Should you add a
loyalty program
or a membership to
your restaurant?
I'll explain that
in one second.
Hey, everybody.
My name is Ryan Gromfin.
I'm an author, speaker,
chef, restaurateur,
and I'm the founder of
the restaurantboss.com,
as well as
clickbacon.com
And today, I'm going to help you
with restaurant loyalty programs
or memberships.
First off, let me
just say this,
they're very similar, I'll explain
the differences in a second.
This is also not going to be
a video where we're going to
get into the technology
or the specifics
of either
one of these,
this is just going
to be a general
look at loyalty programs
and memberships.
Second of all,
I love them both,
I really love
rewarding
my customers instead
of rewarding strangers.
Basically when you coupon, if you
print coupons or deliver coupons,
or however you do
discounts and things,
if your couponing out
to the general public,
you're doing one of two
things - you are either
giving a perfect stranger an excuse
to come eat at your restaurant
for a
discounted price
and possibly
never return.
I know the assumption
is that you're going to
exceed their
expectations,
blow their mind and they're going
come back over and over again.
Usually not
the case,
or we're giving
a customer who
would have eaten in our
restaurant anyways and
would have paid full price a
discount for no reason at all,
so I'm not a huge
fan of couponing.
There are times and
circumstances when I love couponing,
but I'm not
generally a huge fan
of couponing in the way that
most restaurants are doing it.
I am however a huge fan of
loyalty and membership programs.
And so, most of us are
familiar with punch cards,
whether they're digital
like in a mobile wallet
or literally a physical
punch card,
where you know, you visit 10 times,
you get something for free,
or familiar with the point systems
where every time you come,
you give them a card
or a phone number,
when you swipe and
when you get points,
you get rewards or
something for free,
and that's great - that's a
traditional loyalty program.
I love membership
programs,
whether they're free or paid,
I even more love…
It’s good English -
I even more.
I really love paid
membership programs,
but let's just talk
about this really quick.
So loyalty program, I already
explained it, we already know what that is,
so how is that different
than a membership?
Memberships are - first
of all, they're exclusive.
They're not open
to anybody.
You either have
to be invited
or you have to have done
something to get into it,
or maybe there's only a certain
amount of spots but they create
some level
of exclusivity.
Members also get certain things
that everybody else doesn't, right?
So one of
my clients has
like a whisky Club at
their Irish bar where
members get access
to special whiskey's.
They have a few special
whiskeys’ that aren't on the menu
that only
members get,
and so when
they come in,
like if a guest
comes in with
someone else who's a member
and then they learn about this,
how do I become a member?
What is it? Well, in this particular case,
there's a very
nominal fee.
I think they charge
something like
$20 a month and included
in that is they do a special
whisky tasting
once a month
with some hors d'oeuvres and there's a
little bit of a party and things like that,
but then every
time they come in,
they get access
to certain whiskies
and there's kind of
cool menu items,
and whenever they
do whiskey dinners,
they get first priority
on reservations, etc. etc.
Another one of my clients
has an ice cream shop
where they make
a specialty ice cream,
two different flavors every month,
and if you are a member,
they pay $20-25 a month,
and if you are a member,
you get those two special
kinds of ice cream,
and then every
time you come in,
you get to go
to a special line
and you also get either
a special ice cream
that's available now
to everybody else,
you get the special ice
cream at the regular pricing,
or you get a free topping
on another ice cream.
So this idea
of memberships
shouldn't be all
that foreign to us,
but the idea of incorporating
it into your restaurant, right?
Another way that we can do
memberships is with t-shirts,
like every three
months or so,
you can come out with a
new limited edition t-shirt
that you only give
to members and then
when they wear the
t-shirt into your restaurant,
they get a discount, or
they get a free appetizer,
or they get a free
little something, right?
So get creative, think
about what can we do
in your restaurant, what
can you do in your restaurant
that creates a little
more exclusivity.
Something that is a little more special,
maybe it's paid, maybe it's not.
Another one of my
clients has a wine club
where every month
they get a bottle of
red and a bottle of white,
they pay I think $29 a month.
There's a little
party for them,
but again, then when they do wine
dinners, they get priority reservations.
During the holidays,they
get priority reservations.
They get sent
newsletters ahead
of everybody else for
special events coming up.
Once a year, they
do like special wine
tastings… I'm sorry!
Once a quarter,
they do special wine tastings
where they bring in winemakers,
so there's things that
they do for their members
and these are
their best clients
because they have that kind
of a relationship with them,
they come in more often,
they spend more money,
they know everyone by name,
they know the staff.
So again, you can
incorporate a loyalty
program into a
membership program,
but I want you to take
it to the next level.
I want you to think about what
can you do that's more exclusive
than just a
loyalty program.
I hope you enjoyed
this week's video,
I really look forward to bringing
you another one just like this next week.
Have a
wonderful week.
I want to thank you for
watching that video.
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