The days of the traditional Dine-To-Donates are DONE! They don’t work for either party, the restaurant or the charity. In 2014 these were a novel event that would drive massive traffic to a restaurant through the charity, but that’s when very few restaurants and charities were doing them. Now, every restaurant in town has one every night and charities are doign them all the time as well.
So what’s the solution, to me it’s a LONG TERM donation campaign that helps restaurants gain new customers and drive repeat visits from those customers, not one that donated to a charity just because their regulars come in for their normal visits. And for the charity, they should be rewarded to introducing new customers to the restaurant and they should also benefit from the future sales of those customers.
In November 2023 we purchased Repeat Returns, known in the industry as a Restaurant Loyalty Program. But what we found over the next few months was that Repeat Returns was WAY MORE than that. One program I saw that wasn’t being used by enough restaurants was their Community Connections program. This was a charitable marketing platform built 100% for restaurants and WOW the results were insane for the restaurants using it.
The image above are the results for one year from April 2023 through April 2024. This shows the 19 charities that had signed up for the program and their results. These 20 charities drove 7,694 new members to the restaurants loyalty program. Those new loyalty members would visit 14,198 and spend $283,687 in sales to the restaurant all while donating back $8,500 to the non-profits.
FIRST lets discuss some of my issues I’ve had with charitable programs restaurants have done in the past.
1st – Charities do too many fundraisers per month and don’t OWN many of them. If they are doing 5 dine-to-donates per month, they are looking at the global results, not your restaurants results. So many times very few people show up. Which doesn’t really hurt your restaurant since you were already open, but it’s certainly disappointing to see a night you’d hope would do we, flop.
2nd – Telling people what night they have to visit a restaurant is tough. I know this from being a parent of athletes. I missed 75% of the dine-2-donates due to having prior obligations.
3rd – We’ve found charities standing out front of the restaurant and passing out their flier to every customer that walks into the restaurant. So now they are getting credit for all of my customers, and that’s not fair.
These 3 reasons are why I really like the Community Connection program offered by Repeat Returns. The program gives the charity a unique link for their supporters to use to join the loyalty program. If they are already a member, it doesn’t count, but if they are new, BINGO! Then you set the parameters. The example shown here allows them to earn 3% from every dollar spent from these members and they don’t put a timeline on it. The donations added up when these new members spend money. Now you can change the % donated and you can alter dates, it’s all up to the restaurant.
One thing to keep in mind, not every non-profit is created equal. As you’ll see below, the results will vary. Some drive a lot of new members, some very few. Some drive a lot of repeat visits, some very few. The image below are the stats for the past 12 months.
Another thing to keep in mind is that not all “new members” are going to come in and come in often, just like any customer acquisition funnel your restaurant has. In the example below there are 320 new loyalty club members for this restaurant from one charity. But only about 150 of those customers are repeat visitors and under 100 were hardcore loyal customers. But the results speak for themselves. 828 new customer visits and $17,082 in sales. That’s HUGE and when you find 20-30 non-profits to help like this restaurant did, then you’ve struck gold!
The final point today is to supply these non-profits with the right assets. If I was you, I’d create custom graphics with them and help them understand how to market this partnership. And I’d also have a page on my website dedicated to the overall program and each non-profit. You should even do this inside your restaurant and frequently share the posts the non-profit makes, but not only the ones about your program. Actually share their normal posts about the great work they are doing.
I also cover this topic on my daily podcast, Restaurant Marketing Secrets, in episode 607…have a listen CLICK HERE!
