Pub loyalty: rewarding regulars without discounting the bar

A pub already has loyalty. That is what a regular is: someone who chose you years ago and has not reconsidered since. The awkward consequence is that the obvious loyalty scheme, a free pint every so often, mostly hands money to people who were never going anywhere.

There is also a line you should not go near. Rewarding people for drinking more, or faster, is both bad business and, in England and Wales, restricted: the mandatory licensing conditions rule out promotions that encourage speed or excess. A loyalty scheme built on volume is the wrong instrument twice over.

Which leaves a better question, and a more useful one: what would bring people in on a Tuesday?

Key takeaways

Reward the occasion, not the volume. Never build a scheme that pays people to drink more or faster.

Your regulars are not the growth. The customer who comes twice a month and could come four times is.

Reward food, coffee, or entry to something: all carry better margin than a discounted pint and none of them reprice the bar.

The card’s real job is filling Monday to Wednesday, which is capacity you have already paid for.

Sign people up at the quiz, in the garden, or at the table. The bar at nine on a Friday is the worst moment you could choose.

Do not discount the bar

A standing discount for card holders (10% off drinks, a free pint every tenth) has three problems.

It pays out in proportion to how much someone already drinks, which means your heaviest drinkers get the most and your occasional customers get almost nothing. It reprices your bar permanently, because a regular who has paid £4.20 for eighteen months will notice going back to £4.60. And it rewards a behavior you should not be incentivizing.

What a pub actually wants is more visits, not bigger rounds. Design for that, and the drinks look after themselves.

Reward the occasion

The things worth giving away are the ones that bring someone in and cost you least:

Food. A free starter, a side, or a main on the sixth visit. Kitchen margin is better than bar margin on the giveaway, and it turns a drink visit into a meal visit, which is worth considerably more.
The quiz entry, or a round of quiz drinks for the winning table. Costs little, fills the room, and is inherently a group activity: one card holder brings four people.
Coffee and soft drinks. Overlooked, high margin, and it means the designated driver in every group has a reason to carry your card.
First look at something. A cask coming on, tickets to a live night, a table held for the big match. No cost at all, and it reads as belonging.

Each of these rewards the trip to the pub rather than the volume consumed once someone is there.

Fill Monday to Wednesday

A pub’s fixed costs run whether the room is full or empty. Filling a quiet midweek night is close to pure contribution. A chalkboard cannot do it. A digital card can: reach the people who already come, on the day you need them, without announcing a discount to the whole street.

The formats that work are regular rather than surprising:

A weekly fixture. The quiz on Tuesday, the folk night on Wednesday, the same thing every week so it becomes a plan rather than a promotion. Push it to your list the morning of.
A community night. A local group, a supper club, a charity thing. It fills a dead room and generates the sort of goodwill no offer can buy.
Big fixtures. A message the day before a match, to people who have come for sport before. This is targeting, not broadcasting: the people who come for the quiz do not want it.
A win-back. Somebody who came weekly and has not been in for a month. One message, something worth returning for, and then leave it.

Each one suits a different channel. The quiz reminder and the match-day nudge are push: true that morning, worthless the next. The month ahead, the community night, anything with a bill of fare attached, is email. The win-back is a text, because somebody who has drifted for a month is not opening your email and a returning weekly regular is worth more than the message costs.

The discipline in all four is that they go to a slice of the list rather than all of it. A pub that messages everybody every week gets muted, and the regulars mute first. Working out who should hear what is loyalty segmentation.

Where the growth actually is

It is tempting to build the whole thing around the people at the end of the bar. They are the pub’s character and they need no encouragement.

The money is in the middle: the couple who come twice a month, the group that turns up when someone remembers to organize it, the office that used to come on Fridays. These are people who like you and do not think about you very often, and a well-timed message is genuinely all that stands between two visits a month and four.

Your card gives you the one thing that makes this possible (knowing when someone last came) which is exactly what a paper stamp card never told you.

Signing people up

The bar at nine on a Saturday is the worst enrollment moment in hospitality. It is loud, everyone is holding something, and the staff have a queue.

Better moments:

The quiz. People are seated, waiting, and have their phones out already. Put the code on the answer sheet.
The table, or the garden. A small code on each table works all day without anyone having to mention it.
Food service. Anyone who has ordered a meal has a gap between ordering and eating, which is the same window a restaurant uses.
Sunday lunch. Slower, seated, family groups. The best single session of the week for sign-ups.

Lead with the reward, not the scheme (“sixth Sunday roast on us, scan here”) and keep the join form to a name. More on the placement and the wording in what to put next to the till.

What to watch

Midweek covers or wet sales, against the same weeks before you started. This is what the program is for.

Visit frequency among members, not member count. A regular going from twice to three times a month is the win; another hundred sign-ups who never return is not.

Redemption rate. Very low means the card is too long to feel worth carrying. Very high with flat midweek trade means you are rewarding Saturday, which you did not need to buy.

Frequently asked questions

Can we run a free-pint-on-the-tenth card at all? You can, and plenty do. Just be aware of what it is: a volume discount to your heaviest drinkers. A food or occasion reward gets you more visits for less margin, and avoids incentivizing something you should not.

What about a card for the food side only? A good option for a food-led pub, and easier to price. Sunday lunches or main meals only, which keeps the reward on your better margin.

Do we need a card if everyone knows everyone? The card is not there to help you recognize people. It is there so you can reach them on a Tuesday, which no amount of familiarity does.

Should the reward work on match days? Blocking your busiest sessions feels sensible and reads as mean. Push people toward midweek with a bonus for coming midweek rather than a restriction on coming Saturday.

Where to go next

The dining-room version of the same problem (filling the empty table without discounting the full one) is restaurant loyalty beyond the discount. For the fast-counter end of hospitality, see coffee shop loyalty ideas. The underlying decisions are in the complete guide.

Passumo runs the card in Apple and Google Wallet, with visit history per customer and push campaigns you can aim at the people who came for the quiz rather than everyone. There is a worked setup for pubs and bars.