Hustles of day-to-day life have made it a lifestyle for many to buy take-aways or order food to their homes. This added convenience has also enabled restaurants to scale their business fast. However, this also means that the number of new players entering the market has shot through the roof.
In these days of heavy competition, it is difficult to maintain your daily walk-ins as each restaurant tries to break the market by introducing attractive schemes for its consumers. A loyalty program is one of the best ways to ensure that your restaurant builds a strong consumer-base and maintain your profits, if not elevate them.
But how to create an effective loyalty program for your consumers? Let’s look at a few points to remember when designing your restaurant loyalty program.
1. It is a Give and Take Relationship
It is essential to remember that whenever you are designing a loyalty program for your existing (and even potential) diners, you always consider the value they are getting before considering the value you are getting. A consumer is only more likely to join your loyalty program if they find value in it and see that it is reducing their daily expenses.
This can include free loyalty program joining capability, distributing coupons to customers to invite them in for eating more at discounted prices and introducing a system that keeps track of their loyalty and provides real benefits.
2. Providing Quality-Centric Services
In many scenarios, it has been noticed that when customers take part in a loyalty program, sometimes restaurants end up becoming more quantity-centric rather than quality-centric. This means that restaurants try to get as many people to sign up for this program than focusing on the target consumer-base that actually might be interested. This can result in the profit margins of the restaurant being stressed and a striking drop in the quality of service provided by the restaurant.
3. Digitize the Program
We have seen how the introduction of an application can aid your restaurant to grow extensively and enable you to scale your business faster. Similarly, digitizing the loyalty program can allow you to provide insights to the customers into their loyalty score and encourage them to maintain a high score to reap better benefits. Apart from that, a digitized program can also help you to keep track of the number of customers that have signed up for it and enable you to review the progress, revise terms of the program easily, and notify your loyal customers regarding such changes immediately, no matter where they are.
4. Integrate a Points System Redeemable at the Restaurant
Rather than providing rewards in the form of discounts, a loyalty program will prove more beneficial if the rewards are provided in the form of points that can be redeemed as discount on the customers’ next offer. Not only will this allow you to maintain a good profit margin on your initial sale, but also encourage customers to walk-in to your restaurant for a second time, significantly spiking their loyalty towards your restaurant.
We hope that all these points have provided insight into how to develop a loyalty program for your restaurant that is both effective and long-lasting.
