How Much Does a Loyalty Program Cost for a Café? Full Breakdown + ROI

If you're running a café and considering a loyalty programme, the first question is usually: what's this going to cost me?

It's a fair question — especially when margins are tight and every monthly expense needs to justify itself. The good news is that café loyalty programmes are among the most affordable marketing tools available, and the return on investment is easier to calculate than almost any other business expense.

This guide breaks down the actual costs of running a loyalty programme for a café at every level — from free paper cards to digital platforms to enterprise systems. More importantly, it shows you the revenue maths, so you can see exactly when the programme pays for itself and how much it generates beyond that.

The Four Options (And What Each One Really Costs)

Option 1: Paper punch cards

Cost: £30–80 to get started, then ongoing printing costs.

The simplest option. Design a card (free using Canva, or £50–200 for a freelance designer), print a batch (1,000–2,000 cards for £30–60 through an online printer), and hand them out at the counter. Staff punch or stamp the card at each visit.

What you get: A physical card that customers carry in their wallet. Basic reward mechanic (buy X, get one free). No technology required.

What you don't get: Any customer data. Any way to communicate with customers between visits. Any analytics on visit frequency, redemption rates, or customer behaviour. No way to send birthday rewards, push notifications, or lapsed-customer reminders. No referral system. No Google Review integration.

The hidden costs: Cards get lost, forgotten, or left at home — and when that happens, the customer's progress resets and their motivation disappears. Staff time spent stamping cards, replacing lost ones, and explaining the programme to confused customers adds up. Fraud (self-stamping) is trivially easy. When you add up printing, replacement, staff time, and lost customer motivation, the true cost of paper versus digital loyalty systems is significantly higher than most café owners realise. And you have zero visibility into whether the programme is actually working because there's no data.

Best for: Cafés testing the concept with zero budget, or businesses where technology adoption is a genuine barrier for the customer base.

Option 2: Digital loyalty card platform

Cost: £15–60 per month, typically with a free trial and no setup fees.

A digital loyalty platform replaces paper cards with a card that lives in the customer's Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. Customers sign up by scanning a QR code, and staff scan the digital card at each visit using a phone or tablet app.

Perkstar plans for cafés start at £15 per month — which includes a digital stamp card, unlimited push notifications, automated rewards, customer analytics, and the scanner app. Higher tiers (£30–60/month) add features like multiple card types, referral programmes, Google Review Rewards, and advanced segmentation.

What you get: Everything paper cards offer, plus: customer contact information, push notifications to drive visits, automated birthday and lapsed-customer rewards, visit frequency data, redemption tracking, referral programmes, Google Review Rewards, and a communication channel you own and control.

What you don't get at this price point: Custom app development, POS integration (though manual scanning is fast enough for virtually all cafés), or enterprise-level analytics dashboards.

The real cost calculation: £15 per month is 50p per day. If your loyalty programme generates even one additional visit per day (one customer who comes in because of a push notification, a reward reminder, or stamp card progress), the programme has paid for itself before lunch. At an average transaction of £4, that's £120 per month in additional revenue from a £15 investment.

Best for: The vast majority of independent cafés. This is the price-to-value sweet spot — professional loyalty infrastructure at a fraction of what chains pay.

Option 3: POS-integrated loyalty

Cost: £50–500 per month per device, plus potential setup fees.

Some POS systems (Square, Lightspeed, Toast, etc.) offer loyalty modules that integrate directly with your till system. The advantage is that stamps or points are awarded automatically when a transaction is processed — no separate scan required.

What you get: Seamless earn mechanics tied to actual purchases. Transaction-level data. Integration with your existing workflow.

What you don't get (often): The POS loyalty module is typically a simplified add-on, not a dedicated loyalty platform. Push notifications may be limited or absent. Referral programmes, Google Review Rewards, and advanced segmentation are often missing. The loyalty features serve the POS system's needs, not necessarily yours.

The cost comparison: A POS loyalty module at £100/month provides fewer loyalty-specific features than a dedicated platform at £15–30/month. The main advantage — automated earn at the till — saves a few seconds per transaction but doesn't justify a five to ten times price premium for most cafés.

Best for: Cafés already using a POS system with a strong built-in loyalty module, where the marginal cost of adding loyalty is low and the integration convenience matters more than advanced features.

Option 4: Enterprise and custom solutions

Cost: £10,000–500,000+ to build, plus £1,500–15,000+ per month ongoing.

Custom-built loyalty platforms designed for café chains and franchises with hundreds of locations. Fully branded apps, deep POS integration, advanced analytics, and bespoke features.

What you get: Complete customisation, proprietary technology, and features tailored to complex multi-location operations.

What you don't get: Any relevance to a single-location or small-chain café. The investment only makes sense at significant scale.

Best for: Large chains with substantial budgets and complex operational requirements. If you're reading this article, this almost certainly isn't you — and that's fine, because a £15/month platform will outperform a £150,000 custom build for a single-location café. For a broader view of how these enterprise costs compare to what businesses at every level actually pay, a full loyalty programme pricing breakdown across all tiers puts these numbers in context.

The Cost That Actually Matters: Your Rewards

The platform subscription is one cost. The rewards you give away are another — and for most cafés, the rewards cost is actually lower than you'd expect. Choosing the right reward structure matters as much as the cost itself — innovative loyalty reward ideas can drive higher redemption rates without increasing your per-reward expense.

Worked example: stamp card programme

Setup: 8-stamp card, reward is a free coffee.

Average coffee price: £3.50

Cost of a free coffee to make: approximately 40p (milk, coffee, cup, lid)

Revenue per reward cycle: 8 × £3.50 = £28

Reward cost: £0.40

Reward as a percentage of cycle revenue: 1.4%

That's your total reward cost — under 2% of the revenue generated. Even if you use the retail price as the reward cost (£3.50), it's still only 12.5% of cycle revenue, which is well within sustainable range.

