This franchise built its brand on community — guests come back weekly, and basket sizes run above the fast-casual average. The brand's relationship with its customer is one of its most valuable assets — and it was being quietly priced away by third-party delivery platforms charging 25–30% commission on every order, while keeping the guest's contact info, order history, and reorder data on their side of the wall.
The franchise already ran their direct ordering and loyalty on a leading commerce platform — zero commission on every direct order. But direct ordering alone wasn't enough. The missing piece was acquisition: bringing new guests into the direct channel without paying the same 30% tax to discover them. OPA! Marketplace slotted in cleanly above their existing stack — orders ingested directly into the platform's API, points to the same wallet, guest data flowing back to the brand. One guest. One identity. Zero commission.
Once OPA! Marketplace was live, the franchise found a use for the gifting layer that wasn't in the original plan: they sent free soft-serve gifts to guests through OPA! as a promotional hook. Recipients didn't redeem on the couch — they had to walk into a store to claim it. Once in the store, the upsell wrote itself.
OPA! Gifting stopped being a “nice-to-have” and started acting like a paid acquisition channel — except the franchise paid in soft serve, not commission.