Does your rewards program pay for itself?
$5 back on every $50 spent sounds cheap until you realize it is a 10% give-back on all enrolled sales. This calculator finds the order frequency lift your program needs before it turns a profit.
Your program and your customers
Rewards accrue on every dollar an enrolled customer spends, not just the extra orders, so the give-back rate matters more than most owners expect.
Most restaurant programs give back $5–$10 at a time.
Give-back rate: 10.0% of enrolled sales
$50 earned per $5 reward is a 10% give-back. Raise the threshold to lower the cost.
How many distinct customers order in a month.
200 enrolled customers
Programs promoted at checkout usually enrol 30–50% of repeat customers.
Independent restaurants typically see 1.5–2.5 orders per customer per month.
60 extra orders per month
A well-run rewards program lifts order frequency 10–20% among enrolled customers.
Canadian takeout averages $38–$55 per order.
Gross margin on food typically runs 60–75%.
−$280
The rewards cost more than the extra ordering they create.
Rewards cost: $1,840 per month
Break-even lift: 18.2%
Net gain = extra orders × margin − enrolled sales × give-back rate
What the program moves
Enrolled sales per month
$18,400
460 orders from 200 members
Incremental revenue
$2,400
60 extra orders at 15% lift
Margin on the extra orders
$1,560
65% gross margin
Rewards handed out
−$1,840
10.0% of enrolled sales
Net gain by frequency lift
The curve crosses zero at the lift your program needs. To the left the rewards cost more than they earn; to the right the program is paying for itself.
Raise the threshold before cutting the reward
Moving the earn threshold from $50 to a higher number lowers your give-back rate without making the reward feel smaller. Customers judge the reward, not the ratio.
Where the real return comes from
Rewards keep customers ordering for more months, which raises lifetime value beyond the monthly lift shown here. Model that side with the lifetime value calculator.
More free tools
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What one customer is worth, and what you can spend to get one.
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The conversion rate your ads need to pay for themselves.
How much volume can you lose after raising prices and still break even?
How many new orders a promo needs to pay for itself.
Orders per month needed to cover your fixed costs.
Where distance turns a delivery order into a loss.
Food plus labour against the 60% benchmark.
Watch word-of-mouth spread through households — and where it stalls.
Work backwards from the profit you want to the orders and crew it needs.
A rewards program that tracks itself
MenuLogic runs points, tiers and win-back offers on your own ordering site, and reports the incremental orders each one produced.
Book a free demoThese numbers are estimates based on what you enter and what we see across independent restaurants. They are not a guarantee of performance.
