Nearly every independent restaurant tries loyalty at some point, and nearly every one of them ends up with a scheme that a hundred people joined and eleven people use.

Why they die

Almost always the same reason: the reward is too far away. Ten visits for a free main is a promise nobody believes at visit two, and the card is in a drawer by visit three.

Reward frequency, not size. The scheme that works gives something small early, because it is the early reward that forms the habit.

What tends to work

• A free item rather than a percentage off. A free coffee feels like a gift; ten percent feels like arithmetic.
• A threshold people reach in a fortnight, not a quarter.
• Enrolment that happens at the moment of paying, in seconds.
• The same scheme wherever they order, so it does not reset by channel.

Stamps or points depends on the ticket

A café with a five-pound average and daily visits wants stamps: simple, visible, and the maths is obvious. A dining room with a variable spend and monthly visits wants points, because a stamp treats a forty-pound dinner the same as a coffee.

Measure the right thing

Sign-ups are the number every scheme reports and the least useful one. What you want to know is whether members come back sooner than they used to. If the gap between visits is not shrinking, the scheme is a discount rather than a loyalty programme.

The thing that beats every scheme

Being remembered. A regular greeted by name, seated at their table, asked whether they want the usual, does not need a card. Small rooms have always known this, and it is the one advantage an independent has that no chain can buy.

A scheme is what you reach for when the room got too big to do that. It is worth being honest about which of those two you actually are before spending money on it.

People do not come back for a stamp. They come back because it was good and somebody knew them.