Employees at four McDonald’s restaurants in Leicester will see their gift card incentives switched to the Leicester Gift Card as part of efforts to encourage people to support local businesses.
Angus Fraser, a McDonald’s franchisee and employer of the 450 restaurant staff involved, explained that swapping to the local gift cards would encourage his staff to shop in the city centre more regularly.
“Rewards and incentives are a huge and important part of the employee proposition. People want to be acknowledged and rewarded for doing a good job. In the past, we used Love2Shop vouchers for our staff as a thank you, however, as most of our team live and work in Leicester, it made sense for us to start using the Leicester Gift Card instead.”
The city gift card offers a range of incentives and staff will receive it as recognition for being employee of the month or quarter, a rising star or for long service awards.
Incentive to shop local
It was launched by the Business Improvement District (BID) for Leicester in 2020 and is accepted in more than 170 shops, restaurants, attractions, hotels and salons. This includes national brands such as Next, New Look, McDonald’s, John Lewis and Boots, and independent businesses such as Curve Theatre, St Martins Lodge Hotel, East Street Lanes and Art’s Greek.
Fraser, who is also chair of the BID Leicester board, said: “As a large city centre employer, it’s important for us to encourage our staff to spend locally as part of our corporate social responsibility efforts. Of our 450 staff, perhaps around 25 percent of those wouldn’t regularly shop in the city centre, but having the Leicester Gift Card as a thank you encourages them to do just that. Many of our staff are younger and have grown up with online shopping as the norm but the card gives them an incentive and a reason to shop in the city.”
He acknowledged that the card switch for his employees was a “small contribution” in encouraging footfall and spend, but he said: “imagine if every organisation made that choice.”
“The more employers choosing to support local [businesses] through the Leicester Gift Card, the greater the impact for Leicester. The element of choice is also really important and there is more than enough choice on the Leicester Gift Card for my team.”
Economic boost
James Dunham, operations executive at BID Leicester, welcomed the switch explaining that every city gift card has to be spent in the city “locking spend into Leicester which fuels the circular economy”.
“There are over 127,000 households in Leicester. If one person within each household was given a £10 Leicester Gift Card as a reward from their workplace or school, that would be an additional £1.2 million circulating in our economy, boosting city vibrancy and employment,” he said.
Colin Munro, managing director of gift card provider Miconex, said: “In our 2023 research, 82 percent of employees said they would prefer to receive a gift card from work to other incentives, 90 percent said it would boost their motivation and 98 percent are keen to support local. The Leicester Gift Card is the reward that employees want, blending support for local businesses with ultimate local choice.”
