Background
Founded in 2006 as a modest food truck posted on Austin’s 1st Street, Torchy’s Tacos has made a name for itself dishing up elevated, handcrafted “damn good” tacos. Torchy’s has steadily risen through the ranks of the taco-saturated Austin food scene to reach cult status, expanding well beyond that original red truck with over 110 brick and mortar locations. Throughout its impressive run from food truck to growing taco empire, quality, authenticity, and innovation have been key ingredients to Torchy’s success.
Challenge
When the Torchy’s team first came to CardFree, they were looking to improve their brand’s overall digital presence.
As a forward-thinking company with plans for massive growth, Torchy’s had hit a wall with the digital ordering platform it was using at the time.
In short, Torchy’s Tacos needed an upgrade to a more robust, scalable, and dependable digital ordering platform.
Solution
Given CardFree’s proven scale (over $2.9 billion transactions processed), the ability to handle menus with complex modifiers and upsell options, and best-in-class customer service, Torchy’s selected us as its digital ordering solution.
“Knowing that there was going to be constant innovation at CardFree and their breadth of products available—online ordering, native apps, loyalty, text-to-pay, order-at-table—just knowing that those things were going to be available was a big piece of the decision to go with CardFree.”
– Scott Hudler, CMO, Torchy’s Tacos
Integrating Torchy’s Tacos’ branding into CardFree’s digital ordering UI, we worked with the Torchy’s team to deliver a turnkey “off the shelf” app. The outcome was a web ordering app and native iOS/Android apps, all designed to feel like natural extensions of the Torchy’s brand.
“We were able to take our brand, design, colors, and photos to make the app feel like a custom Torchy’s app. It’s a white-label app, but it doesn’t feel like we just threw our branding onto something generic. The product allows us to customize it and make everything feel on-brand for Torchy’s.”
– Scott Hudler, CMO, Torchy’s Tacos
Results
Improved Operational Efficiency
- Significant time savings for staff, allowing more time spent on customer service and operations, less time handling technical issues with ordering.
- Holistic business insights—CardFree’s merchant dashboard gives Torchy’s 110+ operators a comprehensive view of sales data and payment status across all order types.
“Our operators are able to see the status of everything on an easy-to-use dashboard. They know the status of every order, plus the dashboard integrates with our 3rd party delivery apps so they can see everything we have going on. Our operators are much happier with the system we have now.”
– Scott Hudler, CMO, Torchy’s Tacos
A Scalable Solution
- As Torchy’s Tacos continues to expand, the business can rely on CardFree’s best-in-class support team and technology, designed for large scale deployments, battle tested to withstand tons of transactions.
- Torchy’s can easily add new units to the platform, location-specific menu items, and throttle orders during peak hours.
“When you integrate any technology with a POS system, there are always going to be challenges. CardFree has done a great job of identifying the issues and their root causes, and finding solutions quickly, as opposed to dragging it out for days and weeks. The CardFree team has a real bias for action over discussion, which is much appreciated.”
– Scott Hudler, CMO, Torchy’s Tacos