Loyalty programme for pubs and bars
Digital Loyalty Cards for Pubs and Bars
Your regulars prop up the bar every week. Reward them for it. TapStamp gives your pub or bar a digital stamp card that customers tap at the bar. Collect stamps, earn a free pint or a meal deal. Keep your locals coming back.
Why paper loyalty cards don't work for pubs and bars
Sound familiar? These are the problems TapStamp solves.
Friday and Saturday fill themselves
Monday to Wednesday is where you need footfall. You have no way to reach your Friday regulars and give them a reason to pop in on a Tuesday.
Round buyers get under-rewarded
One person buys a round of four pints at £20 and gets the same single stamp as someone buying a £5 lager. Your most generous regulars lose interest in the card within a fortnight.
Voucher apps send deal-seekers, not regulars
Discount apps send bargain-hunters who never return at full price. You need loyalty from the regulars worth £625 a year each, not one-off visitors chasing a two-for-one.
You know the faces but not the frequency
You recognise your regulars across the bar but have no data on whether they come twice a week or twice a month. Without visit data, you cannot tell when someone starts to drift.
How TapStamp works for pubs and bars
Three steps. No complicated setup. Go live the same day.
Customer taps the NFC pod
After they buy a drink at the bar, the customer holds their phone to the NFC pod. One tap, done.
Stamp collected instantly
A digital stamp is added to their card in the TapStamp app. They can see their progress towards the reward at any time.
Reward unlocked
Collect 10 stamps, get a free pint. The customer redeems their reward in-app and keeps collecting towards the next one.
Why pubs and bars choose TapStamp
Built for real businesses on real high streets. Here is what you get.
- Per-spend stamps so a £20 round earns four stamps, not one
- Fill Monday-to-Wednesday with a lapsed-customer push tied to quiz night or live sport
- Standard 10-stamp card that weekly regulars actually finish
- Track who comes twice a week and spot when they start to drift
- Promote events, live sport, and quiz nights to customers who have actually visited
- Boost Google Reviews from happy regulars
Loyalty programme economics for pubs and bars
A wet-led visit (drinks only) typically lands at £8 to £20 per head. A food-led pub or gastropub pushes that to £15 to £35 per head once a meal and drinks are factored in. Arla Pro reported an average consumer spend per visit of £11.76 in 2024 across the sector, up 13.1 per cent year on year. The average pint hit £5.08 nationally in 2025 (£6.16 in London).
Pubs are unusual in UK foodservice because the regulars are genuinely high frequency. Around 30 to 35 per cent of UK adults visit a pub at least weekly, and industry estimates put the average beer drinker at around four visits a month. A weekly regular at £12 a visit delivers around £625 a year. A two-or-three-times-a-week regular generates £1,500 to £2,500.
That frequency is what makes a standard 9 or 10 stamp single-reward card work cleanly here. Customers actually finish the card. The trial-tail problem that plagues restaurants doesn't apply.
Run the maths against your own bar. A neighbourhood pub doing 150 transactions a day at £12 average spend, six days a week across 50 trading weeks, turns over roughly £540,000 a year. Busier food-led venues or city centre bars push higher. A 5 per cent uplift from regulars who visit one extra time a month (instead of drifting to the pub down the road) is worth around £27,000.
The real lever for pubs isn't acquisition. It's frequency among the regulars you already have, and filling the Monday-to-Wednesday gap when Friday and Saturday already fill themselves.
Common reward structures for UK pubs and bars
Standard 10 stamp card with a free pint or meal reward
Buy 9, get the 10th pint or meal free. Easy to explain at the bar, easy for the customer to track, and matches the mechanic regulars have understood for decades on paper. In Scotland this needs to be a non-alcoholic reward or a sealed take-home bottle (see FAQ below).
Per-spend stamp rule for round buying
Set the dashboard to one stamp per £5 or £6 spent. A regular buying a round of four pints at £20 collects four stamps in one tap, which reflects what they actually spent rather than under-rewarding them for paying for the group. This is the single most important economic decision for pubs and the default per-visit rule will frustrate regulars within a fortnight.
Multi-reward card for food-led and gastropubs
Where average spend is higher and visits are slightly less frequent, set a small reward at stamp 3 (free pudding or side), a mid-tier at stamp 6 (bottle of house wine to take home, or 20 per cent off the bill), and the headline at stamp 10 (free main course or a starter and dessert for two). The card carries on after each early redemption rather than resetting, which suits the diner who comes once a fortnight rather than three times a week. Keep the total reward value at roughly 8 to 12 per cent of expected basket spend over the full card to keep the economics sustainable.
