A loyalty program is a discount you agree to give later, in exchange for the customer coming back. That is the whole mechanism. Everything else — cards, stamps, apps, points — is bookkeeping on top of that one trade.

Getting the trade right matters more than the tooling. A program that gives away too much turns your regulars into discount buyers. One that gives away too little is ignored, and you have spent effort building something nobody uses.

What it actually costs you

There are two separate costs, and they are easy to confuse.

The first is the cost of the reward. If a customer redeems a ₱50 item, you provide that item. Your real cost is what it cost you to make or buy it, not its shelf price. For a food business that is often 30–40% of the menu price; for retail it can be far higher.

The second is the cost of the system — the app, the card printing, the terminal, the monthly fee. This is the one to watch, because it is charged whether or not the program works.

On Suki the second cost is zero. The loyalty programme carries no commission and no fee, and you set the earning rate yourself. You bear the cost of the reward when a customer redeems, and Suki does not reimburse it. That is the trade stated plainly: the programme is free, and you fund the reward that brings the customer back.

Setting an earning rate you can live with

The instinct is to pick a round number and move on. Work it backwards instead.

Decide what a returning customer is worth. If your average order is ₱250 and your margin is 35%, a repeat visit is worth roughly ₱87 in gross profit. If a reward costs you ₱30 and brings back even one visit that would not otherwise have happened, it paid for itself.

Then decide how many visits should earn a reward. Somewhere between five and ten is the usual range. Fewer than five and the reward arrives before loyalty has formed. More than ten and most customers never reach it, which is worse than having no program: they have been told there is a prize and then found it out of reach.

From those two numbers the rate falls out. Ten visits at ₱250 is ₱2,500 of spend for one ₱30 reward — a little over 1%. That is a sane place to start.

Start conservative. Raising an earning rate is a promotion. Lowering one is a broken promise, and customers notice immediately.

Why points should stay with the business that gave them

A shared points pool — earn anywhere, spend anywhere — sounds better to customers and is usually worse for the businesses funding it. Points earned at a busy restaurant get redeemed at a quiet bakery, and the bakery absorbs a cost for a customer the restaurant won.

Keeping points tied to the business that issued them means the reward you fund brings the customer back to you. It is the difference between a loyalty program and a subsidy for your neighbours.

That is how Suki works: points earned at a business are redeemable at that business, against products the owner chooses to make redeemable.

When loyalty is the wrong tool

Be honest about the diagnosis before reaching for the treatment.

• Nobody comes the first time. Loyalty rewards repeat custom. It cannot create first visits. Fix visibility, pricing, or the product first.
• People come once and do not return because the experience was poor. A points balance will not outweigh a bad meal or a rude counter. Loyalty amplifies a good experience; it cannot substitute for one.
• Your margin is genuinely thin. At 10% margin, a 5% loyalty rate consumes half your profit on every repeat sale. Either raise the rate you charge or keep the program symbolic.

Loyalty works when customers are already reasonably happy and simply have no particular reason to choose you over the equally fine option next door. That is a common situation, and it is exactly the one points solve.

Making it survive contact with real customers

A program dies from friction more often than from bad economics.

The customer must be able to see their balance without asking. If checking requires the staff to look something up, most people stop checking, and a balance nobody looks at motivates nobody.

Staff have to understand it in one sentence. If your counter staff cannot explain the program while bagging an order, customers will not learn it either.

Redemption must be easy on the busiest day. Any process that works at 2pm on a Tuesday and collapses at 7pm on a Friday will be quietly abandoned by your own team.

Expiry should be generous and stated up front. Points that vanish without warning generate more resentment than the program generated goodwill. On Suki, points expire after 12 months of inactivity at that business — long enough to be fair, defined enough to stop an unbounded liability accumulating on your books.

A reasonable first ninety days

1. Weeks 1–2. Pick a conservative rate. Choose two or three redeemable items with known, comfortable margins. Tell your staff. 2. Weeks 3–8. Mention it at the counter on every order. This is the part most businesses skip, and it is the part that determines whether the program exists. 3. Weeks 9–12. Look at how many customers earned, how many redeemed, and whether repeat visits moved at all. If nobody redeemed, the reward is too far away. If everybody redeemed immediately, it is too close.

Then adjust once, and leave it alone long enough to learn something.

Getting started on Suki

Registration happens in the Suki Business app or at the business console. Your account begins as pending — orders cannot be received until the business is verified and approved, so have your registration or permit details ready, since that is what verification checks.

The loyalty programme, catalogue, point-of-sale, receipts and reports carry no commission. Commission applies only to orders paid online through the platform, currently 0% on the item subtotal. Walk-in and cash-on-delivery orders carry none at all.