Your first 100 regulars: how to get customers for a new café

#What 100 regulars is worth

A regular is someone who comes in most weeks, whose order you could start when they walk through the door, and whose absence you would notice. They are the base a café lives on.

The arithmetic is worth doing once. Say 100 regulars each come in three times a week and spend $8.

Your numbers will differ, but the shape won't: a modest group of loyal locals is a large share of a small café's takings, and it's steadier than passing trade.

Regulars don't happen by chance. Every one of them was a first-time customer who came back a second time, then a third. If, for example, one in five first-timers became a regular, 100 regulars would take around 500 first visits. Nobody can tell you your own rate in advance, but you can measure it, and every section below either brings in first visits or turns more of them into second ones.

#Before you open: get found and get known

The weeks before opening are when you have the most time and the least to show. Use them to make sure people know you're coming. (If you're still at the planning stage, start with how to start a café in Australia.)

Set up your Google Business Profile early. Google lets a new business add an opening date up to a year ahead. Once you've entered the date and verified the business, your profile shows on Google 90 days before that date, and you can post updates and add photos and a description in that window. Google's advice is to set the opening date before you verify, so you don't appear to be open already. Add your hours, menu and photos of the space as it comes together. Our Google Business Profile guide for cafés covers every setting worth getting right.

Start Instagram during the fit-out. People love watching a place come together: the machine arriving, the first test shots, the counter going in, the team. Post your opening date, use the same name as your sign, and put your address in the profile. You aren't chasing followers. You're giving locals a reason to look forward to you. There's more in Instagram for cafés.

Join the local community groups. Most suburbs have Facebook groups and community noticeboards. Read each group's rules first, since many limit business posts to certain days. Introduce yourself once, as a neighbour rather than an advertiser, and answer questions when they come up.

Walk the street. Introduce yourself to the shop owners next door and across the road. They will send you customers if they like you, and they can tell you which hours the street is busy.

Visit the workplaces nearby. Offices, medical centres, schools, gyms, building sites and the council depot are full of people who need coffee at the same time every day. Drop in with a menu, ask who organises the coffee run, and offer to take group orders by phone or message so they're ready on arrival.

#Soft opening and opening week

Run a soft opening. One to three invite-only sessions before the public opening let your team practise on real people. Invite the neighbours, the workplaces you visited and some friends. Keep the menu short. Free or discounted food and coffee is fine here, as long as nothing is offered in return for a review (more on that below). Ask for honest feedback in person or on a card, and act on it.

Staff opening week generously. A busy opening week brings curious first-timers, and what they remember is whether the coffee was good and the wait was reasonable. Roster more people than you think you need, keep the menu tight, and be on the floor yourself.

Be careful with big opening discounts. A modest, time-limited opening offer can bring people in. A deep discount tends to bring people who came for the deal, and your normal price can then feel like a price rise. Most first-timers would rather a great coffee at a fair price.

Start collecting from day one. Hand out your loyalty card from the first day, and if you plan to email or text customers, have a simple sign-up with a tick box ready. Opening week is when the most new faces come through, so it's the worst week to miss.

Watch weeks two to six. Opening week tells you how many people were curious. The weeks after tell you how many came back, which is the number that matters.

#Get your first reviews honestly

Reviews on your Google Business Profile are one of the first things a stranger sees when they search for a café nearby. A new café with three reviews looks riskier than one with thirty, so it's worth asking from the start. The rules are strict, and breaking them can get reviews removed.

Get your review link and QR code. Google lets businesses ask customers to visit a Google link or scan a QR code to leave a review. Customers need to be signed in to a Google Account to post one.

Ask everyone, the same way. A small sign by the till ("Enjoyed your coffee? A Google review helps locals find us"), the link on your receipts or website, and a line in your follow-up emails all work without anyone having to remember or single anyone out.

Reply to every review. Google's own advice is to be professional and polite, conversational rather than promotional, and to respond to negative reviews promptly. Other customers read your replies, especially to the bad ones.

Australian consumer law matters here too. The ACCC treats fake reviews, and suppressing genuine negative ones, as potentially misleading, and its guidance says any incentive for reviews would have to be offered whether the review is good or bad and be clearly disclosed. Google's ban on incentives is stricter, so the simple answer for a café is to offer none. Our guide to getting more Google reviews goes further, including how to handle an unfair review.

#Learn names and orders

This costs nothing and is the thing customers mention most when they talk about their local.

Introduce yourself and ask their name. On a second or third visit, "I'm Sam, I don't think I caught your name?" is all it takes. Write it on the cup if that helps you remember.

Remember the order. "The usual?" is the moment a customer becomes a regular. Some cafés keep a simple list out the back of regulars' names and orders so new staff can learn them. Keep it to what a friendly barista would know anyway, and nothing a customer would be uncomfortable seeing.

Keep the same faces on the morning shift. Regulars bond with people, not with a brand. A stable morning roster in your first months does more for loyalty than any offer.

Notice when someone is missing. "Haven't seen you in a while" said warmly, without guilt, tells a customer they matter.

