• by Teresa Buyikian , February 27, 2024

Loyalty programs and financial education don’t generally go hand in hand, but one smoothie chain is upping its rewards while providing valuable money information in a gamified program for kids.

Tropical Smoothie Café this week partnered with Greenlight Financial Technology, a fintech company focused on “helping parents raise financially smart kids,” to incorporate Greenlight’s Level Up game into the Café’s rewards.

Tropical Smoothie Café will provide the kid-targeted educational game free of charge to customers. As kids and teens play the app-based game, they earn rewards when they complete certain challenges. The first reward is a free 12-ounce kids’ smoothie when they or their referred friends complete 10 Level Up challenges in a learning quest.

“Our collaboration with Greenlight aligns with our mission to ‘Inspire Better.’ As the first brand providing rewards that are integrated into the Greenlight Level Up game, we look forward to the opportunity to reward hard working kids,” said Deborah von Kutzleben, CMO of Tropical Smoothie Café, in a release.

The Greenlight Level Up game provides a financial learning-based curriculum that goes “beyond the National Standards for K-12 Personal Financial Education,” per the release. The game’s challenges include videos, quizzes and minigames. This year kids and teen players have completed more than $2 million “Level Up” challenges within the game, averaging a score of 88.4% across all personal finance subjects, including spending, saving, earning, investing and managing credit and risk.