Cafés and bakeries
Loyalty for cafés and bakeries.
The punch card behind your till, on the phone in their pocket.
You already have the reward. It is a stack of cards by the register, half of them water-damaged, and you have no idea how many are out there. The same reward, on a card in Apple Wallet, tells you exactly who your regulars are and quietly reminds them at 2:30 in the afternoon.
What the card does in a café
Four things a paper card cannot do, all of which matter more in a business built on frequency.
It does not slow the line
One scan, about a second and a half, on the same phone your staff already have in their apron. No account to make, no email to type at the counter, no tablet to buy. If it costs you five seconds a customer at 8:15am it will not survive, so it does not.
It nudges at 2:30, not at 8am
The dead hour between lunch and close is the one you can actually move. A geofenced card can surface on the lock screen of someone who is already within a few hundred metres of your door, at the hour you choose. That is a different thing from an email nobody opens.
The reward is visible, so it pulls
A paper card in a drawer does nothing. A card in the wallet shows six of ten filled and names what is waiting at ten. People finish what they can see themselves finishing — it is the whole reason the punch card was invented, and the wallet just stops it getting lost.
You finally know your regulars
How many people came back this month, how many times, who has not been in for three weeks. In a café that number is the business. Most owners run on a feeling about it; you would run on the actual figure.
The reward recipe I'd start you on
A starting point, not a rule. I tune it to your margin and your ticket before we launch — and I show you the arithmetic, not just the recommendation.
- What earns a stamp
- One visit, one stamp — not one dollar, one stamp. Frequency is what you are buying. Spend-based points reward the person who already spends; visit stamps reward the person you want back tomorrow.
- The reward
- Tenth drink free, any size, no exclusions. Exclusions are how a loyalty program earns a reputation for being annoying.
- What it costs you
- A $4.75 latte costs you roughly $1.10 in product. Nine paid visits earn one free drink, so you are giving back about 2.5% of that customer's spend — cheaper than almost any discount you already run.
- Breakeven
- The program pays for itself at roughly one and a half extra visits a day across your whole customer base — about 44 a month. Not 44 extra customers; 44 extra visits from the ones you already have.
- The monthly campaign
- One offer a month, timed to your slowest hour. In a café that is usually a Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon in the second half of the month.
- Bakeries, adjust
- Basket sizes are larger and less frequent, so eight stamps with a dollar-capped reward (a loaf, a half-dozen, a coffee-and-pastry) works better than ten. We set the cap so the reward never costs you more than about a dollar a visit earned.
Whether it is worth it, honestly
The number that matters is about one and a half extra visits a day. A $4.75 drink costs you roughly $1.10 in product; after card fees, about $3.40 of every sale is contribution. Covering $149 therefore takes roughly 44 extra visits a month — call it one and a half a day across your whole customer base, or about $210 in additional sales. If your ticket is higher — a coffee and something — it is fewer than that. That counts product and card cost only, because an extra visit does not add rent or staff hours.
What I will not promise is that it happens. What I will do is show you the enrolment count, the repeat rate and the redemption rate at day 30, and if they are flat, you cancel. It is month to month after the first three.
The honest risk is not the software. It is week one. If your staff do not scan, nothing else in this page matters. So the launch includes a till card, a training run at a shift change rather than an email, a check-in at day seven, and a small incentive for whoever signs up the most customers in the first month.
- Typical setup
- $99 one-time
- Monthly
- $149, one location
- Extra locations
- +$49/month each
- Equipment
- None — your staff’s phone
- Time from your side
- About an hour, once
- Live in
- Seven to ten days
What café owners actually ask me
We are slammed from 7:30 to 9:30. Will this hold up the line?
It is one scan on a phone your barista is already holding, and it happens while the drink is being made rather than at the point of payment. If it turns out to add real seconds at your peak, you move the scan to the pickup end of the bar — and if it still does not work, you cancel. But I would rather set it up properly than argue about it in the abstract: let me watch one morning rush before we launch.
Most of my regulars are older. They will not do this.
Some will not, and you keep the paper cards for them — the two run side by side, nothing gets taken away. But the honest test is not age, it is whether they pay with their phone. Count how many did today. Whatever that fraction is, that is roughly your ceiling in month one, and it is usually higher than owners expect.
I already have loyalty through Square.
You do, it is included, and it is decent software. Two questions then: is it actually switched on and being scanned, and can you tell me what it says? The software is not the hard part. Nobody at Square designs your reward, writes your monthly offer, or reads the numbers back to you. If you want, I will look at your Square loyalty dashboard first and tell you honestly whether you need me. Sometimes the answer is no.
What happens to my customer list if I stop?
It is yours, it says so in the agreement, and I export it for you within ten business days of you asking — whether you are leaving or not.
Do my customers need to download an app?
No. Apple Wallet and Google Wallet are already on the phone — nothing to install, no account, no password. They scan a code at your counter and the card is in their wallet.
Not quite your shop?
Same card, same price, different recipe.
Send me your logo. I’ll build the card.
Free, no commitment, on your own phone within a week. Then you decide whether the rest is worth $149 a month.
Book a 15-minute demo