Loyalty program calculator for cafés

What a stamp card really costs you in free coffees, and how many extra visits it has to bring in to pay for itself. It works for any card: paper, a till add-on or an app.

Free, no sign-upRuns in your browserChecked 28 October 2026

Your card

The card you run now or the one you're planning. Paper or digital, the sums are the same.

For “buy 9, get the 10th free”, enter 9stamps
6912
Your menu price
$
Beans, milk and cup. Work it out
$

Your customers

The people who use the card.

Count the ones who keep coming, not every card handed out
Per customer, roughly. Pick the nearest.times
Weekly3× a weekWeekdaysDaily
More options60% of cards claimed, no running cost, prices include GST.
As a share. Some get lost or never finished; 60% is a fair guess.%
An app's fee, or printing for paper cards. Leave at $0 if nothing.
$a month
Leave on if you're registered for GST: you keep $5.00 of a $5.50 coffee.

It pays for itself if each member comes in one extra time

every 10 weeks

That's 0.43 extra visits a member a month, or 43 extra visits across your 100 members.

Free coffees a month27
What they cost you$133
Each extra visit earns$3.12
Real discount for members6.3%

A free coffee is counted as the sale you’d otherwise have made ($5.00), because regulars mostly claim on visits they’d make anyway.

What the card makes or loses a month

Across the bottom, how many extra visits each member makes a month because of the card. Above the zero line the card pays for itself.

Free coffee replaces one they'd have bought, Free coffee is an extra (ingredients only)−$200−$100$0$100$200$30000.20.40.60.81Extra visits per member a monthPays for itself at 0.43
  • Free coffee replaces one they'd have bought
  • Free coffee is an extra (ingredients only)

With no extra visits the card costs you $133 a month. If each member came in one extra time a month, you’d be +$178 a month. If the free coffee is something they wouldn’t otherwise buy, like a slice with their usual, it costs only the ingredients and the dashed line applies.

How to use it

  1. 01Describe your card
    How many stamps it takes, your coffee price and what one costs to make (the coffee cost calculator works that out).
  2. 02Add your customers
    How many people use the card and how often they come in. If you already run a card, use your real figures. More options covers how many cards get claimed and what the card costs to run.
  3. 03Read the answer
    The big number is how often each member needs to come in one extra time for the card to pay for itself. The graph shows what it makes or loses either side of that.

The arithmetic, worked through

Take 100 members who each come in 4 times a month, on a buy 9, get the 10th free card, with a $5.50 coffee that costs $1.55 to make (about what a regular dine-in milk coffee costs in beans and milk at 2026 prices). These are the calculator's starting figures, and they are only examples.

Free coffees a month
100 members × 4 visits
400 stamps
÷ 9 stamps a reward
44.4 rewards' worth
× 60% actually claimed26.7 free coffees

Some cards get lost or never finished, which is why the redemption rate matters.

The discount is 1 in 10, not 1 in 9. A member who claims every reward takes ten coffees and pays for nine, which is 10% off, not the 11% you get by dividing one free coffee by nine paid ones. With 40% of the stamping never claimed, it works out at 0.6 ÷ 9.6, or about 6%.

What those coffees cost
In ingredients: 26.7 × $1.55
$41 a month
A $5.50 coffee without GST
$5.00
As sales given up: 26.7 × $5.00$133 a month

Which one applies depends on who claims them. Regulars claiming on visits they'd have made anyway cost you the sale; that's the figure the calculator leads with, and its graph's dashed line shows the ingredients-only case.

The extra visits that cover it
Gross profit on an extra coffee: $5.00 − $1.55
$3.45
Less the stamp it earns: 0.6 ÷ 9 × $5.00
−$0.33
Each extra visit is worth
$3.12
$133 ÷ $3.12, across 100 members
43 visits
Extra visits per member a month0.43

About one extra visit every 10 weeks per member. Counted at ingredients only, it's about 0.12, one every eight months or so.

These are the calculator's starting figures, so it opens on the same answer: one extra visit every 10 weeks per member.

Why it shows a break-even, not a forecast

Extra visits are the only way a stamp card pays for itself, and they are the hardest thing to predict. They include visits a member wouldn't otherwise have made at all, and visits that would have gone to another café. They don't include the visits your regulars were going to make anyway, and those regulars are often the first to sign up.

So rather than ask you to guess, the calculator tells you the number your card has to beat. There is good evidence that stamp cards change behaviour: in a study of a café's buy 10, get 1 free card, members bought coffee more often the closer they got to the reward. But how much a card lifts visits varies a lot from café to café, and we haven't found a figure we'd trust for yours.

