SONIC saw an opportunity to enhance its signature drive-in model with the rebuild of its digital ecosystem to offer an improved experience both on and behind the screens. With over 90,000 drive-in stalls around the United States and customers who made SONIC a part of their everyday routine, it was critical that a flagship digital experience would be built to enhance the brand’s core strengths and support an already quick, dependable dining experience. With mobile ordering quickly becoming standard for brands within the QSR category and demanded by customers, SONIC’s opportunity became clear - deliver a best-in-class mobile ordering experience that reinvented the idea of delivering food at the “speed of sound.”

The SONIC app had to take pressing the iconic red button and ordering through a drive-in stall speaker to a whole new level. With that in mind, the app was centered around the familiar red button and optimized for speed

- eliminating as many screens and taps for a user to sort through when placing an order. This also applied to customizing an order, as SONIC prides itself on offering over 1 million different drink and food combos against their menu. Again, the app was designed for speed - putting the food front and center with a single-screen approach to building food and drinks the way the customer wanted them and delivering them as fast as possible.

SONIC attracts a very loyal, very vocal following with their quick service and limitless menu. Knowing that we were attempting to introduce a new mechanic into their customer’s everyday routine, we set out to provide an experience that was easy for consumers to learn while also providing an enhancement to something they had been doing everyday. This meant approaching the concept of the app in a way where experience trumped visual excitement - a flashy visual style in the app would be worthless if we couldn’t deliver an enhanced experience to the customer that was simple to repeat daily. This fueled our approach and manifested into the current app’d design and experience throughout.

With 90,000 drive-in stalls spread across the United States, the mobile app needed to be able to handle a plethora of connected screens at once, flawlessly communicating between the customer and the kitchen in real-time to ensure food was ordered and delivered fresh and fast. On top of that, we wanted to make every user’s experience feel more personalized than the extra items they put into their milkshakes. We put the data we collected about the users to work for us - providing real-time intelligent rewards to users based on their orders, the drive-ins they visited, and even the weather. With upgraded, personalized service presented to the user in an easy-to-use experience, the execution of the mobile app was a resounding success for the brand.

While both apps maintain very high user review scores in both the Apple and Google App Stores, the real benefit has been in shrinking wait times and higher repeat visits from customers. In the app’s short existence, sales are trending upward for orders placed online with more and more users signing up for the app every single day. The end result is a new commerce experience and the ability for SONIC to launch future data-driven marketing and CRM opportunities to drive increased sales and loyalty. In addition, leading up to the national launch of the Order Ahead feature in September 2018, Sonic conducted phased rollouts market-by-market, and a national campaign in October, and has experienced the following use success:

65% of Order Ahead orders each week are from repeat users;

Order Ahead tickets are on average 7% higher than non-order ahead tickets;

Average check-in-to-hop-out time is less than two minutes.