What is a regular worth, and how do you work it out without a till system?

Most guides divide monthly spend by a churn rate, or multiply revenue by years. Both have a catch in the life of a café: you don’t know your churn rate, and revenue isn’t earnings. This calculation uses numbers you can collect yourself in a week.

How do you calculate what a regular is worth?

It takes three numbers and one honest deduction:

“Net” means before VAT, and “share left after cost of goods” is gross margin. A café with 30% cost of goods has a gross margin of 70%. Rent and staff aren’t deducted yet, so the result is a contribution, not a profit.

Line three is missing from most articles. Someone who becomes a regular would probably have sat with you a few times anyway. You can’t credit that part to loyalty.

Example: what is a regular worth at a café and a restaurant?

The numbers are made up and round, and neither place exists.

The tax rates are the German ones, 7% on food and 19% on drinks when eating in (as of November 2026). Planning a loyalty programme shows how the reward cost is worked out.

So ten extra regulars would be about €2,400 of contribution a year in the café example, before staff and rent. That isn’t a promise, just what follows from these assumptions.

How do you estimate your numbers without a till system?

A week of tally marks and your monthly invoices are enough for a useful first estimate.

Pick normal days for the tally, not a holiday week or a street festival. If you have morning and evening shifts, count both, as regulars often come at fixed times. And ask about visits at quiet moments at the counter, not on a packed Saturday.

How do you calculate your repeat customer rate?

Your repeat rate is the number of guests with at least two visits in a period, divided by all guests in that period. Without a card or customer data you can’t measure it exactly, because you can’t tell guests apart.

Don’t confuse it with the share of familiar faces from your tally. There, 45% of visits came from familiar guests, not 45% of guests. A regular with eight visits fills eight marks and a new guest fills one. So only compare that number with your own previous month.

A stamp card makes the rate measurable, though only for members: people who sign up were more likely to come back anyway.

What is a good repeat rate?

We found no reliable benchmark for German cafés or restaurants. What you’ll find online mostly comes from software vendors’ blogs, often from other markets, with no method given. A station café and a neighbourhood restaurant are hardly comparable anyway. So judge the direction: does the share of familiar guests rise over three months or not?

What about those famous retention numbers?

They aren’t established for restaurants. Harvard Business Review wrote in 2014 that, depending on the study and industry, new customers cost five to 25 times more, and that 5% more retention brings 25% to 95% more profit. The second figure goes back to Frederick Reichheld of Bain, known for his 1990 article with W. Earl Sasser on service companies.

Byron Sharp of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute calls this misleading. He points out the 5% meant 5 percentage points fewer defections, a halving from 10% to 5%, and that it was a thought experiment showing only that customers who stay longer spend more in total. Your own calculation will tell you more than any of these numbers.

Where can this calculation go wrong?

• Full hours: if every table is taken at Saturday lunch anyway, a regular takes someone else’s seat. An extra visit is worth most when the seat would otherwise be empty. How to fill quiet days has ideas.
• Staff: the contribution includes no wages. If you need an extra shift, the worth falls.
• Duration: calculate with one year only. Without data you don’t know how long regulars stay, and people move away.
• Friends they bring: a regular may bring others. The formula doesn’t count that, and we don’t estimate it. Treat it as upside you shouldn’t budget on.
• Cause: even if the number rises, you can’t be sure the card did it. At a campus café this could be measured a bit better, and researchers estimated about two extra coffees a month per member. Your place is a different place.

How do you see these numbers without counting marks every week?

The tally sheet is enough to start. To see the number all the time, you need to tell guests apart. With NFCeez it works like this: on your Smart Page, guests sign up for the stamp card with a code sent by email and add it to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. Your team scans it at every visit. The app then shows your members’ return rate, how many came at least twice and how many are one stamp away from a reward. On the Start screen you set a goal for regulars with Orbit and get three missions a week for it. A regular there is someone who came on two different days within 30 days, counted from Wallet stamps and bookings. That’s our own definition, not an industry standard.

The limits: it counts only members and bookings, not every guest who pays and leaves. NFCeez doesn’t know spend per visit or cost of goods, so those still come from your till and invoices. How many guests open your page, and where they come from, is shown under Reach.

What do you do with the number?

The number helps with three decisions. First, it gives you a limit for what a reward may cost. Second, it shows whether a promotion for new guests can pay off at all if only one in ten returns. Third, it gives your team a picture: the guest at the counter is more than one coffee.

The current climate makes this more concrete. According to Germany’s Federal Statistical Office, restaurant and café revenue in the first half of 2026 was 5.7% below the year before after adjusting for prices, and 2.2% above it before adjusting (preliminary). How to turn guests into regulars covers what you can do about it.

Your next step: tomorrow morning, put a sheet of paper with two columns next to the till. After five days you’ll have your first number of your own.