Driving Restaurant Sales and Growth with a Gift Card Program

A gift card program is a savvy, low-cost strategy to drive restaurant sales and growth. It enables customers to purchase and give away gift cards to their family, friends, or employees, while providing restaurants with upfront payment and effective word of mouth advertising. It’s a real win-win for small businesses. 

As other marketing solutions like keeping up with Google’s latest algorithm for your website’s SEO become more expensive and technical, gift card programs remain simple and easy to implement. Once you set it up, there isn’t much more to do except to market it so customers know it exists. 

Setting Up a Gift Card Program 

The first step of setting up a new restaurant gift card program is investing in the tools you’ll need to launch and operate. Many restaurant POS systems have options to add a gift card program within the platform you already use.  

Some popular gift card management platforms include Square, Toast, Lightspeed, Clover, and ShopKeep. You will need one of these platforms to issue and manage the lifecycle of your restaurant’s gift cards. You may also need marketing tools, such as MailChimp and Hootsuite, to share information about your gift card program to customers and eCommerce capabilities to sell gift cards securely from your restaurant’s website.  

Once you invest and set up your restaurant’s system for selling and accepting gift cards, it’s important to set up the terms of the gift cards and to educate staff and customers. For example, you need to decide if gift cards expire or are reloadable.  

Plan to train staff on how the program works and to educate customers about the program. You may want to do a soft launch to make sure things will work out without any issues before announcing your gift card program on social media channels, press releases, and email marketing campaigns.  

Benefits of Gift Card Programs for Small Businesses 

There are so many benefits that come from offering a gift card program to your customers. It’s why so many national restaurant chains offer gift card promotions to encourage customers to buy gift cards. 

When a customer buys a gift card from your business, you get a payment. Whether or not the recipient ever redeems the gift card, you increase your revenue. Having the money immediately improves cash flow.  

In many cases, the person who receives the gift card isn’t a current customer of your business. The gift card works as an effective recommendation from the friend or family member who gave them the gift of spending money in your restaurant. This increases your brand’s visibility with a low cost of customer acquisition.  

When a customer has a great experience, they’re likely to return and become a repeat customer. Since gift card programs for small businesses require minimal ongoing work or maintenance, it’s a simple way to build revenue and visibility.  

Corporate Gift Card Programs 

Corporate gift card programs have become a go-to solution for companies that want to give gift cards to employees or customers as either rewards or incentives. Companies load physical or digital gift cards with predetermined amounts of money that recipients can use as they wish.  

Corporate gift card programs help businesses recognize and motivate employees. Employees may work harder when they know they’re eligible for gift cards as a bonus for good work. Some companies may even include an assortment of gift cards from different businesses so that employees can choose their favorites. 

Gift cards can also incentivize customers to spend more. For example, a corporate jewelry chain may offer restaurant gift cards with engagement ring purchases. This promotion could be advertised as a “Pop the Question” bundle, where the customer receives a larger gift card the more they spend on a diamond bracelet.  

Best Practices for Managing Corporate Gift Card Sales 

Cultivating a good relationship with large corporations who need to buy corporate gift cards is a smart move for your restaurant. Just a few of these bulk orders a year may dramatically improve cash flow and brand awareness. 

Start by making sure physical gift cards look professional and appealing. Corporations prioritize purchasing gift cards from restaurants that employees and customers. If the other gift cards they’re offered are better, this may hurt your chances of future bulk gift card orders. Remember that how your gift card looks could very well be a customer’s first impression of your restaurant. 

Make it known to corporations on your website, social media channels, and by direct outreach that your restaurant offers corporate gift cards. Offer bulk purchase discounts, if possible, to encourage even bigger orders. Thank and follow-up with corporate customers to facilitate repeat business.

Marketing Your Gift Card Program 

The first step you should take once you launch your restaurant’s gift card program is to set up a beautiful sign or poster in high-traffic areas of your restaurant. You want to make sure your existing customers know it exists. 

Use social media platforms and marketing emails to subscribers to educate them about your new gift card program. You can invest in Facebook Ads where the goal is to have users purchase gift cards.  

Plan to center marketing promotions around your restaurant’s gift card program. Many restaurants offer gift card giveaway promotions around the holidays. Restaurants may give away $10 gift cards for every $50 spent on gift cards to encourage customers to spend more. 

The Bottom Line 

A gift card program can help your restaurant increase sales, encourage customer loyalty, and reach new customers. The upfront payment also improves business cash flow.  

The good news is that implementing a gift card program is relatively easy. Many businesses may also use existing POS systems to manage gift card programs.  

If you don’t want to worry about finding and evaluating a bunch of gift card programs only to feel overwhelmed at the end of the process, Paytronix offers a complete suite of tools designed specifically for restaurant owners. We can educate you on how to optimize your gift card program or implement a new one. You can also read our Guide to Gift Card Strategy today.