It’s amazing how the world begins to change through the eyes of a cup of coffee.– Unknown.


Your food is delicious and your coffee is good, but your cafe/coffee shop is a bit out of the way. If you’re disappointed that your cafe is not continuously flooded with customers sampling your food and drinking your coffee, then don’t despair, there is another way and it’s pretty much free.

You may also be in a situation where a lot of the cafes around you are doing similar food and coffee for a similar price, so how do you make your cafe/coffee shop the one that people are going to choose? 

Suggestions on how to get customers returning to your cafe/coffee shop

  1. Loyalty cards. Retaining 5% of your customers can boost your profits as much as 95%. Rather than focusing on attracting new customers, you can focus on existing customers by keeping them coming back. But instead of making every 10th coffee free, how ‘bout making every 6th coffee free to give customers even more of an incentive to return? 

      Loyalty cards build trust and increase customer life time value. 

2. Partner with an app so customers can order their coffee online. A large number of commuters look for places where they can order and pick-up their morning caffeine hit. If your loyalty program and mobile payment technology is working in tandem, your will attract more customers.

3. Serve an ‘organic’ coffee brand. Organic coffee where the bean is being produced sustainably and is good for the environment, good for the habitat of animals, good for us and the people producing it are what can form part of the decision making process for consumers with a conscience. People are now better informed than they used to be and the message is getting through, so make the switch.

4. Perfect your coffee. If your coffee is good it will keep the customers coming back. If it’s not great they may not return. If you’re serving barista made coffee in the form of cappuccino, latte, mocha chino, espresso (there are many variants) then learn how to make it correctly and price it accordingly.

But other options for your customers may also attract them, like very good filter coffee also priced accordingly. Consumers are now better informed and want to be seen as ‘doing the right thing.’

Showing that you are a cafe/coffee shop with a conscience lets people know that their patronage of your cafe has a ‘buy right’ attitude and that their purchase may indirectly support sustainable and ethical causes. Such as not offering food products that contain palm oil or showing your support for: Sustainable Gastronomy Day

6.  Getting behind ethical causes and being seen as ‘doing the right thing’ may also extend to:

       a. Making ‘equality a reality’ by becoming a partner cafe of 5050 Cafe Friends. This is a matter of exchanging links so that your cafe is added to the support link carousel and is seen to be supporting equality. 

       b. Adding your cafe’s website URL to the listing form when you list your cafe at 5050 Cafe Friends. Your cafe’s URL will then appear on all 5050 Coffee invites sent out when their customers go to select: ‘A Cafe Near You’.

In order to support equality when you list your cafe you must agree to the 5050 Protocol:

UNICEF says gender equality ‘means that women and men, and girls and boys, enjoy the same rights, resources, opportunities and protections. It does not require that girls and boys, or women and men be the same, or that they be treated exactly alike.’

The 5050 Protocol the principle behind 5050 Cafe Friends is about gender equity (paying for your own coffee) which builds a foundation for the possibility of an enduring relationship founded on mutual respect and gender equality which is about ‘being equal’ but is not about being the same. It’s about rights, responsibilities and opportunities being equal for everyone regardless of whether they were born male or female.

7.   Stay connected. Ensure your cafe offers safe wi-fi so your customers can access the internet securely. This means they’ll be able to work from your cafe, hold meetings at your cafe, catch up with friends or just check their social media accounts online.

Be Chosen

If you would like your cafe to stand apart from other cafes in your area, you can do this by creating a stand-out listing at 5050 Cafe Friends. It’s completely free to list your cafe and will take about 5 minutes of your time. By updating your listing with offering your cafe’s Deal of the Day you will go to the top of search results in your area. People who join as Cafe Friends will then be able to select your cafe to invite someone for 5050 Coffee.

With a free listing at 5050 Cafe Friends you can also add WOO (What’s On Offer) icons to your listing which can show that you serve organic coffee or that you offer free wi-fi there are over 13 to choose from.

