Lunch menu: how to keep your regular lunch guests
Lunch menu regulars: a stamp per lunch, a reward on the tenth visit, the menu on their phone before they decide, geo push for offices and a weekly plan.
Even regular lunch menu guests often rotate between several places nearby. You keep them with a small, regular reward and by showing them the menu before they decide where to go. And all of it has to work without slowing down the queue at noon.
How a lunch guest decides
Around ten or eleven, an office is asking one question: where are we going for lunch today? Whoever turns up on their phone with a menu at that moment has the advantage. The guest is not looking for the best restaurant in town. They want to be sure they will eat well and be served quickly today. This timing is our working hypothesis. Check when your first guests start arriving.
A reward that pays off for you and the guest
A stamp for every lunch and a reward on the tenth. A guest who comes every day gets a reward roughly every two weeks. A guest who comes twice a week, every five weeks. Both are fast enough for the card to motivate.
A sample calculation using the formula from How many stamps on a loyalty card: the menu costs €9 and the reward is a dessert that costs you €1. The effective discount is 1 ÷ (10 × 9) = 1.1%. A whole free menu costing you €3.50 would come to 3.9%.
A dessert, an extra soup or a coffee after lunch means a lot to the guest, because they often would not order it otherwise. For you they are cheap and do not keep the table occupied any longer.
The menu on their phone before they decide
Send cardholders a short lock screen message while they are still deciding. Suggested wording:
Today: cabbage soup and chicken paprikash. We still have a table free at 11:30.
You send the message yourself once the menu is ready. If there are offices around you, geo push helps too: your card appears on a cardholder's lock screen when they are near your restaurant, and on iPhone it shows a short text you write. The details are explained in How geotargeting works in a mobile wallet. Push notifications are included in the Advanced plan and higher.
The noon queue must not slow down
Scan the card during payment, not before or after it. Your cashier should not be explaining the program with ten people waiting behind the guest. A QR code on the counter and on the tables does the job for them, and anyone who wants the card adds it while waiting for their food.
Lunch menu regulars: a weekly plan
- Monday: send the menu for the whole week so guests know it in advance.
- Tuesday: a stamp with every lunch, no extra promotion.
- Wednesday: a message with the dish of the day, if you have something guests love.
- Thursday: a stamp with every lunch, a quick hello at the till is enough.
- Friday: a coffee after lunch for cardholders, so the week ends on a good note.
The plan is only a suggestion. If Monday is your quietest day, move the Friday coffee there.
A loyalty program for your restaurant as a whole, not just for lunch, is described in Restaurant loyalty program that actually works. If cashback suits you better, see How to set up a cashback card in a restaurant.
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