Dive Brief:

• Wow Bao is connecting real-life restaurant rewards to Roblox through a partnership with Flaunt, part of the fast-casual Asian chain’s bigger bets on the metaverse, according to a news release.  
• Players can travel to Wow Bao’s Dim Sum Palace, where they are greeted by a DJ and can explore lounge areas, Momo’s Restaurant and a hidden speakeasy. The interactive 3D environment also carries Wow Bao paraphernalia and clues guests can follow to discover a head accessory for their Roblox avatar. 
• To claim the gear and enter to win other prizes, such as grocery coupons and free Wow Bao for a year, players must visit a campaign website and sign up for the Hot Buns Club program. Wow Bao said it is the first fast-casual restaurant to gate Roblox items behind rewards in this fashion, an approach enabled by Flaunt’s Loyalty Cloud solution.  

Dive Insight:

Hype around the metaverse may have dissipated, but brands remain interested in leveraging online games to foster affinity with young consumer groups that have largely shunned traditional media. Wow Bao has turned to Roblox as a way to drive more sign-ups for its Hot Buns Club and further shore up a positioning around tech innovation, a push that comes as the company seeks to expand its U.S. footprint. 

The Chicago-based chain, which was founded in 2003, is known for its embrace of vending machines and ghost kitchens. It previously experimented in areas such as nonfungbile tokens (NFT), a Web3 scheme that has since been folded into its VIP rewards. Flaunt, a loyalty solutions provider focused on emergent tech, assisted with Wow Bao’s NFT play. 

Wow Bao is again leaning on Flaunt for the rewards integration on Roblox, which the QSR claims is the first of its kind for the category. Other restaurants have jumped into Roblox, including Chipotle, which in 2022 let players roll virtual burritos in exchange for an in-game currency that could be traded for entree codes.

Players who visit Dim Sum Palace, a space created with Los Angeles production studio Sawhorse Productions, can journey through a dance floor, restaurant and speakeasy while following clues to find a piece of headwear they can put on their Roblox avatar. Securing the limited-supply item requires signing up for the Hot Buns Club.

Dim Sum Palace is open to all U.S. Roblox users but only those 18 and older can participate in the rewards aspect, speaking to some of the complexities marketers must navigate when activating on games that have predominantly young user bases. Wow Bao will update Dim Sum Palace over time to build out its relationship with new rewards members. The company is also taking advantage of Roblox’s portal ads format that lets users quickly jump between different experiences. 

As other metaverse destinations have turned into ghost towns, Roblox, which predates the future-facing tech trend, has remained massively popular. The platform has about 71.5 million daily active users, per its most recent earnings statement, and many skew toward the coveted Gen Z and Gen Alpha age sets.

Roblox has ramped up monetization efforts through advertising to capitalize on that appeal. The company earlier this week struck a deal with PubMatic to bring programmatic media buying to its video ad inventory, which is expanding availability later this year.