Business-sized cards and a custom rubber stamp – just 2 ingredients to help you gain repeat customers! Loyalty cards are a simple and inexpensive method of producing regular guests to your restaurant.
We recently visited for the first time, Boiling Point, a Tawainese Hot Pot restaurant (hot pot is similar to Japanese Shabu Shabu) at their Irvine location. A delicious ancient dish with a culinary history of over 1,000 years in China, the Boiling Point hot pot concept was truly a hot pick for dinner on a chilly, overcast California night. They serve 10 hot pot soups on their menu, including beef, Thai, Korean kimchi, curry fishball, lamb, house special, stinky tofu, seafood and tofu, and tomato and veggie hot soups. Choose from mild to very spicy and pick a side dish of steamed white jasmine rice or thin rice vermicelli noodles. The soups come to you boiling hot, served in a small wok kept piping hot from a lit sterno candle placed underneath. My beef hot pot hit the spot – thin beef slices, imitation crab, enoki mushrooms, napa cabbage, tomato, corn, fishball and tofu in a boiling sweet and savory broth.
After receiving the check, a few of the people in our group pulled out their “point cards.” These business-sized loyalty cards reward guests a free hot soup after collecting 10 stamps: “Get one free hot soup for next purchase, when 10 stamps were collected.” They even provided a loyalty card just for their popular tea drinks and slushes.
The loyalty card concept is classic and traditional, but can still be very effective. If you think about it, new technologies like FourSquare have pretty much “modernized” this frequent guest loyalty/rewards method. Consider offering both loyalty options to your guests to maximize your reach. If you need assistance with your customer loyalty program, contact Synergy Restaurant Consultants.