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.
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