3 Reasons why loyalty programmes are important for restaurants

As a business owner, you would have already known that returning customers are crucial to the success and longevity of your restaurant. This is because repeat customers are more likely to spend more compared to new customers trying out your restaurant for the first time.

More often than not loyalty programmes involve giving out discounts, promotions and benefits to returning customers thus keeping them happy. As we know, happy customers means returning customers. As offering such benefits to returning customers may eat into your restaurant’s margins, some restaurants do not see why they should run a loyalty program to keep customers coming back and would often solely focus on providing better food quality for customer retention.

While that strategy may work in the past, the current F&B industry is getting increasingly competitive and restaurants without a loyalty program struggle to retain customers. Here are 3 reasons why your restaurant should start a loyalty program to boost customer retention.

1. Boost sales
2. Get out of the price war
3. Stronger branding
4. More word of mouth marketing

Boost sales

With a loyalty programme, customers are more likely to choose your business over a direct competitor’s as they have access to special benefits and discounts that they do not have with your competitors. This way, you avoid losing out customers to your competitors, thus boosting sales as your customers will continue to patronize your restaurant instead of your competitors.

Get out of the price war

Restaurants are always competing with prices and this really hurts a restaurant’s margins. While customers gravitate towards low prices, it generally is not a make or break factor. When your restaurant offers something interesting through loyalty programmes, customers will be more likely to continue to patronize your restaurant instead of your competitor’s as you are value adding instead of simply being the cheapest option.

Stronger branding

A loyalty programme helps you personalize customer offers based on their buying habits and offer better deals for returning customers or allowing them to collect points to be redeemed for their future visits. This makes customers feel more valued, making them more likely to stick with your brand.

More word of mouth marketing

Word of mouth marketing is one of the strongest forms of advertising. When customers have had good experiences and feel that they are valued at your restaurant, they will be more likely to recommend your restaurant to their peers.

This contributes to increased customer acquisition from which, you can expand you loyal customer base that in turn recommends more new customers, leading to constant growth for your restaurant.

How does your POS system contribute to customer loyalty?

Restaurant owners and managers have lots to manage on a daily basis and may not be able to properly manage customer loyalty programmes. With a restaurant POS system like MEGAPOS, you get an in-built member management and reward point accumulation and redemption system to help digitalise customer management.

On top of that, MEGAPOS restaurant POS system is integratable with third party CRM solution providers to match your business needs.

Interested? Click here for a FREE demo of MEGAPOS restaurant POS System.