Cafés
Loyalty for cafés
Daily habit, thin margins, a morning rush that leaves no room for a slow sign-up. The scheme has to be faster than the queue.
Fresh Start Café
Hi, Winston
3 more until a free regular coffee.
5 of 8
Enter the code from the counter
What's different about a café
Four things that make this trade its own problem, and what the product does about each.
The morning rush is not negotiable
Between eight and half nine you cannot afford three seconds a transaction. Scanning a customer's card is one action, and the four-character code exists for when a camera is not practical.
Paper cards work, and that is the real competition
A rubber stamp is faster than any phone. What paper cannot do is tell you who anyone is, notice that a daily regular has stopped coming, or show a customer they are two stamps away.
Ten days without a regular is a changed habit
In a café, lapsed happens fast. Somebody who came every morning and has not been in for a fortnight has found somewhere nearer their new office. Set win-back short.
Your customer without a smartphone still counts
Staff can create a card from the shop device and look it up by the last four digits of a number, so the regular with a phone for calls does not get quietly excluded.
Where we'd start you
Sensible defaults for cafés. The stamps and the reward are one field each to change; win-back tunes itself to each regular.
- Stamps on a card
- 8
- The reward
- A free regular coffee
- Win-back
- Tuned to each regular's rhythm
Eight stamps suits a sub-£4 average and lands the reward inside a fortnight for a daily customer. Twelve days is the point where a coffee habit has genuinely moved elsewhere.
Questions from cafés
Is scanning fast enough at the morning rush?
Scanning a card is about a second and a half once staff have done it a few times. It is slower than a rubber stamp and faster than anything involving an app. If a camera is awkward, the four-character code takes no staff time at all.
Can I keep honouring my paper cards?
Yes, and you should. Never invalidate somebody's progress. Run both until the paper ones run out.
Does it work on the shop's old iPad?
If it runs a current browser, yes. The staff device is a web app, so there is nothing to install from an app store.
Worth reading next
Paper stamp cards vs digital: what actually changes for a café
Paper works, costs almost nothing and everyone understands it. Here is a fair account of what you gain and lose by moving a café's card to a screen.
Phone number vs QR code: the most inclusive way to run loyalty
Some customers have no smartphone. Some have no data. A loyalty scheme that only works one way excludes people who come in every week.
Win-back emails: the highest-ROI loyalty automation
One email to people who have stopped coming in beats almost anything else you can automate. What to say, when to send it, and what to offer.
Try it in your café
30 days free with everything on, then £29.99 a month. Unlimited customers, cancel from one button.