{"id":79288,"title":"Forge Rewards: The Starbucks app for  your restaurant brand","tagline":"We connect any restaurant with their community by making loyalty accessible.","body":"**TL;DR: Forge makes premium, white-labeled loyalty apps for leading restaurant brand – think a Starbucks app for your own restaurant.** \n\nHey everyone! We’re [Ethan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/changethan/) and [Isaac,](https://www.linkedin.com/in/isaackan/) and we’re building [Forge](https://www.linkedin.com/company/forgerewards)[.](https://www.forgerewards.com/) Our journey started as roommates at Stanford where we worked on ad-branded contraceptives, AI-generated Spotify playlists, and exploring new restaurants. Today, we’re on a mission to enhance customer relationships and build loyalty for restaurants and have 300+ partners including Chubby Group, Omakase Restaurant Group, and Daeho Dining.\n\n**The Problem**\n\nIn high school, Ethan saw firsthand while helping manage 3 Korean corndog locations that non-conglomerate restaurants struggle with building a digital presence and customer retention. Since then, these issues have grown tenfold as they fail to acquire and retain repeat customer and in-person traffic - while losing 30% to third-party delivery apps. \n\nOn the other hand, publicly-trading conglomerates like Starbucks, Domino’s, and Wingstop are well equipped with huge teams of in-house engineers and control their customer’s dining journey with their technology. \n\n**Our Solution: Forge, the Starbucks app for your brand.** \n\nForge brings this sophisticated technology to any restaurant brand, white-labeled at a very low-cost. We want to level the playing field for any restaurant to compete with these conglomerates, so we helped them build via well-designed loyalty apps that include Amex-like status, tiers, points, membership subscriptions, in-app orders, and a whole suite of AI-powered marketing tools. \n\nThis has already resulted in stronger customer relationships, new revenue, recurring revenue streams, and increases in both average customer spend and visit frequencies with over $20M in new revenue redirected to our partners, 3x increased visits, and over 300,000 active users across our apps!\n\n**Our Asks**\\\nIf you want to join the Forge family or know any restaurant brands or places you’d like to see us help out with loyalty, email us at [founders@forgerewards.com](mailto:founders@forgerewards.com)!\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=79288\u0026key=user_uploads/1751413/c3b552ae-0b80-4348-a327-9af31ca1d871)\n\nEthan and Isaac (at HE\u0026C Wagyu Garden)","slug":"Kcq-forge-rewards-the-starbucks-app-for-your-restaurant-brand","created_at":"2024-03-11T22:33:36.865Z","updated_at":"2026-05-25T06:19:31.635Z","total_vote_count":44,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Kcq-forge-rewards-the-starbucks-app-for-your-restaurant-brand","share_image_url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/media/?type=post\u0026id=79288\u0026key=user_uploads/1751413/c3b552ae-0b80-4348-a327-9af31ca1d871","company":{"id":29519,"name":"Forge Rewards","slug":"forge-rewards","url":"https://www.joinforge.app/","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/c135eee2915601bd39910219334c34b2549944a0.png","batch":"Winter 2024","industry":"B2B","tags":["Artificial Intelligence","Fintech","Food Tech"],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/29519"}}