Heinemann's History & Description
Heinemann’s is a seven-location casual dining restaurant chain based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Started in 1923 by Byron Heinemann, the business has built a strong and loyal following of customers based on its “made-from-scratch” quality food position coupled with a fanatical approach to customer service.

The business is still owned by Byron Heinemann’s descendants and is known as Milwaukee’s best place for “doing business deals over breakfast”. Every location is typically packed during the lunch hour serving a variety of freshly prepared sandwiches, burgers, soups, entrées and daily lunch specials. Wine and beer are offered at dinner from a wine menu that is well-above the “box wine” selection offered by some national chains (owner John Byron Burns is a wine enthusiast). Some cooking and prep is done at their central commissary with the remaining accomplished in each location’s kitchen. All bakery goods are baked fresh at the commissary and delivered to the stores where they are also offered for sale at the front counter. Years ago in a National Geographic article on Milwaukee, Heinemann’s grilled coffee cake was showcased with photos as one of the city’s true treasures.

Over the years, most of the downtown locations have been closed with new restaurants opening in more suburban locations where quality food consumers have migrated. Only one location remains in downtown Milwaukee, on the ground floor of a high-rise office building where breakfast and lunch along with quick-take out foods are the only fare offered. Their newest location is 90 miles from Milwaukee in the State Capital of Madison, Wisconsin.

Customers
Heinemann’s lengthy history has made it a mainstay among customers, many of whom have been coming to the restaurants their entire lives. As a result, the customer base is primarily over 55 and comprised of people who enjoy the consistency of the food, atmosphere, periodic menu changes and the fact that they’ll see many of their friends when they dine.

Capture Methodology
Based on the customer volume of each location and customer’s time in store, data capture cards were used to gather customer name, address, e-mail address, birth date and anniversary. They were distributed to each patron and included completion incentives in the form of a coupon certificate to be redeemed at a future visit. All cards were keyed into the database by Heinemann’s staff during slower periods of their shifts.

Data Capture Economic Model
Before the program began, Data Dog Marketing created an assumptive model on the cost of acquiring the initial data.

*When the model was originally designed, Data Dog projected that 60% of the incentive coupons would be redeemed when in fact only 40% were redeemed. Of those redeemed, approximately 54% resulted in the customer making an additional meal purchase and the remaining 46% were folks who simply came back in for their incentive without buying anything. Because of the additional meal purchase, the per-person cost of incentives could theoretically be lower than 16¢ if the additional meal purchase is taken into consideration.

Based on the restaurant’s average ticket as well as the propensity for a second visit to be made by people redeeming incentive coupons, the actual cost of .53 per customer profile-acquired was insignificant. Heinemann’s management was attuned to the concept of a customer’s “lifetime value” and considered the cost of acquiring the data a valuable investment