The F&B industry never sleeps.

You’re thinking about new menu items for the upcoming holiday.

You’re booking a live band for an event you’re hosting next month.

You’re making sure that comms between office and operations staff are in sync (because they’re too busy to check e-mails).

You’re keeping with new food trends (#CleanEating #AvocadoToast 🥑).

Whether you’re a restaurateur or a marketing executive for a restaurant group, you’ve got a lot on your mind.

And on top of all of this, you know that customer loyalty is imperative.

At the end of the day, what matters the most is your bottom line.

The Breakdown

This post will cover everything you need to know to run a successful restaurant loyalty program from scratch.

1 — Define your objectives & loyalty program framework

Objectives

What are your objectives of launching a loyalty program?

This could be:

Acquiring 5000 more customers.

Getting existing customers to dine at your restaurant 5x more this year.

Increasing the average spend per customer by $100.

Understanding customers better to provide personalized dining experiences (resulting in more spend).

Getting more customers to visit during off-peak hours.

What are you hoping to achieve by starting a loyalty program? This is critical to measure whether your loyalty program is, in fact, successful.

Incentives

What incentives are you going to offer that is valuable enough for customers to join your loyalty program and remain in your loyalty program?

We’ll cover how you can promote your loyalty program later, but what’s important here is retention. What will get your customers coming back — again and again — to your restaurant?

Is a free lunch set incentive enough after their 8th visit?

What menu item is the most popular and how can leverage that to drive loyalty?

Do your customers prefer perks (e.g. lifetime free corkage) or discounts (e.g. 10% off, $20 cash rebate)?

Loyalty program types

Depending on your objectives & incentives, determine what type of loyalty program would work best for your restaurant.

Some examples include:

Stamp card/punch card loyalty program

Points based loyalty program

Tiered loyalty program

Tip: work together with your operations manager on defining your loyalty program. Your ops manager has a lot of insight on what customers love, what customers hate, and what generally goes on in restaurants.

2— Design your digital loyalty card

Now that you’re all set, it’s time to create your digital loyalty card.

That’s right — we’re going digital 📱.

With Loopy Loyalty, you can design captivating digital loyalty cards in minutes. Your customers simply save their digital loyalty cards in Apple Wallet or Google Pay — no need to install a 3rd party app.

Apple Wallet & Google Pay digital loyalty cards

You can create a digital loyalty card in just 15 minutes.

Sign up for Loopy Loyalty and you’ll see just how easy it is. If you do need a bit of assistance, these resources will help:

3 — Empower your staff

Front line operations staff are crucial to the success of your loyalty program.

They’re face to face with customers. They’re taking orders. They’re handling customer complaints.

Photo by Crew on Unsplash

Brief staff

All of your restaurant staff members need to know about your new loyalty program. At a minimum, you should have answers to these questions:

Can any customer join or is this only for VIP customers?

How will customers earn stamps?

What is the reward they will need to give away?

What happens if you run out of rewards — what is the alternative?

Provide your staff with everything they need to know about the loyalty program so that they’re not left saying “I don’t know” to a customer.

Staff training & testing

It’s important to make sure staff are trained to fulfill what’s required in the loyalty program.

Show staff how to save their digital loyalty card to Apple Wallet, Google Pay, or Pass2U (if customers do not have Android Pay).

2. Install the Loopy Loyalty digital stamper app on iOS or Android on the your staff’s device or your restaurant’s shared device. Then practice issuing a few stamps & redeeming rewards.

Note: You will need a WiFi or data connection to use the stamper app.

Ultimately, you want your staff to experience every part of the loyalty program as if they were the customer. Run through this a couple of times with different staff members to build confidence and capability.

Here’s a complete checklist of other things to consider before launching your loyalty program.

4 — Promote your loyalty program

With paper and plastic loyalty cards, customers can only receive them when they visit your restaurant or by post 🐌. Which is inefficient.

Digital loyalty cards created with Loopy Loyalty allow your customers to instantly:

Sign up for your loyalty program wherever they are in the world. Save their digital loyalty card to their smartphone.

Giving you a direct channel to start engaging with them right away. (More on that in the next section).

Promote your loyalty program online

Photo by Igor Miske on Unsplash

Copy your loyalty program URL from your Loopy Loyalty dashboard.

Then, sweat your assets. Promote your loyalty program URL across as many channels as possible:

Website : Add this URL to your website. A simple “Join our loyalty program” button will do. Want to really sell the benefits of your loyalty program? Create a dedicated page for your loyalty program. Then add a ‘Sign Up’ button to take customers to your loyalty program URL.

: Add this URL to your website. A simple “Join our loyalty program” button will do. Want to really sell the benefits of your loyalty program? Create a dedicated page for your loyalty program. Then add a ‘Sign Up’ button to take customers to your loyalty program URL. Social media (part 1) : Paste this URL in bio or description. Anyone who visits your profile can instantly join your loyalty program.

: Paste this URL in bio or description. Anyone who visits your profile can instantly join your loyalty program. Social media (part 2) : Make an announcement that you’ve just launched a new loyalty program. Tweet it, share an update on Facebook, share it on Instagram, and anywhere else you are active.

: Make an announcement that you’ve just launched a new loyalty program. Tweet it, share an update on Facebook, share it on Instagram, and anywhere else you are active. Email : Already have an existing customer list? Send them an email with the link to join your loyalty program.

: Already have an existing customer list? Send them an email with the link to join your loyalty program. SMS/WhatsApp: Know your customers’ mobile numbers? Text them the link.

Promote your loyalty program offline

Encourage customers who have visited your restaurant to join your loyalty program and instantly earn rewards.

Save the QR code as an image from your Loopy Loyalty dashboard. Then:

Print this QR code on this on a tent card. Put these tent cards on tables for customers to easily scan. (Download this free tent card template).

Print the QR code on posters and flyers.

Print the QR code on business cards. (Download this free business card template).

Ask staff to encourage customers to join your loyalty program.

Refer to this post for more tips on promoting your loyalty program across all channels.

5— Engage & reward your customers

You now have a channel to remind your customers to visit your restaurant any time you want.

To let them know of today’s lunch specials at 11:55am, right before they leave the office for lunch.

To let them know that happy hour is being extended tonight.

Here are some tips for engaging and rewarding your customers that will help you maximize customer retention.

1 — Give customers a stamp right when they enroll.

You’ll be able to see who has enrolled in your Customers table in Loopy Loyalty. Why not reward them with their first stamp just for signing up? You can also then send a message directly to that customer welcoming them to your loyalty program.

2 — Know your customers’ birthday? Send them a personalized birthday greeting!

3 — Find out who your top 5 customers are and reward them with an extra stamp. Or invite them to visit your restaurant this week for an extra 20% off.

4 — Send a message to all customers letting them know of your opening/closing hours during the holidays. Trust us, this will be extra helpful.

5 — Send a targeted message to customers who have only dined at your restaurant once. Get them to come back to your restaurant with an enticing special, a complimentary glass of wine, or a free dessert.

Learn more about sending push messages here.

Customer loyalty is now in your hands

Getting that customer to come one more time to your restaurant and one less time to your competitor’s is how the battle will be won or lost.

Visit https://loopyloyalty.com/ to take control of customer loyalty for your restaurant today.

Questions? Let us know in the comments below!