So measure it. With any card, you can count rewards claimed each week. With a digital card you can also see how often each member comes back. Compare a few months after launch with the months before, and put your real figure in.

Ways to make a card cost less

  • Reward something they don't usually buy. A free slice or cookie with a coffee costs you ingredients, not a lost sale, and the customer usually still pays for the coffee.
  • Set the stamps for your regulars. Too few and you give away a lot to people who'd come anyway. Too many and cards are abandoned, which saves money but loses the point. Try a few card lengths in the calculator to see how the break-even moves.
  • Give a head start. A card that starts with a stamp or two already on it feels underway. In a car wash study, cards needing 10 stamps with 2 given were finished more often and sooner than plain 8-stamp cards, though both took 8 purchases. Just count those stamps when you set the card length.
  • Put bonus stamps where you have spare capacity. A double-stamp afternoon costs more in rewards, but the visits it brings land when your staff and machine are otherwise idle. Our guide to filling quiet hours has more on this.

For the wider plan of getting customers through the door and turning them into regulars, read your first 100 regulars. If you're choosing between a paper card and a digital one, we compared them honestly in paper punch cards vs digital.

Frequently asked questions

10%. The customer takes ten coffees and pays for nine, so one in ten is free. The 11% figure comes from dividing one free coffee by the nine paid ones, which overstates it. In general a card that needs N stamps gives away 1 in N + 1. And because some cards are lost or never finished, the real discount is lower again: at a 60% redemption rate, a buy 9 card works out at about 6%.
It depends on whether the customer would have bought it anyway. If a weekly regular claims their free flat white on a visit they'd have made regardless, you've given up the sale: the full price without GST. If the reward is something they wouldn't otherwise have bought, like a slice with their coffee, it only costs you the ingredients. Most cafés have a mix of both. The calculator leads with the lost sale, the cautious view, and its graph shows the ingredients-only line too.
There is no reliable public average, so use your own if you have a card already. Count how many rewards you hand out in a month, multiply by the stamps per card, and divide by the stamps you gave out that month. If you're starting fresh, the calculator assumes 60%; change it under More options to see how much it matters. Paper cards tend to get lost and forgotten, which lowers the rate.
Nobody can tell you that for your café in advance, and any single industry figure would hide a huge range. Research on a café coffee card found members bought more often as they got closer to a free coffee, so cards can change behaviour. But many members are regulars who would have come anyway. That's why the calculator doesn't ask you to guess. It shows the break-even, the number your card has to beat, and the graph shows what happens either side of it.
Match it to how often your regulars come in. 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 be abandoned. Fewer stamps cost more per visit, so run both options through the calculator. A head start helps too: a study found people given a 10-step card with 2 steps already stamped completed it more often and faster than people given an empty 8-step card, though both needed 8 purchases.
The rewards cost the same either way, and for most cafés they are the bigger number. Paper costs only printing and stamps, but you can't see who your members are, cards get lost or copied, and you can't contact anyone. Digital systems usually charge a monthly fee, and most show you who is coming back. Put each option's real monthly cost into the calculator (under More options) and compare the break-even.

General information, not financial or tax advice. The calculator works in prices without GST when you say your prices include it, because the GST part of a sale is paid to the ATO. Registration is required once your GST turnover reaches $75,000 a year. Results depend entirely on the figures you enter, so treat them as a way to compare options rather than a forecast.

Sources

5 sources, 1 official

  1. 1ATO: Registering for GST ($75,000 turnover threshold)ato.gov.au · official source
  2. 2Kivetz, Urminsky and Zheng (2006), The Goal-Gradient Hypothesis Resurrected, Journal of Marketing Researchideas.repec.org
  3. 3Nunes and Drèze (2006), The Endowed Progress Effect, Journal of Consumer Researchideas.repec.org
  4. 4Knowledge at Wharton: the car wash loyalty card study (head-start cards finished more often and sooner)knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu
  5. 5Goal pursuit (Wikipedia): summary of the car wash results, 34% against 19%en.wikipedia.org

Keep going

All tools and guides
GuideYour first 100 regularsA practical plan for opening week and the months after, to turn first visits into habits.Free toolLoyalty card makerDesign a printed stamp card with your logo, colours and reward, and download it ready to print.GuideHiring and paying café staffAwards, casual loading, super and rosters, explained for a first-time employer.