![]() Those Groupon customers tended not to understand Benchmark’s ingredient-focused, Cal-Italian style of pizza, Swanson says, and so for years, the restaurant had to deal with slightly disgruntled coupon holders.īut at least in that case, Benchmark had signed up for the promotion on purpose. The problem, though, was that the type of customer who tended to buy a voucher on Groupon turned out to be a fundamental mismatch for the restaurant - customers looking for the biggest bargain, the “biggest pizza” for the lowest price. Back in 2013, Benchmark had only signed up to do a Groupon deal because the restaurant was having a hard time filling seats at its out-of-the-way Kensington location. Two of Benchmark’s wood-fired pizzas Benchmark Pizzeriaįor Swanson, that’s what made this whole situation especially galling. And not when the restaurant already had a terrible experience with Groupon the first time around. The thing is, Swanson most definitely did not want to be offering a half-price Groupon deal right now - not when Benchmark is, like so many other restaurants, already struggling just to stay afloat during this pandemic. This, Swanson says, despite never once reaching out to see if Benchmark even wanted to revive the promotion. After all, Benchmark hadn’t offered a Groupon promotion in eight years, back when it was a brand new, unknown restaurant.Īs it turns out, unbeknownst to the Swansons, Groupon had reactivated that 2013 voucher and was once again selling coupons for that exact same deal - $20 for a $40 meal, or $40 for an $80 meal - on its website. “That’s weird,” Swanson remembers thinking to herself. Perhaps you remember Groupon, the Chicago-based daily-deal company that flooded inboxes with improbably steep bargains during its heyday in the late 2000s and early 2010s - the company that, as AdAge once put it, “revived couponing for the Facebook and Twitter generation.” Melissa Swanson, who along with her husband Peter owns Benchmark Pizzeria, a small East Bay wood-fire pizza restaurant, says she hadn’t really thought about the company in years - that is, until customers started showing up last week, Groupon vouchers in hand, demanding a half-price meal.
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