Giant Eagle, a regional food and pharmacy retailer headquartered in the Pittsburgh area, is a leader in grocery innovation. The chain continuously operates with a customer-first mindset, relying on great products, fair prices, and a top-notch experience to stand out in a crowded space. 

As part of that focus on experience, Giant Eagle has partnered with Upside to provide its customers with personalized promotions. These cash-back offers deliver the value that shoppers seek without unnecessarily diluting the brand’s margin, helping set Giant Eagle apart.

“One of the biggest challenges food retailers face is truly driving loyalty and differentiating themselves in a noisy, busy retail environment,” said Arica Griffin, Giant Eagle Director of Loyalty and CRM. “Upside has been a wonderful tool to encourage Giant Eagle customers to enter our doors for the first time via incremental cash-back opportunities.”

As a discerning business with a keen eye for tools that drive results, Giant Eagle conducts regular audits of its investments to ensure positive returns. It was with that spirit that the retailer conducted its own independent analysis of Upside’s incremental revenue measurement.

The results were clear: Upside’s and Giant Eagle’s calculations of incrementality were nearly identical, confirming that Upside does deliver incremental, net-new sales for the business.

Inside the analysis

The Upside Dashboard helps our retail partners track the impact of the Upside platform and gives them the data they need to make smart decisions. One of those data points is the amount of incremental revenue that Upside has delivered, updated in real-time.

In this instance, Giant Eagle used its own transaction data to calculate Upside’s incremental revenue and compared its figure to Upside’s stated impact. From July 2024 — shortly after Giant Eagle first launched on Upside — to June 2025, there was only a 0.4% difference in the incremental revenue calculations for Giant Eagle and Upside. Furthermore, Giant Eagle’s measurement came out higher than Upside’s. In other words, according to Giant Eagle, Upside was actually understating its incremental impact.

“We've worked closely with Upside to understand its methodology and we have created our own methodology to measure the incremental revenue,” said Anna Saffer, Giant Eagle Sr. Director, Head of Enterprise Analytics. “Alignment on incrementality is key for our partnership, and it’s given us confidence and clarity.”

Going forward, Upside and Giant Eagle will continue meeting on a regular basis to review results — a level of accountability which has strengthened Giant Eagle’s belief in the partnership. 

“Upside has been a great partner as Giant Eagle explores opportunities for additional growth and to drive new and unique customers into our doors,” Griffin said.

Taking the next step: Upside Pay

Secure in its understanding of Upside’s impact on the business, the team at Giant Eagle took an additional step to deepen the partnership and further improve the customer experience — enabling Upside Pay at checkout. 

Upside Pay is a seamless, secure checkout experience that allows users to pay for their groceries within the Upside app and earn instant cash back. The resulting experience improvement means more incremental transactions and profit for our retail partners.

“Since launching Upside Pay, we have heard positive feedback from both customers and team members in our stores about how simple it is to use during checkout,” Griffin said. “And for our business, Upside Pay has allowed us to drive a significant increase in overall engagement with Upside and the sales that we're seeing.”

With both independent validation and a smoother checkout experience now in place, Giant Eagle is winning more trips from new and uncommitted customers — proving that personalized promotions paired with seamless payment can deliver reliable growth.

Reliable, incremental growth

Get in touch with our team of grocery experts to see how Upside can drive new and uncommitted customers to your business.