How to Start a Loyalty Scheme for Your Café

A café loyalty scheme has one job: to turn someone who comes in now and then into someone who comes in by habit. Most schemes fail at it for a simple reason. The reward is too far away.

Here is how to design one that works.

Step 1: Reward visits, not spend

There are two kinds of scheme.

• Frequency-based — a reward after a number of visits. Your tenth coffee is free.
• Spend-based — a reward after spending a total. Spend €100, get €10 off.

For a café, frequency is almost always right. Your ticket is small and the habit is the whole business. Asking a customer to track a running spend total over a dozen €4 coffees is asking them to do arithmetic they will not do.

Spend-based schemes suit places with bigger, less frequent bills — a restaurant, a wine bar.

Step 2: Make the first reward reachable

This is the setting that decides whether the scheme works.

If your regulars come in three times a week, a reward after ten visits arrives in about three weeks. That is close enough to feel real. A reward after thirty visits arrives in two and a half months, and most people forget the scheme exists long before then.

Ask: how long will it take a typical regular to earn the first reward? Aim for a few weeks, not a few months.

Step 3: Pick a reward that costs you little

The best rewards have a low cost to you and a high perceived value to the customer:

• A free coffee or tea
• A pastry or cake with their usual order
• A size upgrade
• A free item they have not tried, which doubles as a way to sell it to them

A cash discount works too, but a free thing is more memorable than a small saving.

Step 4: Give rewards an expiry, and remind people

An earned reward with no expiry sits unused. An earned reward that expires in a month, with a reminder a week before and the day before, brings people back.

This is not about catching people out. An unused reward is a customer who meant to come back and did not, and a reminder is a nudge they are usually glad of.

Step 5: Get rid of the paper card

Paper stamp cards are familiar and cheap, and they have real problems:

• They get lost, washed and left in other coats
• They are easy to stamp twice, or fake
• They tell you nothing about who your regulars are

That last one is the biggest loss. A digital scheme records each visit, so you can see who comes in, how often, and — crucially — who used to come in every day and has stopped. That is the customer worth a personal message, and a stamp card will never tell you they exist.

Step 6: Make it invisible at the counter

The best loyalty schemes add nothing to the queue. If staff have to find a card, open an app, or ask a question during the morning rush, the scheme slows down the thing it is meant to reward.

Look for a scheme where a visit is recorded automatically when somebody pays, with a manual option for the occasional exception.

Step 7: Tell people once, properly

A sign at the till, a line on the receipt, and staff mentioning it to regulars in the first few weeks. After that, the rewards do the talking.

Use what the scheme tells you

The real value of a digital scheme only shows up after a month or two, when you can see the pattern of your regulars.

• Who are your top twenty customers? They are worth knowing by name, and worth thanking.
• Who has stopped coming? Someone who came in four mornings a week and has not been seen for three weeks has usually found another habit. A personal message, or a small reward, brings a good share of them back.
• When do regulars come? If most come before nine, that is where staffing and stock matter most.
• Is the reward being reached? If almost nobody earns it, the threshold is too high. If everybody does within days, it may be too generous.

A scheme you look at once a month and adjust is worth far more than one set up and forgotten.

Mistakes to avoid

• A first reward that takes months to reach
• Rewarding spend in a café, where the tickets are small
• No expiry, so rewards pile up unused
• A scheme that slows the queue
• Launching without telling your regulars

How it works on Mosey

• Frequency or spend, your choice, matched to how your customers buy.
• Visits record themselves when a customer pays through Mosey Pay or completes an order, and staff can add one manually.
• Progress updates in real time, so a customer can see how close they are while still at your counter.
• Expiring rewards with automatic reminders seven days out and the day before.
• Several sites can share one programme if you want them to.

It is free to create and run. Mosey takes 1% on the spend a programme rewards, up to €150 of commission per venue a month, and 0.4% above that. Nothing to set up, nothing to pause, and no monthly fee.

What it connects to

• Run a loyalty programme
• Take payments in store with Mosey Pay
• Mosey Tap: NFC loyalty at the counter
• Win back customers who stopped coming in
• What Mosey costs — every rate on one page