to the very last penny – overnight in just four hours, roughly half the anticipated timeframe, thanks to minute-by-minute plans for all workstreams. The team immediately tested gift cards in-store following the conversion to confirm uninterrupted functionality and spent the following weeks documenting new business processes, resolving remaining items, and fully transitioning ownership of the new environment to the restaurant brand’s team before the start of the holiday season.

Conversion Table:

W. Capra was engaged to managed the gift card conversion over a 5-month period to move the program before the beginning of gift card season, which runs October-January.