Loyalty in restaurants: five rules for your program

“We’re not a charity — why give away food?” I’ve heard this dozens of times, usually from a restaurant owner.

Let’s call him Oleksandr. Like you, he counted food cost down to the penny every day, and giving something away for free felt like shooting himself in the foot. The skepticism is understandable: when you count margin to the penny every day, giving food away feels like a loss. We showed him that he could look at the loyalty program from a different angle.

Spare kitchen capacity when the dining room is full

On Friday evening, Oleksandr had no tables left. According to the chef, the kitchen could handle an additional third of orders. That “invisible” capacity became our opportunity for growth.

An online order doesn’t take up a table or need a server, so it can use the kitchen’s spare capacity. For example, at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, we sent a push notification inviting a guest to redeem accumulated bonuses, and the guest placed an order without opening Google Maps to look for alternatives. That gave us an order that might not otherwise have happened.

Five rules for a restaurant loyalty program

We designed a program with Oleksandr based on five rules. By our estimate, it went from a cost center to a source of profit, and profit grew by 40%.

1. First, we replaced direct discounts with points. At Oleksandr’s restaurant, a dessert that cost 15 UAH to make felt like an 80 UAH value to the guest who received it as a gift.
2. We reviewed sales and chose popular items with low food cost as rewards: signature lemonades, house desserts, and appetizers.
3. In the new app, we showed a progress bar toward the gift — the “endowed progress” effect. With only one order left to earn a free panna cotta, guests felt that game-quest urge: “gotta finish it.”
4. When a guest redeemed a bonus, for example a free coffee, the app immediately offered a croissant with it at 25% off. Having received a gift, people are psychologically inclined to “give back.” The average check on these orders rose by 25%.
5. Once a week, the system automatically reminded guests whose bonuses were about to expire that they could place an order. This reminder forms a habit of coming back.

Eatery Club™ tools for this program

Oleksandr couldn’t run this program manually. Within the Eatery Club ecosystem, our ready-made website and mobile app already had all the described logic built in, including the bonus system and points wallet.

In the bonus system, percentages, “happy hours,” and personalized offers can be configured in a few clicks.

In the points wallet, guests save points toward dishes the restaurant wants to promote. The marketing hub automatically segments the audience and sends offers suited to those segments.

The system integrates with self-service kiosks and POS accounting, so bonuses apply both online and offline.