• by Ben Frederick  @mp_benfred, April 8, 2016

b.good, a Boston-based restaurant with a mission to bring healthy and seasonal, locally-sourced food into the fast-food world, had a mobile app before, but it wasn’t great.

The company has always been about telling stories and building a community. With the recent redesign of their new app, they wanted to build loyalty around compelling narratives and emotion, rather than just putting a point-of-sale (POS) system into a customer’s pocket, says Jon Olinto, cofounder of b.good.

“We’ve got a point of view—sound bites, and smiley faces is not what we’re about. We’re supposed to have a message. We want to build something that lasts,” says Olinto.

Part of that effort has been giving people offers with the option to donate their free food to various schools in the area. Once the donations reach a critical mass, b.Good takes over the cafeteria for a day and serves the students.

Olinto says they also follow up by making videos of the event and sending them with thank you notes to everyone who donated.

Though the new app has only been out since November, it’s had a huge effect on the restaurant. Olinto says that 30% of their transactions are now digital in the Seaport area of Boston.

The other thing the app has provided is a wealth of new data.

“Data is everything—from a content standpoint, it allows us to deliver more relevant content. Right now, it’s a very elementary use of doing a better job of talking to customers… but in the long run we want to be able to deliver more targeted content and having all that data is a tool we didn’t have previously. Our POS doesn’t provide that level of data,” says Olinto.