You can also become a partner cafe by exchanging links with 5050 Cafe Friends which will drive your customers to select your cafe to invite a friend to, while also driving cafe friends to your cafe.

If you return to suggestion1. at the beginning of this article re: loyalty cards, you can apply the same principle of customer retention and ‘Be Chosen’ by giving away Clever Cookies with every take out or dine in coffee which will return customers your cafe. 

How To Get More Customers For Free!

If you’re combining technology with real world ‘know-how’ it is likely that you’re using technology in a way that it was meant to used – to help us!

At 5050 Cafe Friends they’re supplying the technology, all you have to do is use it and apply real-world ‘know-how’. 

You can get your cafe brimming with customers in two simple steps:

1/  List your cafe (for free) with 5050 Cafe Friends by joining as a cafe.

2/  Print out, giveaway, share, or display Clever Cookies (the more the merrier) so that more people can know about meeting people who share common interests at your cafe.

Here’s the process in a little more depth:

You can start your own cafe marketing campaign for free if you follow the below guide:

1/ Head on over to 5050cafefriends.com and select the option ‘Join as a Cafe’ and start your cafe’s listing (it’s free to do this).

a   You will be asked some rudimentaries as well as to agree with the 5050 Protocol which supports gender equality and to agree with complying with covid 19 requirements for your cafe in your country.

b    Complete all fields such as: 

      Upload a food photo

      Add a description

      Add a Deal of the Day

      Add your website’s URL (if you have one)

      Add WOO (What’s On Offer) icons for your cafe

 c   Lastly, as a way of saying: ‘Thank you’ and to increase customers to your website and to increase customers to the 5050 Cafe Friends website they encourage you to exchange links.

You will have already entered yours on the listing form, but if you haven’t, you can go back and log in and edit and add your URL. 

They will then request that you ‘copy ’n paste some code onto the appropriate page onto your website if you have one. This will help drive traffic to your website as well as to theirs. 

2/    When you list your cafe, you will also see an option for printing out Clever Cookies. 

Clever Cookies promote the free trial at the 5050 Cafe Friends website for Cafe Friends.

(Simply put, Cafe Friends are people who join the website and then invite people for to a cafe for 5050 Coffee). Clever Cookies also promote the free listing for cafes (which should not be confused with the cafe friends listing). They also contain a qr code that when scanned takes you directly to the website. 

There are some options for giving away Clever Cookies which include:

  a/ A business card sized printable option which can be given away with every dine-in or take-out coffee.

  b/ An A4 sized sheet of Clever Cookies which can be cut out by your staff and given away.

  c/ An A5 sized option where you need only print one to display on your counter or in the window of your cafe.

Or a share option which you can add to your facebook page or send to a friend. 

Every time you log in either as a Cafe Friend or as a Cafe you can view the options for sharing or skip. 

The cycle goes from Clever Cookie > Customer > 5050 Cafe Friends website > Your Cafe > Clever Cookie 

5050 Cafe Friends Free Trial

If you’ve listed your cafe for free, you may also like to experience what a cafe friend experiences by taking up the free trial on offer. This way, you’ll know first hand how your customers get to know about your cafe via the listing you create.

When you giveaway, share or display a Clever Cookie and take up the free trial at 5050 Cafe Friends you’ll have access to some great features such as:

Marketing your cafe shouldn’t have to be expensive. By letting your customers know about 5050 Cafe Friends and by making sure your cafe has secure wi-fi (so they can join the internet and access the website easily), you should be able to give away, share or display enough Clever Cookies to start getting customers returning to your cafe and bringing a friend or bringing friends. Remember the magic formula, retaining just 5% of your customers can boost your profits by 95% so a handful of people that can find like-minded friends who share their interests who would like to continue the conversation by meeting up your cafe for 5050 Coffee can make your cafe a hub and a place for people to meet. 

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