GEOFENCING ROI IN CANADIAN QSR: A 12-MONTH STUDY

This case study documents the geofencing deployment and results across three Canadian QSR brands — anonymised as Brand A (coffee and bakery, 180 locations), Brand B (burger QSR, 94 locations), and Brand C (chicken QSR, 67 locations) — over a 12-month period from Q1 2024 to Q4 2024.

All three brands deployed geofencing through a centralised platform, enabling consistent measurement methodology and comparable results. The study tracked incremental in-store visits, cost-per-visit, and campaign ROI using mobile device measurement panels and point-of-sale integration.

Each brand deployed three types of geofences:

Own-location fences targeted consumers within 800 metres of each brand location. These fences served re-engagement offers to lapsed customers and loyalty programme prompts.

Competitor conquest fences surrounded the three highest-volume competitor locations within each trade area. Consumers detected at competitor locations received comparative offers within a 15-minute window.

Behavioural audience fences targeted locations where the target customer skews highly: gym and fitness studio parking lots, transit hubs during commute hours, and office parks at lunch.

Fence radii were calibrated by location type — drive-through locations used smaller, more precise radii (400–600m) while walk-traffic locations in urban cores used 200–350m radii to reduce noise from adjacent buildings.

Across all three brands and the 12-month study period:

Visit lift: Average incremental visit lift of 23% attributable to geofencing campaigns, measured against matched control groups of non-exposed consumers in the same trade areas.

Cost per incremental visit: $2.80 average across the three brands, compared to a baseline CPA of $4.10 for non-geofencing digital campaigns.

Cost-per-acquisition reduction: 31% improvement in CPA versus non-geofencing digital channels.

Competitor conquest effectiveness: Conquest campaigns generated visit lift of 8–12% from consumers detected at competitor locations — lower than own-trade-area campaigns but highly incremental given the audience is actively in a purchase decision.

Daypart performance: Lunch (11am–2pm) and drive-time (4–7pm) windows significantly outperformed other periods, with visit lift 40% higher than off-peak geofencing campaigns.

Brand A (Coffee/Bakery): Saw the strongest morning commute performance. Commuter geofences around transit stations and park-and-ride lots drove 34% visit lift in the 6–9am window. Co-op fund contribution from geofencing campaigns justified the entire program cost within the first six months.

Brand B (Burger QSR): Lunch daypart was the highest-performing window. Geofences deployed around office parks with 2,000+ employees drove measurably higher average cheque size — lunch customers converted to combo purchases at a higher rate than the overall lunch average.

Brand C (Chicken QSR): Dinner daypart and weekend family occasions drove strongest results. Geofences around community sports facilities and family entertainment venues consistently outperformed other location types in this category.

Three implementation lessons from the 12-month deployment:

Centralised management is essential. Brands that attempted to run geofencing location-by-location produced inconsistent results and incurred significantly higher management overhead. Centralised deployment with location-level performance reporting is the right model.

Creative must be contextual. Generic creative underperforms dramatically in geofencing. The highest-performing campaigns served contextually relevant creative — weather-triggered copy, daypart-specific offers, competitor-conquest messaging — rather than repurposing national campaign creative.

Attribution takes time to calibrate. Geofencing attribution is strong but not instant. Allow 60–90 days for the measurement panel to accumulate sufficient visit data for statistically significant results, particularly at lower-volume locations.

For QSR brands considering geofencing investment, these results suggest a clear deployment framework:

1. Start with own-location fences in the 5–10 highest-volume locations per region 2. Calibrate daypart targeting to your category's peak purchase windows 3. Add competitor conquest targeting once baseline measurement is established 4. Expand to behavioural audience fences only after own-location and conquest fences are optimised 5. Measure incrementality against control groups, not just raw campaign metrics

The ROI case for geofencing in Canadian QSR is well-established. The differentiation is in execution quality: brands that centralise management, contextualise creative, and apply disciplined measurement consistently outperform those that run geofencing as a media channel without the supporting operational infrastructure.