You Can Triple Visits To Your Eatery With One Simple Fix
If you own a brick-and-mortar food business, this post is for you
If you own a brick-and-mortar eatery, this post is for you
You have a beautiful cafe in a bustling neighborhood. It’s been your dream for most of your adult life, and now it’s a reality. Customers praise the aesthetic design, and are thrilled by the unique benches made from reclaimed cherry wood that you bought on Etsy and painstakingly refurbished.
Anecdotally, you hear about how delicious the food is, and how these customers “come back all the time”. And yet…
Revenue is static. Anemic, even. You can’t predict customers on any given day. When you have new menu items, or run promotions…you get crickets. Most troublesome — you can’t count the number of times a customer says to you “Yeah, i love this place, i just keep forgetting to come more often”
Sound familiar? Welcome to the mostly unexplored realm of customer retention that many small eateries like coffee shops, cafes, juice bars, burger joints, and fine restaurants overlook.
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In a nutshell, you’re blind to the cash cow of Repeat Visitation.
Let’s outline 3 main problems, and then talk about a solution for each one:
1. Cash Customers: A significant portion of customers still pay with cash. You even vaguely recognize some of them…the runner with the golden retriever…the guy who orders a turmeric latte and works on his laptop…the woman & her friends who come in…sometimes. You’re missing out on knowing when they come, what they order, and what might prompt them to return.
2. Your Shop Isn’t A Habit…Yet: A customer who drops by once a month could easily become a weekly visitor. If you can achieve this, that’s 4x your revenue, from existing customers! The trick is get them to consider you every time they get hungry. Because let’s be honest — they forget. Make their hunger/thirst a cue to think of you, and you’re golden.
3. You’re Powerless To Reach Them: Say you launch a new menu item, or run a weekday special, or offer discounts for afternoon coffee runs — how do they know? If only you could reach out to them, instead of just…waiting until the next time they come.
Solution? Welcome to the modern world of your own loyalty program.
Customers love loyalty program. The average person is a member of more than 20 (!).
People enjoy being recognized and rewarded. By offering a loyalty program, you’re not just giving them a discount on their tenth coffee; you’re gifting them a status, or a belonging to a community. The allure of climbing your loyalty ladder is a game-changer, it’s the magnet that pulls them back through your doors, time and time again.
How? Well, that’s the good news. Implementing a robust loyalty program has never been easier.
Platforms like Toast, Incentivio, Fivestars, or Square offer sophisticated loyalty tracking programs tailored for small eateries. They provide insightful analytics to understand customer behavior and preferences, and most work with the majority of POS systems.
The best part? It’s EASY to implement. Seriously.
If you want hand-holding on how to actually do this, or are just curious about which one you should pick, I can help. I know the details, pros & cons, and features of all the platforms.
Let’s have a conversation, shall we?
In the future…
Let’s revisit the scenario: All those customers who last visited, (and loved it) more than 30 days ago?You can reach them now. Anytime. Because you have a sophisticated program in place that lets you remind them, via customized emails or texts, just what they have been missing.
Business is better than ever, and your customers are more loyal. It’s truly a win-win.
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