For most cafés, the rewards cost is the least significant expense in the programme. The platform subscription and the staff time to promote it matter more — and both are minimal.

What about the time cost?

Staff time is a real cost, and worth acknowledging honestly.

Sign-ups: 20–30 seconds per customer (QR code scan, quick form, card saved to wallet). Over a full day with 10 sign-ups, that's about 5 minutes.

Scanning: 2–3 seconds per transaction. Negligible, even during peak hours.

Push notifications: 5 minutes to compose and send. Done once or twice per week.

Programme management: 15–20 minutes per week for reviewing analytics, adjusting promotions, and checking performance.

Total weekly time investment: approximately 30 minutes. For context, that's less time than most café owners spend on a single social media post.

The ROI Calculation: When Does a Café Loyalty Programme Pay for Itself?

This is the question that matters more than the cost question. Not "how much does it cost?" but "how quickly does it make more than it costs?"

Let's run the maths for a typical independent café.

Monthly platform cost: £15

Average daily customers: 80

Loyalty sign-up rate: 30% of customers join over the first three months (conservative estimate with staff actively asking)

Loyalty members after three months: approximately 200

Average visit frequency increase for loyalty members: 15% (one additional visit per month for customers who previously visited six to seven times)

Additional monthly visits attributable to the programme: 200 members × 0.15 additional visits = 30 extra visits

Average transaction value: £4.50

Additional monthly revenue: 30 × £4.50 = £135

Monthly programme cost: £15 (platform) + approximately £5 (rewards given) = £20

Monthly profit from programme: £135 − £20 = £115

ROI: 575%

Break-even point: The programme pays for itself within the first week of the first month. By the end of month three, it's generating over £100 per month in net additional revenue — and the membership base is still growing.

These numbers are conservative. Cafés with higher foot traffic, stronger staff engagement, or more active push notification strategies typically see higher returns. And the calculation doesn't include the value of Google reviews generated through the programme, referral-acquired customers, or the long-term retention impact of birthday and milestone rewards.

Real-World Example: A Café's First-Year Loyalty Economics

An independent café with two staff members and approximately 100 daily customers launches a Perkstar loyalty programme.

Month 1: £15 platform cost. 65 customers sign up. Staff ask at every transaction. Push notifications not yet configured. The programme is in "build mode" — accumulating members.

Month 2: 140 total members. First push notification sent: "Double stamps today — perfect excuse for a midweek coffee." Noticeable uptick in Wednesday visits (normally the quietest day). Birthday automations activated. Revenue impact beginning to show.

Month 3: 200 total members. First reward redemptions happen — 18 customers claim their free coffee. Each one buys something alongside it (a pastry, a second drink for a friend). The redemption visits generate an average of £3.20 in additional spending beyond the free item. Lapsed-customer notifications trigger for 12 members who haven't visited in 21 days — 5 return within the week.

Month 6: 310 members. Visit frequency among members is measurably higher than non-members. Google Review Rewards enabled — reviews increase from one per month to four. The referral programme brings in 8 new customers at zero advertising cost. The café has spent £90 on the platform and an estimated £40 in reward costs over six months. Conservative estimate of additional revenue generated: £800+. When you calculate that a single loyal café customer spending £4.50 per visit three times a week generates over £700 annually, the true lifetime value of a loyal customer puts the programme's £180 annual cost into perspective.

Month 12: 420 members. The programme is now the café's primary marketing activity — more effective than social media, more cost-efficient than any advertising, and running largely on autopilot (automations handle birthday rewards, lapsed reminders, and reward alerts). Annual platform cost: £180. Annual reward cost: approximately £100. Additional revenue attributable to the programme: conservatively £2,000+.

The café invested £280 over the year and generated over £2,000 in additional revenue. No other marketing channel available to a small café comes close to that return.

Modern Take: Why Loyalty Programme Costs Matter Differently in 2026

During a cost of living crisis, every business expense faces scrutiny. "Can we afford a loyalty programme?" is a reasonable question when margins are compressed and costs are rising across the board.

But the better question is: "Can we afford not to have one?"

Without a loyalty programme, your café has no structured way to bring customers back, no communication channel between visits, no system for generating Google reviews, and no referral mechanism. You're relying entirely on product quality and location to retain customers — which are necessary but insufficient when every café on the street is serving decent coffee.

At £15 per month, a digital loyalty programme is cheaper than a single day's worth of Instagram advertising, a quarter of the cost of a local newspaper ad, and less than you spend on takeaway cups in a week. If it generates even three additional visits per week — three customers who came because of a push notification, a reward reminder, or stamp card progress — it's returned its monthly cost several times over. For a more granular look at how these numbers have shifted over the past year — including updated platform pricing and revised ROI benchmarks — the 2026 café loyalty programme pricing guide covers the latest figures.

The question isn't whether you can afford it. It's whether the £15 is better spent here or somewhere else. For most cafés, there's no marketing investment that produces a comparable return.

Getting Started

A café loyalty programme costs less than most business owners expect and generates more than most business owners hope. The combination of a low platform cost, minimal reward expenses, and high per-visit revenue makes it one of the most favourable ROI calculations in small business marketing.

Perkstar starts at £15 per month with a free 14-day trial and no credit card required. You get digital loyalty cards in Apple and Google Wallet, unlimited push notifications, automated rewards, a scanner app, customer analytics, and everything you need to launch a programme that pays for itself within weeks. No setup fees. No contracts. No minimum commitment.

Start your free 14-day trial →