Why Loyaltea

There is a paper loyalty card in my wallet from a café I like. Twelve stamps, free coffee at the end. I have filled it more than once and I have never redeemed it. By the time the card is full I have forgotten it exists, or it is in another jacket, so I take a new one and start again. The café gave me a reward and I never collected it, which means it never brought me back, which was the whole point.

Then I moved to London, where nobody uses paper any more. Every café has a card in your phone’s wallet. You scan once, it stamps itself, it reminds you when a coffee is waiting, and you never think about it again. It just works, and you go back.

Beirut’s cafés are as good as any in London. Their loyalty cards are not. Loyaltea is the fix: a card that lives in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, ten seconds to join, one tap for the barista to stamp, and a way for the café to say hello to every regular on a slow afternoon. No app, no hardware, nothing to lose in a jacket.