Legendary Food and Legendary Service

Previous to working with Awardco, Texas Roadhouse used a recognition company for service awards for their corporate office, but this solution wasn’t scalable to each of the individual stores, and expanding it to spot recognition programs would have taken months. 

After a fortuitous call with Awardco founder and CEO Steve Sonnenberg, Texas Roadhouse decided to switch to Awardco because it was simple, user friendly, and had all the capabilities they needed.    

Originally starting with service awards, Texas Roadhouse soon found that Awardco’s platform could do much more than that. Spot recognition programs that allowed managers to recognize employees on the spot, as well as programs for employees to recognize each other, soon became a staple of the Texas Roadhouse culture. 

Organizing, tracking, and facilitating these kinds of recognition across so many locations was exactly what Texas Roadhouse was looking for, and exactly what they found with Awardco. By building a strong company culture through rewarding recognition with Awardco, Texas Roadhouse has seen retention, engagement, and employee satisfaction increase.

“One of our employees needed their virtual gift card ASAP, but it had somehow gotten lost when it was sent,” says Storey O’barr, Corporate and Community Events Coordinator at Texas Roadhouse. “I worked with Awardco and they immediately resolved the issue and I contacted the employee with their gift card. I didn’t know this at the time, but later found out that this employee needed that gift card to purchase something important: 

‘As a server I don’t make a lot of money, and I needed this gift card to get an Urn for my Mom who had recently passed away. Thank you so much for getting this to me so quickly!’

“Without Awardco’s exemplary service, we may not have gotten this card to this employee in time,” relates Storey. “Lots of our employees use their points for things they need, like diapers and formula, because they don’t make much as a server. With Awardco we’re able to help them out just a little bit more, and that’s pretty remarkable.”

Texas Roadhouse’s implementation of Awardco has been so well received across the board that additional recognition programs are being considered for the future—namely onboarding and birthday celebrations—and they’re excited by how that can continue to help them deliver the best experience for their employees, and by extension the best hospitality to their customers.