Warriors- Let's Brainstorm and Make Some Cash.

Also... I plan on working with a local facility that helps kids with substance abuse problems by donating a percentage of all profits from my discount cards. I'm excited about being able to give back to the community, and feel that respectfully advertising this fact will increase sales.
Any feedback on the idea expressed above?

Interesting idea about getting return visits. You could also modify it a bit and make it a free "club" that gets 10% off each time that person comes in.

Instead of tying the discount to the number of visits, it might work better if it is tied to the number of people in the party. That might help to get more people coming back.

And of course a "club" gives a reason to collect their email to keep members updated of new menu items, specials, etc.

Marvin

I don't know the model you are discussing. However, if you want to spend a little time researching you may be able to get some data to help. There is a company that recently started similar to Groupon, but their model is similar to what you are describing. I think they get a bigger cut of the sale from the merchant each time someone comes back with their coupon. I can't remember the name, but I read an article online, so there was some buzz about it when the launched, so you can probably find them with some searching. Might be some tips to help you if you read some articles about what they are doing.

I think your problem with that one is in the #s and rate of growth. when you bring someone all the way up to a 30% discount, they're going to enjoy that. if you take that away, all of a sudden they need to make a rational value decision about whether or not its worth the $$.

if you want to make something that works, it needs to be steady and intelligently placed.

for example, what's their slowest day of the week? most businesses, especially in the food industry, will lose more money on their slower days than it would appear based on the cost of running equipment - like a pizza oven for example. the price of those is often like having another employee on the clock.

the sweet spot is in giving them an incentive to MAKE THE TRIP to the store, get their food, and then let the quality of the business and service be enough to make them come back. if you just throw a discount in their face, it's not going to generate customers, and if you throw free stuff at them, the resulting sales spike can be a little deceptive in terms of its long term results.


i've got 5 years of restaurant experience (pizza, various positions as well as family connections to management, supervision & ownership for a large franchise chain of 10+ stores), and i have never seen any kind of discounts like that work. %'s are difficult to deal with and they don't tell the customer very much about the realistic amount of money that they'll save.

i gotta stop myself before this post turns into a book...anyways. look into chik-fil-a's marketing approach, it's massively successful. they basically throw free stuff at their customers all the time, with very little warning time or promotions. their customers become free viral advertising for them.


if you can successfully manage the text approach, you're in business. think of it like managing a list, but being a 3rd party individual that does it. Let the business owners have power over AWESOME deals that only select customers get if they have the text (they can either mention the text ad or show the text ad, depending on how strict the owners wanna be). business owners love this because they're in control of the costs, and can use this to avoid problem areas (low traffic days, avoid food expiration. various other reasons but those are the big 2)

think of it like a viral text agent - you manage & grow the list as a private agent. they let you know when to run the deals, you optimize the text delivery. they need to be great deals though or you're only going to piss people off and lose your list faster than you gain it. it's not easy to start, but once the ball is rolling it's pretty easy money.

if you have any other questions you can PM me or ask in thread.