This article will discuss loyalty programs during covid-19 and how they can help your restaurant. The covid-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on the restaurant industry. Many restaurants are only able to provide delivery and collection options, depending on where they are based. Restaurants are carefully deciding how to keep their business strong during covid-19. As a result, it is vital that customer loyalty programs are considered.

Customers will always love a good discount. This is particularly important in this current climate. This is because many of your customers may be ordering from your competitors. Therefore, if you are not providing them with an incentive to order from you, they may order from your competitors.

The restaurant industry is facing a decrease in sales. Some restaurants will struggle to support their day to day operations as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the solution is providing your customers with loyalty programs. This will encourage them to stay with you until you reopen your doors to the public. 

The pandemic has put just about everyone in the food industry at risk. As it is, restaurants already operate on thin margins. Social distancing requirements and restaurants only operating for delivery and collection create more challenges. Therefore, this industry needs the support of their customers more than ever before. 

This article will inform you why loyalty programs can help your restaurant during covid-19. 

Why Loyalty Programs?

It is the backbone of any successful restaurant. Loyalty programs carry huge benefits for restaurants of all shapes and sizes. Therefore, in your regular day to day operations, customer loyalty is vital. During a health pandemic, customer loyalty is even that more vital as it has the ability to save your business. 

People love discounts. Therefore, if you offer discounts, the likelihood of them returning to your restaurant once you reopen is higher. They begin to care about your business because you are showing care for them by offering them a good deal. A loyalty program does more than just offering a once off discount. A loyalty program keeps them coming back for more!

Contactless payment is encouraged during the pandemic. Therefore, you should ensure your customers know that they will be able to use their customer loyalty discount online.

Your restaurant’s website and digital channels such as social media can be used here. Therefore, you can use them to advertise your discounts. In addition, your website should be optimised for search engines. This is so your website will show at the top of the Google search. 

Social media is an effective place to advertise any and all promotions. So, if you have just recently launched a brand new promotion, ensure you post it to those channels. Social media is an area where you can be transparent with your customers also. Particularly during the pandemic as people are looking for ways to support the industry. 

In addition, use social media to inform your customers on how important it is for them to support your business. Your customers will hear and appreciate that and hopefully as a result, they will help you. Therefore, the likelihood of them helping you will increase if they are receiving an incentive. 

What To Offer In Your Loyalty Programs? 

Many large chains base their customer loyalty programs on points and perks. Currently, the best practice is to offer immediate and uniquely valuable offerings. This is because they give a great deal more value to diners than long-term programmes like points.

The option many independent restaurants take is to move away from points altogether. Rather, they prefer to shoot for instant and personally relevant rewards.  Therefore, programs with a ‘punch’ often have more success with younger diners. 

In addition, use what diners love about you to work into your customer loyalty program too. Ensure you communicate clearly and frequently with your loyalty program members. Highlight exactly how they can use their points and what perks they receive. Therefore, make the redemption process as easy as possible.

Your restaurant needs to make your program memorable. It’s essential to market to your members in an engaging and clever way. Otherwise, you risk users forgetting they signed up in the first place.

Remember also, to be aware of what your goals are from customer loyalty programs. Ensure you have a properly developed, revenue-focused strategy that will be able to measure your success.

How MENUU can help you

We have a powerful in built loyalty engine. This makes the process super simple for both the restaurant and the customer. Easy to set up in the CMS. In addition, you can set how many orders the customer must place before receiving their reward. You can set the reward as a fixed amount off their order or else an average spend value. The customer’s loyalty will build up automatically on our platform so you don’t need to manually manage the process.

How It Works

The customer will receive an SMS each time they order. This will advise them of how many orders they have placed with your restaurant. They will have reached the set number of orders. Then, they will receive a promo code for their free order / discount off their next order. This discount will automatically apply the next time they place their order. The customer can also view their loyalty points in their profile within the app or when ordering online.

Conclusion

Your restaurant can hugely benefit from offering customer loyalty programs to the customers supporting your business during covid-19. You can increase customer loyalty, additional customer spend and overall customer convenience. Discounts and promotions can be crucial in seeing you through this crisis. Once you have gotten started, you can start using your customer’s data to better tailor deals for them.