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Sonic of North Texas runs a tight operation. With 48 restaurants in the Lone Star State — plus two more in Kansas — this Sonic Drive-In franchisee wants to know that its investments work, and not just in theory.
That kind of scrutiny is something we often see, and we welcome it every time. Upside's core promise to retailers is that you only pay for incremental profit you wouldn't have earned otherwise. Some retailers, especially those managing multiple locations or reporting up to a franchise group, want independent confirmation before they deepen a partnership or expand to new sites.
For a clear, objective perspective, NTX Sonic turned to MarketDial, a research firm that specializes in exactly this kind of measurement. It's a rigorous process, and it's designed to be skeptical by default.
In the end, it confirmed Upside customers visit more and spend more than their counterparts from the general population.
The results: Measurable, incremental lift
Using its own methodology (totally independent of Upside’s), MarketDial designed a controlled experiment and identified matched comparison groups. It intended to see whether Upside genuinely drove incremental customer behavior or just took credit for transactions that would have happened anyway.
MarketDial’s conclusion was that Upside customers are driving real, measurable incremental revenue and transactions, and Upside's own reported numbers are accurate.
For total incremental revenue, MarketDial's and Upside's measurements differed by less than a percent. Upside's results fell squarely within MarketDial's 90% confidence interval.
The customer-level data told the same story. We paired Upside users with a matched group of non-Upside customers, then compared how Upside influenced changes in behavior. After Upside was introduced, Upside customers at NTX Sonic’s locations spent 15% more per visit and came back 9% more often per month. Ultimately, our partnership delivered a 70% ROI.
Franchise operators watch every percentage point, so those figures represent a meaningful, compounding lift across the customer base.
“In a competitive space like ours, you need any edge you can get,” said Jerry Fogel, NTX Sonic’s director of operations. “Upside has been that edge for us, and this validation of their methodology just gives me more confidence going forward.”
What this means for your business
Third-party validation answers the question every smart operator eventually asks: is this actually working? For NTX Sonic, the answer was yes — confirmed by a firm with no stake in the outcome.
Upside's measurement methodology is built to hold up to this kind of review. We track incrementality obsessively, and we only take credit for the transactions we've influenced. When an independent firm runs the same analysis and arrives at the same conclusion, that's proof of concept.
NTX Sonic isn’t the only restaurant franchisee checking our work. The Rose Group, Mitra QSR, and Tasty Restaurant Group also validated some or all of Upside’s measurement methodology in recent months.
If you're a QSR franchisee looking to bring more customers through the door and keep them coming back, get in touch to see what Upside could do for your locations.