#A loyalty card: paper or digital

A loyalty card gives people a reason to choose you over the café on the next corner, and there's research behind it. In a study of a café's "buy 10, get 1 free" card, members bought coffee more often the closer they got to the free one. A related study found that people given a 10-stamp card with 2 stamps already filled in completed it more often and faster than people given an empty 8-stamp card, though both needed the same 8 purchases. A head start on the card is a cheap trick worth using.

Set the stamps for the customers you have. Someone who visits twice a week finishes a 9-stamp card in about a month, which feels achievable. A card that takes months to finish tends to end up in a drawer.

Know what it costs. A "buy 9, get the 10th free" card gives away 1 coffee in 10 if every card is claimed, which is 10%, not 11%. Whether a free coffee costs you the sale or only the ingredients depends on whether the customer would have bought it anyway. The calculator below works through both, and tells you how many extra visits the card needs to bring in to pay for itself.

Choose paper or digital with your eyes open. Neither is right for every café.

Paper is a perfectly good way to start, especially in your first weeks when you're still learning who your customers are. Digital earns its fee once you want to know who is coming back and to reach people who stop. Back Again, which we make, is one digital option: customers tap their phone on a sign at the counter, with no app to download. Whatever you choose, read paper punch cards vs digital for the full trade-offs before you print or sign up.

#Follow up by email or SMS, with consent

A short message at the right moment brings people back: a welcome after they join, a "we've missed you" after a few weeks away, a birthday treat, news of a new menu. Keep it rare enough that people are glad to see it. Australia's Spam Act sets the rules for marketing emails and texts, and the ACMA, which enforces it, explains them plainly.

Get consent first. The ACMA says you need consent before you send marketing messages, and express consent is best practice. People can give it by filling in a form, ticking a box, over the phone or face to face. Keep a record of who agreed, when and how, because under the Spam Act it's up to you to prove it.

You can't message people to ask. The ACMA says you cannot send an electronic message asking for consent, because that message is itself marketing. Ask in person, on your sign-up form or with a tick box.

Don't rely on inferred consent. It can apply where someone has an ongoing relationship with you, such as a membership, and the marketing is directly related to it. The ACMA says it doesn't cover sending messages to someone just because they bought something, and that it's not as reliable as express consent. A tick box is simpler.

Every message must identify you and let people leave. Include your business name and contact details, and an unsubscribe that is clear, free, works for at least 30 days after sending, doesn't make anyone log in, and is honoured within 5 working days. For texts, "Reply STOP" is the usual way, but check your sender can receive replies, as the ACMA notes that named (alphanumeric) sender IDs generally can't.

Never buy a list. You are still responsible for having consent for every address you use.

This is a summary rather than legal advice, so read the ACMA's guidance yourself if you're unsure. For what to actually send, see email marketing for cafés.

#Fill your quiet hours

Most cafés are flat out at 7.30am and empty at 2.30pm. Your rent, power and staff cost the same in both, so a customer you win in a quiet hour is worth more than one squeezed into the rush.

Find your quiet hours from your till. Most point-of-sale systems report sales by hour. Look at a few normal weeks, not opening week.

Make an offer for a specific time and a specific group. Parents after school pick-up, people working from home who need a mid-afternoon break, the gym crowd after a late-morning class. "Coffee and a cookie for $7 between 2 and 4" is clearer and easier to stop later than a percentage off.

Never discount the busy hours. You'd be giving margin to people who were coming anyway, and slowing the queue for everyone.

Consider bonus stamps in quiet hours. A double-stamp afternoon costs more in rewards, so check it in the calculator above, but the visits land when your machine and staff are otherwise idle.

Our guide to filling the quiet hours has a 30-day plan.

#Become part of the neighbourhood

The cafés with the most loyal regulars are often the ones people think of as part of the street, not just a place to buy coffee.

Partner with the businesses around you. A bakery, florist, bookshop or hairdresser nearby shares your customers. Display each other's cards, or offer something small to each other's customers.

Give people a reason to gather. Host a weekend run club's post-run coffee, a knitting group, a kids' story time, or a local artist's work on your walls. Groups come back every week.

Show up for local causes. A school fete, a sports club's presentation night or a community clean-up puts you in front of exactly the locals who become regulars, and it's the right thing to do.

Check with your council before you go outside. Footpath signs, outdoor tables and events in public space usually need permission, and the rules differ between councils.

For more ideas on getting people through the door, see how to attract customers to your café.

#Measure what works

You can't tell what's working if you only look at the day's takings. Spend 15 minutes once a week on a handful of numbers, and write them down so you can see the trend.

Ask new faces how they heard about you. For the first month or two, a tally by the till ("Google", "walked past", "friend", "Instagram", "work") shows you where to spend your time.

Change one thing at a time. If you start a quiet-hour offer, a new card and a letterbox drop in the same week, you won't know which one worked.

Know your target. The break-even calculator shows how many customers a day you need to cover your costs, which tells you how many regulars you really need. For many cafés it's more than 100, and that's fine: the first 100 is where the habits are built.