The QSR email audit

An unsolicited, self-funded benchmark of quick service and fast casual restaurant email programs, measured from the subscriber’s side rather than from platform analytics. It spans the 300+ brands we tried to join, measured continuously from a single dedicated mailbox.

By category and scale across quick service and fast casual restaurants in the United States, including national chains, strong regional operators, and a small set of adjacent convenience store brands that are labeled separately.

One identity, enrolled by hand into each brand’s public email, loyalty, or lifecycle program. Every message that results lands in a single dedicated mailbox where it is labeled, timestamped, and scored. Where an enrollment cannot be completed, a second person independently attempts it before the brand is recorded as unjoinable.

Not in advance. The study measures the experience an ordinary subscriber receives, and announcing it beforehand would change the thing being measured.

Yes. Every claim is anchored to a verbatim quote, a timestamp, or a directly observed screen, so any brand can check it against its own send logs. Where a claim does not hold, we correct it and say what changed. A brand that has since fixed a defect can also ask to be re-scored, because a benchmark that punishes a team for something they repaired months ago measures history rather than practice.

The index is republished annually. Between editions we correct any finding a brand successfully disputes, and we re-score a brand that has changed its program and asks us to.

Thirty minutes. We walk through your brand’s scorecard across all ten dimensions, show the messages behind each score, and flag every defect we logged. You leave with the findings either way.

Ask on the call and we will tell you. The enrolled list covers national chains, strong regional operators, and a small set of adjacent convenience store brands, which are labeled separately.

Nothing. The study is self-funded, and the walkthrough is how we share what we found with the brands we measured.

The index is live now. Fill out the form on this page and we will send you the full report. The index republishes annually, and subscribers get first access to each new edition plus the interim findings between them.