20 loyalty program ideas for coffee shops, restaurants and shops

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Stampinonow

Happy birthday!

There is a coffee on the house for you today. Come and get it.

Here the customer comes often and buys much the same thing, so stamps are usually the right call. Points come into play once you also sell brunch or bags of beans.

1. 15+1 on coffee. One stamp per coffee, the sixth on the house. The most used setup in specialty and takeaway, because at two visits a week the reward arrives in about two weeks.
2. 29+1, only at high traffic. Same mechanic, double the threshold. It works only if most customers come several times a week, otherwise the card never fills up.
3. 3Coffee or cake, their choice. You can add several reward types to one offer and let the customer pick when they reach the threshold. Good for pushing desserts without giving two rewards.
4. 4Cashback 10%. One point for every 10 EUR spent, one point worth one euro. Right if you also sell brunch, cakes or beans, where bills vary a lot.
5. 5An upgrade instead of a product. The reward is plant milk, an extra shot or the syrup of their choice. You usually charge for those, so the customer feels a gain while it costs you little.
6. 6Coffee of the month. The reward is the seasonal coffee, not the house one. That turns the program into a tasting rather than just a giveaway.
7. 7The birthday reward. It appears on the card on the day itself and is collected within the window you set. You keep no dates in a calendar.

The setups and the thresholds by visit frequency are covered on the coffee-shop page.

In a restaurant bills vary a lot and visits are less frequent. Points offers reward in proportion, which a stamp cannot do.

1. 81 point per 10 EUR, 1 point = 1 EUR. The setup My Thai runs in Romania, in lei. It explains itself in one sentence and applies to the whole bill, so nobody has to remember what counts.
2. 9Cashback 5%, when points go across the whole menu. Half a point per 10 EUR. The careful version if the reward can also be spent on bottled drinks, where you earn little.
3. 10Dessert or soup, their choice. Add two or three reward types to the same offer and let the customer pick. All of them are things you cook, so they cost you ingredients.
4. 11A minimum before redeeming. You set how many points must be collected before the reward can be used, so it is not spent 50 cents at a time on every visit.
5. 12Two offers on one card. Lunch on stamps and the rest of the menu on points, in the same place. How many offers you get depends on the plan.
6. 13Rewards saved for later. The customer keeps a reward they have earned instead of using it on the spot, and you cap how many they can hold. Comes with the Premium plan.

How these look in practice, at My Thai and MINI STOP 24, is on the restaurants and shops page.

Stampinonow

MINI STOP 24

You're nearby! Come say hi 👋

In a shop the margin is thinner and part of the shelf is resold stock. What matters here is less how much you give and more what you give it on.

1. 141 point per product. One product bought is one point, and one point is worth one leu. The MINI STOP 24 setup, easier to explain at the till than a percentage.
2. 15No-margin categories taken out. Cigarettes, tobacco, takeaway coffee. The rule is printed on the card and applied at the till, and the reward stops eating your margin.
3. 16A minimum value per product. MINI STOP 24 asks for at least 5 lei, so nobody farms points on the gum by the register.
4. 17A double-stamp or double-point day. You pick the day and the till gives two instead of one on each purchase. It is not a scheduled rule, you start and stop it yourself, which makes it useful for launching a new product or for slow days.
5. 18The reward picked off the shelf. Add several reward types and let the customer choose. It also moves the products that sit.
6. 19No expiry at all. In a convenience shop, where visits are irregular, expiry does more harm than good. Leave it off.
7. 20The card in the digital wallet. No app to install, and the card can surface on the lock screen when the customer is near you. The detail is on the wallet-only card page.