Case study: Cafe Tone — three coffee shops, one loyalty card

Cafe Tone opened its first coffee shop in 2019 in Karlín, a few minutes' walk from Karlínské náměstí. The concept was simple from day one: serious specialty coffee without the theatre — flat whites, batch brew, and a few pastries from the bakery down the street. It worked. A second location followed in Vinohrady in 2021, and a third opened two years later in Holešovice, close to the market hall. Today the team is around twenty people.

Three shops, though, brought the problem every small chain knows: a loyalty program that runs itself in one location starts to crumble across three. This is the story of how Cafe Tone replaced paper stamp cards with a digital card in Apple Wallet and Google Wallet — and what actually changed in the first 90 days.

The problem with paper

The paper "10th coffee free" card had worked in Karlín for years. But once there were three cafés, small annoyances started stacking up into real noise:

• Lost and forgotten cards. Roughly half the regulars had their card "somewhere at home." The barista then faced a choice: start a new card, or promise the stamp for next time. Either way, the program quietly loses value.
• Invisible regulars. A customer who came to Karlín daily and to Vinohrady on weekends was a different person to each shop. They carried two half-full cards and often finished neither.
• Zero data. Nobody knew how many cards were in circulation, how many got completed, or whether the program affected visits at all. The only hard number was redeemed rewards at the till.
• The stationery-shop stamp. A near-identical stamp could be bought for pocket change. It wasn't an epidemic, but a few times a year a suspiciously full card would turn up.
• Reprint costs. New card batches every few months, plus counter stands. Not dramatic money, but a recurring cost with no measurable output whatsoever.

"What annoyed me most was arguing with guests about smudged stamps. It sounds like a small thing, but it's ten awkward conversations a week that no barista wants to have," says co-owner Tereza.

How the switch went

The setup itself took one afternoon. Tereza walked through the wizard in the Stampit partner dashboard at partners.stampit.app: uploaded the logo, matched the colors to the brand, chose ten stamps, and kept the reward identical to paper — the tenth coffee free. All three locations run under one program, so stamps add up no matter where the customer buys their coffee.

QR stands went on the counters. A customer scans the code and the card lands in their Apple Wallet or Google Wallet within seconds — no app install, no registration form. Baristas stamp through the Stampit Partners mobile app: they scan the code on the customer's card, or simply tap phones via NFC. Every team member has their own account, so each stamp is traceable to the person who gave it.

They did one smart thing at launch: double stamps for the first week. It gave baristas a natural opening line ("This week you get two stamps"), and it put a clear deadline on the move from paper. Paper cards were still accepted in parallel for a month — anyone who brought a half-stamped card got their stamps transferred into the phone.

90 days later

The numbers below come from the Stampit dashboard statistics for the program's first three months, aggregated across all three locations.

Metric	After 90 days
Cards added to wallets	~2,100
Active cards (stamped within the last 30 days)	64%
Cards with at least one reward redeemed	31%
Holders collecting stamps at more than one location	9%
Cards added during launch week	~480

None of these numbers is spectacular on its own — and that is exactly how it should look. Around 2,100 cards across three shops means a large share of the regulars adopted the card, not every passer-by.

The more interesting figure is the 64% of cards still active. With paper, Cafe Tone never knew how many of the cards it handed out ended up in the bin; now, for the first time, they can see that almost two thirds of cards are still alive after three months. And 31% of cards with a redeemed reward means rewards genuinely come back to the counter — the cost of free coffees is suddenly a line item you can calculate, not a guess.

The smallest number in the table may be the most valuable: 9% of holders collect stamps at more than one location. It isn't much, but it's the first time Cafe Tone has seen in black and white that regulars move between neighbourhoods. On paper, that customer was invisible — now they can be planned for, for instance when aligning the menu so it feels consistent across all three shops.

"Paper told us absolutely nothing. Now I open the statistics on a Sunday evening and I know how many cards we added and whether rewards are coming back. It's not rocket science — but for the first time, we can simply see it," Tereza adds.

What they would do differently

A few notes Tereza passes on to any café considering the switch:

• Run double stamps for two weeks, not one. Interest was still growing in the second week; cutting the promotion after seven days was needlessly early.
• Train the team before launch, not during service. The morning rush is no moment to explain novelties. What helped in the end was a three-step counter stand — scan, add, done — so the barista barely had to say anything.
• Use card news from day one. Messages that appear directly on the wallet card only started in month two (a new single-origin, changed opening hours in Holešovice). In hindsight, it was the easiest channel they had, left unused for a month.
• Don't complicate the rewards. They considered tiered rewards and drink-size bonuses. In the end the simple tenth-coffee-free stayed — it communicates itself and baristas never have to explain anything.

What's next

The next step targets the weak spots in the week. Weekday mid-mornings are the quietest hours at all three locations, so Cafe Tone is piloting a Stampit coupon program: a time-limited coupon for a discounted batch brew and croissant combo, valid Monday to Wednesday. The coupon shows up directly on the wallet card, so it needs no extra channel and no flyers.

They also want to make more of the card's ability to speak up for itself: thanks to location awareness, the pass surfaces on the lock screen when a customer is near one of the cafés. For the newly opened Holešovice shop, it's a quiet way to remind Karlín and Vinohrady regulars that the third location exists.

Paper isn't coming back to Cafe Tone. As Tereza puts it: stamps don't fall out of a phone wallet — and at last, they can see what the loyalty program actually does.