Choosing a loyalty program for your café or restaurant
This gets decided in a demo, with clean screens and an empty counter. The questions below are the ones that matter afterwards, on a Saturday, with a line. Ask any provider of loyalty systems, including us. Not every answer of ours is flattering.
What does the customer have to do to join?
Joining is everything between a staff member offering the program and a card existing: a download, an account, an email typed onto a smudged screen, or one scan.
This step alone decides whether the program exists. Every extra tap is a customer who says never mind, and staff stop offering it once it has gone badly.
Ask: show me the sign-up on a phone, from the customer's side. How many taps, and what do they type?
Nothing to install: they scan your QR code and tap Add to Wallet. They do need a phone with Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, and a customer carrying neither cannot hold a LoyalTea card.
Where does the card actually live?
A card lives somewhere: in an app the customer installs, in a browser tab they must find again, on paper in a wallet, or in the wallet app already on the phone.
The place decides the survival rate. An app has to survive an install, a login and the next storage cleanup. A tab is gone once closed, and paper lasts until laundry.
Ask: where is this card after the customer changes phones? They have to find it months from now, without your help.
In Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, issued by LoyalTea directly rather than through a third party, and it updates on the customer's phone as they earn.
Does it fit how your counter earns?
Loyalty comes in two shapes. A stamp card fills visit by visit and suits a counter selling one thing at a time. A points program earns against the bill.
Pick wrong and you give away more than the visit was worth, or set the reward so far out that nobody reaches it. A provider who does only one shape is handing you their arithmetic. Our page for cafés works through both.
Ask: can I run stamps, and can I run points? Who decides the reward, and what does changing it take once real customers hold cards?
Stamps or points, with the reward built around what you sell. You can change the reward yourself in the web dashboard, or tell us and we make the change. Staff record each earn at the counter, so LoyalTea sits beside your till, not inside it.
How long does one scan take at the busiest moment?
Every provider looks quick in a quiet room. The moment that counts is the one nobody demonstrates: a phone held up, a line behind it, a hurried staff member.
Speed decides whether the program runs. If the loyalty step slows the line, staff quietly stop offering it and will not tell you. Our page for restaurants takes on the dinner-service version.
Ask: let somebody who has never seen this run a scan on my own hardware, at my own pace. What happens when the connection drops?
Staff scan with the camera in the LoyalTea Merchant app, or with a plug-in USB scanner at the counter, and earn, preview, confirm and undo sit on one screen.
Whose customer list is it, and can you take it with you?
A loyalty program builds exactly one asset: a list of the people who came back, with how often and how recently. The rest is software you rent.
That list is what you keep if you ever change providers. If you can see it only inside somebody else's dashboard, you do not have it.
Ask: can I export the whole list myself, today, without asking anyone? And the day I stop paying?
Yours. You export it yourself from the web dashboard, any time, without asking us. The export lives in the web dashboard and not in the phone app.
What does the law where you operate ask of you?
A loyalty program collects personal information: a name, sometimes an email address, a record of when somebody walked in. In Québec, Law 25 sets rules about consent, about telling people what you collect and why, and about information that leaves the province. The Charter of the French language shapes the language customers are served in.
That is not a reason to be nervous. It is a reason to read the customer-facing screens in French before you sign: in the customer's eyes, they are yours.
Ask: show me, in French, every screen a customer sees. Where is your privacy policy, and where do your service providers store the information?
None of this is legal advice, and no software is compliant on your behalf. Our Montréal page sets out the same facts.
French by default, in the staff app, the web dashboard and every customer-facing screen.
Our hosting is not in Québec, and our own documents say so. Our Privacy Policy names the service providers we use, and some of them store or process personal information outside Québec and Canada, primarily in the United States. As Québec's Law 25 requires, we assess those transfers to confirm the information receives adequate protection. If a provider's location matters to you, read that section before you sign anything, here or anywhere else.
Who actually runs the program once it is live?
Setup is the easy part and every provider does it. The question is the quiet months afterwards, when the reward needs adjusting and nobody owns the program.
Software does not notice that a reward is set too far away. A person does. Running it yourself is a real answer, as long as you know whose job it is.
Ask: after launch, who changes the reward when it is not working, and what happens if I want to run it alone or stop?
We run it with you, and you keep full access to the merchant app and the web dashboard. You can make everyday changes, like rewards and campaigns, yourself, or ask us to make them.
Who actually runs it, once it is live
We set your program and rewards up, launch it at your counter with your staff, and then run it for you: you tell us what you want, we make the changes. You keep full access to the merchant app and the web dashboard, and you can reach us whenever something needs to change.
Before you decide
Is my customer list mine?
Yes. Your customer list is yours: download it yourself, any time, as a CSV from the web dashboard.
How do I know which reward to offer?
That is part of what we set up with you: what you sell, how often people come back, and what you can afford to give away. If it turns out wrong, you tell us and we change it.
What if I would rather run it myself?
Then you run it yourself. You keep full access to the merchant app and the web dashboard, and you can make everyday changes, like your rewards and campaigns, yourself.
What should I look at during a demo?
The customer side on a real phone, the staff side at a real counter, in the language your customers speak. Then ask to leave with a copy of your own data.
What we charge, since you asked the question
Free during the pilot, and we set everything up with you.
Ready to run these questions on your own counter?
Tell us what you sell and how often people come back, and we will go through the list at your counter.
Ready when you are
New to LoyalTea? Request access and we'll set your program up with you. Already on board? Sign in with your business Google account.