Editor’s Note: This article is part of Food On Demand’s Summer Series, where the editorial team explores a different topic each month. August’s focus is Tech Lessons, for which one article each week features tech-focused lessons from restaurant industry professionals.
To the uninitiated, restaurant loyalty may seem fairly straightforward: Offer incentives so guests will become loyalty members; keep the discounts and exclusive menu items coming and those customers will become regulars.
Olga Lopategui, founder and principal consultant at Restaurant Loyalty Specialists
That summary, however, is a vast oversimplification of a complex process of acquiring and retaining frequent customers, according to Olga Lopategui, founder and principal consultant at
During an August 11 interview with Food On Demand, Lopategui reflected on nearly two decades of experience working with prominent chains such as KFC and TGI Fridays, as well as a variety of small- and medium-sized brands ranging from 20 to 1,000 locations, to share the hard-earned lessons in restaurant loyalty acquired throughout her career in restaurant marketing and consulting.
The loyalty misnomer
While “loyalty” is the standard term used for restaurant guest acquisition and retention programs that leverage perks (including discounts, point systems, reward tiers, freebies, member-exclusive offers and other incentives), Lopategui said it isn’t the most accurate description.
“All of that [incentivizing] is trying to shift your behavior to an extra purchase,” Lopategui said, but “rewards programs” or “behavior modification programs” are more accurate names for loyalty solutions. Traditional loyalty programs, she continued, don’t make customers feel better about a brand or more feel a closer association to it.
“It doesn’t make you a brand ambassador,” she said. “It just tries to get you through the door one more time, which is a very noble goal.”
An example of loyalty programs serving more as a behavior modification tool than as a means of building brand commitment among consumers is their use to drive customers to first-party ordering platforms rather than third-party delivery apps, which charge commissions and additional fees.
“People can be on DoorDash and still be very loyal to a restaurant (but) they might not be interested in the benefits for loyalty members,” Lopategui said, clarifying why loyalty is not the best-suited term for the initiative. “It’s a very good business goal to get the customer to convert to a traditional loyalty program just because you’re more likely to make them more profitable for you, and that’s worth the effort.”
No one owns the guest
Lopategui said restaurant brands have long based their approach to loyalty programs around “owning the guest.”
Eventually, after identifying trends in loyalty behavior from real industry data and observing that approach first-hand with clients, she described that expression as overemphasizing a brand’s control over customer behavior.
“The understanding behind that [phrase] was that you can make people be extremely attached to your brand, and you can own them for certain occasions,” Lopategui said, identifying the path to guest ownership as through data gathering, such as loyalty participation accompanied by app use. …“Over time, particularly in the last couple of years, I came to the realization that—with the proliferation of restaurant apps, choices and additional channels such as third-party ordering—you just can’t own the guest. The best you can do is to shift their behavior.”
The number of digital restaurant ordering channels has risen significantly in recent years, but 2026 market insights from Statista report that steep growth remains ahead for the online food delivery market, projected to reach $1.5 trillion by the end of the year. That global revenue figure is expected to grow at more than 6 percent annually through 2031.
In the United States alone, online food delivery generated an estimated $432 billion in revenue last year, with the meal delivery segment accounting for upwards of $100 billion.
As the number and value of digital guests grew, Lopategui said, general sentiment regarding restaurant loyalty gradually shifted from wanting to maintain ownership of a guest for specific occasions to seeking an influential position within a customer’s collection of rewards platforms.
Urgency and convenience drive ‘loyalty’
Lastly, Lopategui said that loyalty building, in the traditional sense, is usually reserved for in-restaurant occasions, such as trying a menu item for the first time on-site and interacting with staff. Digitally, loyalty solutions are more operationally focused, meaning convenience and proper incentives are key to overcoming barriers.
“Being a busy mom who orders food for the family, if I accidentally didn’t order through the app—even if I have an account with a company—there is no way I’m going to go back and try to find that receipt and scan it,” Lopategui said, demonstrating the fragility of customer loyalty. “If it weren’t for professional reasons, I wouldn’t pay much attention to this. When I have so many different things in my mind, trying to count those points is just not a part of my life.”
According to Alchemer’s 2026 Quick Service Restaurant Study, 44 percent of American survey participants admitted to simply forgetting to use loyalty programs, and 24 percent said it involves too much planning. The research found 85 percent of respondents cited saving money as the top benefit of participating, and 35 percent identified expiring points as the top frustration.
“I’ve always advocated having a feasible structure for loyalty programs that are attractive to the guests and drive them to do what you want them to do—spending more or coming more often,” Lopategui said. “I came to the realization that your ad hoc offers and promotions can do just as much and often more, because people react to urgency; they react to what’s in front of them right this moment.”
Alchemer’s research found that 93 percent of customers considered artificial intelligence and personalization tools somewhat or very important (46 and 47 percent, respectively) when they save time, surface the best deal, and reflect what they actually like to order.