Midweek push tied to live sport, quiz nights, or specific events
Set a 14 or 21 day lapsed-customer threshold and broadcast a Tuesday quiz night reminder, Wednesday steak-night offer, or "Six Nations is on tonight" prompt to customers who haven't tapped in. Tie it to something already happening so you're not creating new operational load on quiet nights, just filling the room around what's already booked.
Everything you need to run a loyalty programme
NFC stamps, analytics, push notifications, and more. All included.
NFC Tap to Stamp
Customers tap their phone on your NFC pod. One tap, one stamp. No fuss.
Digital Stamp Cards
Multi-reward loyalty cards with your branding. Set rewards at multiple stamp positions so customers always have something within reach.
QR Code Fallback
A backup option when NFC is not available.
Business Analytics
See stamp activity, customer visits, redemption rates, and more at a glance.
Push Notifications
Send targeted messages directly to your customers' phones.
Birthday Rewards
Automatically send rewards on your customers' birthdays.
Why NFC beats paper cards and QR codes
TapStamp uses NFC tap-to-stamp technology. Here is how it compares.
NFC Tap
- Sub-second stamp
- No camera or scanning needed
- Tamper-proof and encrypted
- Works offline
- Feels premium
Paper Cards
- Lost, damaged, forgotten
- Easy to fake stamps
- No customer data
- Printing costs add up
- Looks outdated
QR Codes
- Requires camera and scanning
- Slower than NFC
- Can be screenshotted and shared
- Needs good lighting
- Feels transactional
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about loyalty cards for pubs and bars.
On the customer side of the bar, next to the card terminal where every transaction already finishes. The cashier brings the pod forward when the payment is being taken, the customer taps, done. Keep it on a fixed mount or a weighted base so it doesn't get knocked off during a busy Saturday night, and keep it under bar staff control rather than left out for self-tap. If you have multiple till points, you can run a pod at each one, but most pubs find a single pod at the main till handles the bulk of traffic without slowing service.
Use the per-spend stamp rule in the dashboard. Set it to one stamp per £5 or £6 spent and the round-buyer collects four or five stamps in one tap, which is what they actually deserve. Without this, your most generous regulars (the round-buyers) get under-rewarded relative to single-pint customers and will lose interest in the card within a fortnight. This is the one setting most pubs need to change from default.
In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, yes, under your premises licence with Challenge 25 applied as normal. In Scotland it's not allowed. The Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005 prohibits offering alcohol as a reward or prize unless it's in a sealed container and consumed off the premises. Greene King's loyalty terms reflect this directly (their Spin to Win wheel doesn't award alcohol in Scotland). Scottish pubs typically use a free meal, free dessert, or free non-alcoholic drink as the headline reward instead, or offer a sealed take-home bottle. If you operate across both jurisdictions, take licensing advice and structure the reward so it's compliant in your strictest market.
Honest answer: it depends on your demographic. Pub-goers under 50 are now overwhelmingly contactless and Apple Pay, so the tap action is familiar. Older regulars (60+) may need a one-off explanation at the bar the first time, but once their card is set up they tap the same way every visit. The pod sits on the bar regardless and the customers who don't engage simply don't, so there's no operational cost to running it alongside customers who never use it. Most wet-led pubs see meaningful uptake among 25-to-55 year old regulars within the first month.
The underlying mechanic is the same. Tap, collect, redeem. Those chains run vertically integrated apps tied to enterprise EPOS systems (Zonal, Tevalis, Access) built for managed estates of hundreds of sites, and you can't realistically buy into them as an independent. TapStamp is a standalone NFC pod that sits next to your card terminal regardless of which till you use, which is the only practical option for a single site or small group running on ICRTouch, Epos Now, Square, or no integrated POS at all. You're getting the same loyalty mechanic the chains have validated, without paying enterprise infrastructure costs to access it.
Starter is £20/month, Growth is £35/month, and Scale is £50/month. All plans include a 30-day free trial and the setup fee includes your NFC pod.
Yes, customers use the free TapStamp app on iOS or Android. Signing up takes under 30 seconds with Google, Apple, or a phone number.
Ready to launch loyalty for your pubs and bars?
Start your 30-day free trial today. Set up takes minutes, not days.
