Hello! Welcome to the underused blog! We’re making this post to share a few updates.
TLDR
- We’ve changed the point system to require 200 points before getting $5 off (that’s a 2.5% discount rather than 5%) and your points expire after 3 months.
- We’ve added a 2.5% packaging fee on all to-go orders that require our packaging, especially things in boxes or cups (if you’re just grabbing a cookie in a small bag we aren’t gonna add the fee).
Loyalty Program
In 2023, we introduced a fair wage surcharge of 20%. Several months later the government had a crackdown on “junk” fees intended to target service providers who sneakily add on fees to your bill. We were very straight forward about the fee even posting a blog with all of our financials in it. However, Square decided to do a sweeping compliance and made these kinds of surcharges unusable. We took it away, raised a few prices (not 20% across the board) and didn’t make a stink of it. At the same time as we introduced the original surcharge we introduced a loyalty program where every point is worth a dollar and 100 points got you $5 off. That’s a 5% discount and a really good deal. Our reasoning was that with the surcharge this would probably average out to about a 17%-ish revenue increase when everything was balanced.
After we took away the surcharge we didn’t change the loyalty program. Month after month we looked at the numbers and kept seeing this approximately $1,000 loss each month…from the loyalty program. After spending some time with that figure we recently decided to change the way the program works. Now 200 points ($200 spent) gets you $5 off. That’s a 2.5% discount rather than 5%. The goal of the loyalty program is to reward those who visit often so we’ve also opted to expire points after 3 months. We’ve always had restrictions on what items gain points but just to put them out there, no points can be earned on: whole cakes (regular or special order), dozens of cupcakes/minicupcakes, catering orders, wholesale orders, and items at the farmers market (again our goal is to reward loyalty to frequent cafe visitors).
Packaging Fee
Simultaneously we’ve found it necessary to add a 2.5% packaging fee to all to-go orders that require our packaging. If you bring your own cup/bag, cool! No fee! We’ve seen the cost of our cups & boxes increase to a point that we have to take some sort of step to mitigate the costs. If you’re just grabbing a cookie or a pastry in a single slip bag, we’re likely not going to charge you the fee as those are the cheapest of our packaging. We’ve also seen a large number of folks asking for things to-go then eating them here, which just doesn’t make sense and it doesn’t help us (or the environment!) in any way. We’re more than happy for you to use our dishes, that’s why we chose such pretty plates and cups!
We hope that these two changes kind of balance things out so that we don’t see a $1,000+ loss each month (as an idea of what $1,000 gets us in this business, our MLGW/utility bill for August was $1,036).