Taco Bell, Domino’s and Burger King add games to their apps
Spin-to-win screens and prize draws are reaching fast-food loyalty apps, and a platform vendor says one smoothie chain saw sign-ups climb after launch.
By
Josh Whitaker
In brief
- Smoothie King’s app games drew more than 2 million plays in three months, according to PAR Technology.
- The same vendor says loyalty sign-ups rose by more than 40% over that period.
- Taco Bell runs weekly mini games with prize drawings, while Domino’s and Burger King use a game and a sweepstakes.
- The games also helped win back lapsed customers without heavy discounting.
Restaurant chains are betting that a loyalty app can hold attention the way a mobile game does. Prize draws and spin-to-win rewards now sit alongside points in the apps of brands ranging from Taco Bell to Smoothie King, as Entrepreneur reports.
Why loyalty apps are turning into game screens
The logic starts with the audience. Entrepreneur notes that two thirds of Americans, roughly two out of every three, play video games weekly, and that most of them do so on a phone. Fast-food companies want a share of that screen time, and gamification is the route they have picked to get it.
For a customer who only wants to order lunch, the change is easy to notice. A loyalty screen that once showed a points balance now also offers something to play and a chance at a prize.
The Entrepreneur piece, published on Oct. 26, 2026, opens with the line that restaurants cannot stop playing around. It presents Taco Bell as the latest brand to join a movement that already includes several other national names. The common thread is the loyalty app, which has become the place where these chains test playful mechanics instead of relying only on traditional points.
Entrepreneur describes restaurant gamification as the method these companies plan to use to capture some of the time people already spend on their phones, rather than as a side experiment.
How three chains are doing it
| Chain | What members get |
|---|---|
| Taco Bell | A fresh mini game each Monday until Nov. 1, per Nation’s Restaurant News. Members collect “Paddles” that enter them into prize drawings, including one for a signed Davante Adams jersey. |
| Domino’s | Soccer Shootout, the first game the chain has put inside its app, which arrived this summer. |
| Burger King | A sweepstakes open to Royal Perks members, offering weekly cash prizes that reach as high as $5,000. |
The formats are not the same. Taco Bell combines a recurring game with prize drawings, Domino’s offers one game, and Burger King relies on a sweepstakes rather than a game. No results have been reported for any of these three programs.
Each program is tied to membership. Taco Bell’s games are reserved for rewards members, while Burger King’s sweepstakes is limited to people enrolled in Royal Perks. The games and draws therefore sit behind a sign-in, which means a customer must belong to the loyalty scheme to take part.
What Smoothie King’s numbers show
Smoothie King is the only chain in the report with results attached. Its spin-to-win style games were measured over their first three months, and the figures come from PAR Technology, the company that built the platform.
Beyond new sign-ups, PAR Technology says the games drew back customers who had stopped ordering, and did so without leaning on steep price cuts. For a chain choosing between games and discounts as a way to reactivate people, that is the most practical finding in the report.
Because the platform vendor produced these numbers, they reflect its own account of the Smoothie King rollout. They concern one chain only, and no cost, sales or profit figures come with them.
Entrepreneur’s own reading is cautious but positive: it says the strategy appears to pay off, and Smoothie King is the example it uses to support that view. The two outcomes it highlights are different in kind. One is growth in the loyalty base, the other is the return of people who had drifted away from the brand, which PAR Technology links to the games rather than to price promotions.
Photo: Erik Mclean / Pexels
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