Digital loyalty cards for sandwich shops

Why this works for sandwich shops

A sandwich shop sells to the same people on the same five days a week at almost the same ticket, which is the exact shape a stamp card rewards. Eight stamps is about a month and a half of a regular's lunches, so the reward lands while the habit is still forming.

A sandwich shop's competition is not other sandwich shops, it is the four other things someone can do at half past twelve: the supermarket meal deal, the place next door, the food they brought in, or skipping lunch. Loyalty works because it puts a small standing reason on your side of a decision that is otherwise made on whatever is quickest.

Stamps beat points because lunch tickets barely vary. A sandwich, a drink and a packet of crisps is within a euro or two of the same total every time, so the fairness that points buy you is worth nothing here, and the simplicity of 'eight lunches, ninth free' is worth a great deal.

The constraint is the lunch queue, which in a sandwich shop is not a rush so much as the entire trading day compressed into ninety minutes. Enrolling by phone number fits inside the transaction because the customer does nothing: a staff member types the number while the order is being made up, and the card arrives by text before they are back at their desk.

Should a meal deal count as one stamp or several?

One stamp per transaction, not per item. A customer buying a sandwich, a drink and crisps has bought one lunch, and giving three stamps for it completes the card in under three visits, which turns a retention programme into a straight discount for people who were coming anyway.

The rule to publish is 'one stamp per visit', because it is the version a new staff member cannot get wrong and a customer cannot argue with. If you want to reward the larger order, points are the honest instrument; stamps are for counting occasions.

How do you handle office orders for ten people?

Credit the person who places and pays for the order, and treat it as one stamp rather than ten. The office order is one buying decision made by one person, and that person is the relationship worth keeping.

Large standing orders deserve different treatment entirely, and a stamp card is the wrong tool for them. A weekly delivery to the same office is a contract conversation, and the useful thing your loyalty data does there is tell you which phone number keeps appearing on Friday mornings.

What does a sandwich shop do about the weekend?

Nothing, usually: accept that the business is a five-day one and set the card's goal against weekday frequency. Eight stamps is a month and a half for someone buying lunch three times a week, which is the right horizon. It would be five months for a Saturday-only customer, who is not who the programme is for.

If weekends are a second business for you, the lever is a message rather than a mechanic. A wallet notification on a Friday afternoon reaches a list of people who already buy lunch from you, which is a far warmer audience than any advertising you could buy for the same money.

What sandwich shops usually struggle with

• The entire day's trade arrives inside a ninety-minute lunch queue
• Supermarket meal deals undercut on price and cannot be beaten on it
• Regulars are recognised by face, so nothing is recorded when they stop coming
• Weekday-only demand makes the week's other two days dead

What we would set up for you

A stamps card with 8 as the goal and a free sandwich of the customer's usual size as the reward. Customers enrol by phone number at the counter (they never take out their phone), and the card lands in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet in about three seconds.

You can change the goal or the reward later without reissuing anyone's card, so there is no penalty for starting with this and adjusting once you have real data.