A restaurant loyalty programme in 2026: what to reward, what it costs and how to run it without a notebook

A returning guest costs nothing; a guest from a booking portal is paid for on every visit. How to set up a loyalty programme you can measure: which rewards make sense, what does not pay off, what it costs.

A restaurant that depends on booking portals pays for every arrival. TheFork and OpenTable charge per seated guest, so the same family that visits six times a year is paid for six times. A guest who returns on their own, because they know someone in your restaurant recognises them, costs nothing. A loyalty programme is the tool that makes that return measurable and encourages it, and in 2026 it no longer needs a cardboard stamp card to work.

What a loyalty programme actually measures

A loyalty programme is not a discount. It is a record of three facts about every guest: how many times they have visited, how much they have spent in total and what their average bill per visit is. Only once those three numbers exist does a reward make sense, because you know who you are giving it to and how much that guest has brought in so far.

In the jelo.hr system that record builds itself. Every reservation opens a guest profile, every further visit raises the visit count, and the system adds up spending and calculates the average per visit. On that basis it sorts guests into three groups: new, regular and VIP. The owner enters nothing by hand; the list of guests with visit counts and basic preferences is available in the regular guests overview.

Which rewards pay off

From the practice of restaurants that run rewards through the system, the ones that work best are tied to a concrete threshold rather than a percentage off the whole bill:

A reward after a set number of visits. The example jelo.hr offers as a default rule: a free dessert after the fifth visit. The guest has to come five times to get it, and the restaurant gives it once.
A reward after a total spending threshold. A bottle of wine or an aperitif once the guest passes an amount you define yourself. This targets guests who come less often but spend more.
Priority when booking. For guests in the VIP group, hold the window table or the Saturday 8 p.m. slot. It costs nothing and is remembered the longest.

The dessert arithmetic: if the dessert is 6 € on the menu and the ingredients in it cost 2 €, the reward for a guest who has booked a table five times costs you 2 €. Compare that with a portal that charges for each of those five visits separately.

What to avoid: 10 % off every bill for regulars. Such a discount does not depend on the guest's behaviour, the guest soon starts to treat it as the price, and the margin on the whole bill drops every time. A reward has to be something the guest receives, not something they do not pay.

Stamp card versus system

A cardboard card has three flaws. The guest leaves it at home, the waiter on shift does not know how many stamps the guest has, and at the end of the month the owner has no idea how many cards are in circulation at all. That is why a paper loyalty programme in most restaurants quietly dies after its first season.

When the system runs the programme, the rule is set once and rewards are granted automatically according to it. Guest and staff both see the available rewards in the guest profile, so the waiter knows the guest at table 7 is due a dessert before the guest asks anything. Details on rules and thresholds are on the loyalty programme page.

The guest profile is created from the reservation; staff see the visit count and notes before the guest sits down.

What it costs

Guest records and rewards are part of the jelo.hr Pro plan, which costs 59 € a month. The Start plan at 29 € a month covers the website, online reservations and a basic table layout, but not guest records. On top of that there is a one-off activation of 99 €, which includes system setup, the website, reservation configuration and e-mail notifications. There is no fee per guest or per reservation, the subscription runs for a minimum of six months, and for the first seven days all Pro features work free of charge and without a card.

For comparison: Eat App, a system that offers a guest database alongside reservations, charges 69 $ a month for its cheapest Lite plan when paid yearly, or 99 $ paid monthly (restaurant.eatapp.co/pricing, September 2026). DISH Professional Reservation costs 25 € a month excluding VAT plus a one-off fee of 50 € (dish.co, September 2026) and covers reservations.

How to start within a week

Set one rule, not five. A dessert after the fifth visit is enough to begin with; the rule can be changed later without reprinting anything.
Switch on automatic notifications: the booking confirmation and a reminder the day before. A guest who receives a reminder forgets less often, and every visit that happens goes into the record.
Tell your staff where to look. In the Pro+ plan (79 € a month) staff have their own access on a tablet and see rewards in the guest profile without entering the admin area.
After three months, open the VIP list. Those are the people you invite to taste the new menu, rather than everyone on Instagram.

Prices for all plans and what each includes are on the pricing page. If you would like to see how a loyalty programme would look with your guests and your menu, get in touch via the contact page.