Launching a customer club does not mean pretending you have no loyal customers until launch day.

For most established hospitality businesses, the opposite is true. The people you want in the club first are probably already standing in front of you.

They are the regulars whose orders the team knows. The locals who book every few weeks. The parents who appear after school. The Friday lunch crowd.

The job is to formalise it without making it weird to tackle specific business problems and increase revenue.

Start with your existing regulars

A new club needs members, but it also needs credibility.

Existing customers give you both.

Rather than launching with a giant “JOIN OUR NEW LOYALTY PROGRAMME” campaign, start conversationally.

“We've made something for our regulars.”

“We're starting a Midweek Club.”

“We've created a way to hear about cancellations first.”

“We're launching a little club for local hospitality people.”

The proposition should sound like a natural extension of the venue, not a corporate initiative arriving from head office.

Give early members a reason to care

Do not ask your best customers to join simply because you would like their data. Give them something useful.

That might be first access, a welcome extra, a standing member benefit, a launch event or the status of being a founding member.

It does not have to be expensive. it has to make sense.

Let the team recruit the first members

Your team already knows who many of these people are, and that is a powerful place to start.

A personal “You should join this - it's basically made for people like you” will often beat a poster.

Give staff a ten-second explanation and make joining easy. If the team cannot explain the club naturally during service, simplify the proposition.

Put joining where the customer already is

A club should not require customers to go home and remember a web address.

Put the invitation and QR code into the normal customer journey.

At the table, bar, bill, till, menu socials, website .The exact mix depends on the venue, but the principle is the same: reduce the distance between “that sounds good” and “I'm in”.

Treat the first members as a learning group

You do not know everything at launch. Your early members and the usage of it tells you what lands.

Which benefit do they mention? What confuses them? What do staff have to explain repeatedly Which messages get a response? What do customers wish the club included?

The advantage of a club is that the proposition can change.

Make launch feel like hospitality

The best launch is not necessarily the loudest.

Imagine a neighbourhood restaurant telling its 50 favourite regulars that Christmas tables will open to club members first.

Or a pub inviting local hospitality workers into an Industry Club before the launch to their general customers. Or a café giving its familiar parents early access to a Parents Club with useful school-holiday perks. Those launches feel personal because they begin with a relationship that already exists.

You are formalising, not replacing

Your team should still know people's names. Regulars should still get looked after because somebody recognises them. The club should not turn warm human hospitality into a mechanical process. It should support what the venue already does well and give the relationship somewhere to live beyond the visit.