Heartland Taps Into Acquired Tech to Juice Restaurant Marketing

Heartland Payment Systems has leveraged newly purchased merchant marketing company Beanstalk Data to build a restaurant analysis service.

Called Heartland Insights, the service will help restaurants integrate their CRM systems, marketing and engagement programs with Heartland point of sale and e-commerce products. Insights is scheduled to launch July 1, and will ferret out information such as identifying new versus repeat customers, busiest times of day, average customer frequency and spend—and how to tie this information into marketing automation, payment processing and other business services.

Insights is designed to sweeten Heartland's appeal among restaurants, a particularly strong segment for the processor, and a key attraction for Global Payments, which completed a $4.3 billion acquisition of Heartland in April.  

Heartland has more than 135,000 restaurant relationships, or a 19% market share, and more than a quarter of table-service restaurants. Beanstalk's clients include Taco Bell, Pollo Tropical, Carl's Junior, Panda Express and others.

Restaurant technology has been a big part of Heartland's acquisition strategy as the processor updates to hold its share in an increasingly digitized vertical. It has also acquired Digital Dining, pcAmerica and Dinnerware in 2015, and Xpient and Liquor POS in 2014.  Around the same time, Heartland acquired Leaf for its tablet-based point of sale technology.