In 2024, Giant Eagle, one of America’s leading food and pharmacy retailers, realised its two-decade-old loyalty infrastructure needed an upgrade.
Not because its groundbreaking fuel rewards programme wasn’t well-loved or popular (it was), but because the in-house platform that supported it made implementing sophisticated offer types with real-time personalisation at scale difficult to achieve.
The company made a bold choice to completely reimagine what loyalty could deliver for its customers, partnering with Eagle Eye to rapidly scale and expand the new myPerks programme through modern, cloud-based technology, writes Jeff Baskin, Chief Revenue Officer at Eagle Eye.
Straining the capacity of legacy systems
For Giant Eagle, which operates over 470 locations throughout the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions, the limitations of its internal points management system became apparent as the retailer sought to expand the rewards framework with a variety of new offers. The beloved fuelperks programme, launched in 2003, had served customers well with its straightforward cents-per-gallon discounts on gasoline. Giant Eagle’s previous points management system had supported years of programme success, but as the merchandising and marketing teams introduced new offers, more personalised promotions, and expanded earning and redemption opportunities across more channels and touchpoints, the need for a more scalable and flexible solution became clear.
The challenge extended beyond technical capabilities. After two decades, the creativity of Giant Eagle’s loyalty team was starting to outgrow the original platform as they sought new ways to offer value to customers. They needed a flexible, scalable solution that could keep up with tests for new promotions, pivot to adjust campaigns based on performance data, enable real-time personalisation, and speed up point processing. Meeting modern customer expectations
Giant Eagle’s operational constraints arrived at a particularly challenging moment for grocery retail. Consumers, conditioned by their interactions with pure-play ecommerce giants like Amazon, increasingly expect grocers to know their preferences, anticipate their needs, and reward their loyalty with offers that demonstrate a genuine understanding of their shopping behaviours. Meeting these expectations requires loyalty technology capable of processing millions of transactions while simultaneously delivering individualised experiences at every touchpoint.
With that technological need in mind, Giant Eagle selected Eagle Eye to power the relaunch of its myPerks programme, replacing its internal system with a modern, cloud-based solution built on the Eagle Eye AIR platform. The migration, completed within nine months, marked a complete transformation of how the retailer could engage with loyalty members.
Eliminating batch processing, boosting personalisation ability
The new platform introduced capabilities that would have been nearly impossible under the previous system. Rather than relying on traditional batch processing, myPerks now operates through real-time cloud adjudication with POS integration, allowing instant points accrual and reward redemption. This real-time processing extends across all customer touchpoints, from in-store purchases to digital interactions, delivering immediate value and creating consistency that builds customer confidence.
The Eagle Eye Wallet creates an operational single-customer view by tracking all customer interactions across touchpoints, enabling Giant Eagle to understand customers better and deliver more personalised marketing based on individual activity and preferences. Unlike traditional segmentation approaches that group hundreds of customers into categories, Giant Eagle’s new system offers one-to-one personalisation. This granular approach means each customer receives offers specifically tailored to their purchase history, shopping frequency, and product preferences.
A partnership that delivers results
Early results validate the strategic decision. Giant Eagle now delivers between 20 and 25 million personalised offers monthly, a scale that would have overwhelmed the previous system’s capabilities. The programme also attracted 53,000 new loyalty households following the re-platforming.
Working with Eagle Eye, Giant Eagle was also able to quickly build and implement new types of loyalty campaigns. These include continuity campaigns like the Thanksgiving Turkey Tracker, which gave customers the opportunity to earn a free turkey after spending a set amount (with the option to donate it to a local food bank), driving increased spend and frequency in the lead-up to the holiday. The grocer was also able to deploy specialised discounts for team members, military members, first responders, and senior citizens, as well as “bounceback” campaigns like the one that incentivised vaccinations in the pharmacy by offering an instant discount offer on grocery purchases for members who participated. In total, 13 campaign types are currently live, with an additional 10 planned for the next quarter.
Unprecedented scale and the ability to build and launch a variety of loyalty campaigns are only two visible benefits. Giant Eagle is also enjoying significant operational efficiency gains as marketing teams are freed up to focus on strategy and creative development rather than manual campaign execution, while the Eagle Eye platform’s pre-built capabilities support hundreds of different schemes, formats, point structures, discounts, and cashback options. The result has been an increase in the myPerks programme’s overall ROI.
Building for future growth
Looking forward, the platform positions Giant Eagle to adapt as customer expectations continue shifting. The rewards framework, including membership tiers and earning rules, can now change to meet customer demand and be optimised for maximum return. New functionalities, including personalised pricing, gamification, supplier partnerships, and contextualised behaviour-based offers, have already been implemented. As the grocer grows, the system can accommodate unlimited new members while maintaining performance and personalisation quality.
Justin Weinstein, Giant Eagle’s executive vice president and chief merchandising and marketing officer, noted that Eagle Eye has “advanced and accelerated our efforts to bring our customers the most personalised and rewarding loyalty platform in the country.” The myPerks programme continues to rank among the nation’s top retail loyalty platforms, recognised for its flexibility and unique approach to points redemption across groceries and gas.
For grocery retailers evaluating their own loyalty technology decisions, Giant Eagle’s experience illustrates how strategic partnerships can accelerate modernisation while reducing implementation risk. The nine-month implementation timeline demonstrates that even complex, established programmes can be successfully migrated without disrupting customer experiences. More importantly, the results show that modern loyalty platforms can deliver measurable business impact while creating the personalised experiences today’s shoppers expect from the retail brands they shop with.
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