Loyalty restaurant schemes in Italy: the rules, then the reward

A loyalty restaurant scheme is a promise that coming back is worth something. Getting the promise right is the easy half.

The hard half in Italy is that a scheme touches personal data, and the rules about that are specific, old and well enforced. Most schemes that quietly stop after four months stop for one of two reasons: the card was never carried, or nobody could legally send the message that would have brought the customer back.

This article deals with both, in that order, because a beautiful reward attached to an unusable list is a wasted year.

What the Garante actually says about fidelity cards

Italy's data protection authority set out its position on fidelity cards clearly, and three points from it shape any restaurant scheme.

Running the scheme itself does not need separate consent. The Garante treats the processing needed for loyalty in the narrow sense as necessary to perform the agreement the customer entered into.

Profiling and marketing do. Every other purpose, profiling and market research on one side and marketing on the other, needs specific, informed and separate consent for each, and the same document is explicit that joining the scheme cannot be made conditional on giving that consent.

There are limits on how long purchase detail may be kept. The Garante names twelve months for profiling and twenty-four months for marketing, counted from when the data was recorded.

Read plainly, that is a design brief. Ask for the card and the marketing tick separately. Let a customer collect stamps and refuse the messages. Do not build a scheme that only works if everybody says yes to everything, because a good share of people will not.

None of this is legal advice, and your commercialista or a privacy adviser should see your notice before you print anything. But knowing the shape in advance stops you designing something you then have to take apart.

The card nobody carries

Now the practical half.

The paper card fails for an ordinary reason. It lives in a wallet, gets soft, gets lost, and gets forgotten at the exact moment it would have been used. Staff forget the stamp. The customer is embarrassed to ask.

An app fails for a bigger reason. A person will not install an application for one trattoria. Asking them to is asking for a large favour in exchange for a small discount, and restaurant apps explains why that trade almost never works for an independent place.

The card that survives is the one already in the phone. Google's own documentation for loyalty cards describes issuing passes anywhere hyperlinks are supported, including websites, email and SMS messages, so a customer adds it by tapping a link rather than by downloading anything.

That is the difference between a scheme people join once and a scheme people use.

Then the mechanic has to be worth using

Three design choices decide whether a scheme changes behaviour or just gives a discount to people who were coming anyway.

What earns a stamp. Per visit is simple and rewards the person buying a coffee as much as the person buying dinner. Per euro spent is fairer and slower to feel. Stamps only on one dish is the sharpest of the three, because it moves the thing you want moved.

How far away the reward is. A reward at 10 stamps is a year away for a monthly customer and a fortnight away for a weekly one. Match it to how often your regulars actually come, not to a number that looks generous on a poster.

Whether it expires. A reward with no end date is never urgent and never used. One that ends is the reason somebody comes in this month.

A restaurant loyalty program covers the mechanics in more depth, and restaurant loyalty companies is worth reading before you sign with anyone, including us.

How ours is put together

Get Menu builds the scheme into the ordering itself, so nothing depends on a member of staff remembering.

Stamps accrue on their own. Per order, per euro spent, or only on the dish you choose. Nobody has to mark an order delivered for a stamp to count, which is where most systems lose their accuracy.

Tiers your regulars grow into. A customer who has passed a threshold gets an automatic discount every time, with no code to remember and nothing to ask for at the counter.

Rewards that end. You set an expiry, so the offer has a reason to be used, and a reward waiting to be claimed is shown on the card itself.

The card lives in the phone's wallet. A Google Wallet card that updates itself after every order, with no app to install. Apple Wallet is built and waiting on a certificate, so today it is Google only, and we would rather say that than let you find out later.

Joining happens where ordering happens. Your own ordering page carries the menu with 57 colour themes and a font picker behind it, and the card is offered at checkout rather than at a counter during a rush.

Ordering keeps the data honest. Every line is priced again from your live menu at checkout, counts fall per item so a sold-out dish greys itself out, and options and add-ons carry their own prices. A stamp counts against a real order, not a guess.

Messages are capped by design. A confirmation goes to the customer, a ticket to your kitchen group. Offers travel separately so they never delay an order, no customer receives more than the cap you set inside 7 days, and if two campaigns would reach the same person the second waits for you to approve it.

Offers with edges. Coupons carrying caps, exclusions and expiry dates, bundles at a fixed price, and a win-back for a regular who has gone quiet. Nothing stacks by accident, because the best single discount wins.

Records that fit the rules. A sales dashboard by day and item, an export to a spreadsheet on any day, the ability to erase a customer without losing the accounts, and old order details cleared automatically after 120 days.

"The scheme that worked best in our own testing was not the most generous one. It was the one where the customer could see how close they were without asking anybody. Distance you can see is what makes people order again."

— Tanzeel ur Rehman, co-founder of Get Menu

The parts we do not do

We are not a cash register, so a walk-in paying at the counter is not automatically stamped by us. Loyalty here follows an order placed through your own page or a table code.

There are no online payments. A customer pays cash or on your own card machine at the door or the table, which also means no card data exists in the system to be lost.

There is no scheduled ordering and no pre-order, and there is no collection order type. If a customer wants to book Saturday lunch on Thursday, that is still a phone call.

And we do not write your privacy notice or decide your consent wording. We give you separate switches so a customer can hold a card without agreeing to marketing, which is what the Garante's position asks for, and the wording is yours and your adviser's to settle.

A first month that proves something

Pick one reward and one earning rule. Not three.

Set the reward close enough that a normal regular reaches it inside a month, and give it an end date.

Offer the card at checkout and nowhere else at first, so you can see the join rate cleanly.

At the end of the month, count two things: how many customers hold a card, and how many of those ordered a second time. If the second number is not moving, change the distance to the reward before you change the reward itself.

The trial runs 15 days without card details and takes 0% of what you sell, which is long enough to get the cards out and see the first ones fill.

Frequently asked questions

Does a restaurant loyalty scheme need customer consent in Italy?

The Garante treats the loyalty processing itself as part of the agreement with the customer, while profiling and marketing each need their own specific consent. Joining cannot be made conditional on agreeing to marketing. Have your notice checked by an adviser.

Do customers need an app to hold the card?

No. The card is added from a link and lives in the Google Wallet already on the phone, updating itself after each order. Apple Wallet is built and waiting on a certificate.

Can I stamp a card for someone paying at the counter?

Not automatically. Stamps follow orders placed on your own page or through a table code. A counter sale runs through your register, which is a separate system.

How many stamps should a reward take?

Enough that a regular reaches it inside a month or so. Ten is a common number and it is wrong for a place people visit twice a year.

Can a customer be removed from the list?

Yes. A customer can be erased without breaking your accounts, and the detail of old orders is cleared automatically after 120 days.