Bring Guests Back: The Manager's Guide to Loyalty Plans 🎁☕

Want to turn first-time visitors into regulars? A great loyalty program gives your guests a reason to choose your restaurant every single time. With NX Restaurant, setting up rewards is simple: you define how guests earn and what they win, and NX automatically tracks check progress, manages balances, and presents rewards right at the register!

Loyalty plans belong to your entire business account rather than a single store. Once created, your plans are shared across all of your venue locations automatically.

🧭 Navigating the Loyalty Dashboard

To get started, log into the NX Portal and click on Loyalty in the left-hand navigation menu.

At the top of the page, you'll see summary stats tracking your total Plans, Active programs, and Enrolled Guests. From here, you can launch new plan builders or manage existing rewards.

1. The Core Concept: How Guests Progress & What They Win 💡

Every loyalty plan answers two simple questions:

Question 1: How does a guest make progress?

Choose one of three earning structures:

By amount spent: Tracks dollars spent on the check. Best for restaurants with varying ticket sizes.
By visit: Tracks total visits, regardless of spend. Best for simple "come back often" rewards.
By item: Tracks specific items purchased. Best for digital punch cards (e.g., "Buy 10 coffees, get 1 free").

Question 2: What do they win?

Choose one of four reward types:

Points: Guests earn a flexible running balance spent like store credit.
Coupon: A fixed reward issued when a threshold is hit (e.g., "$10 off" unlocked).
Free Item: A specific, redeemable menu item.
Auto Discount: A discount that applies automatically at the register with zero friction.

More Info: Rewarding Loyalty: Understanding Your NX Loyalty Plan Options

🪙 Understanding the Points Rule

100 points is always worth $1.00 to your guest.

That single calculation makes setting up points simple:

Giving 1 point per $1 spent = 1% back to the guest.
Giving 5 points per $1 spent = 5% back.
When a guest reaches 500 points, they can redeem $5.00 in store credit.

2. Before You Start Checklist 🏁

Have these two details ready before creating your plan:

The Reward Name: Write it plainly (e.g., "Free Coffee" or "$10 Off"), as guests see this text on receipts, terminals, and their mobile phones.
Earning Pacing: Decide how often a guest should earn a reward (e.g., every 5 visits vs. every 20 visits).

💡 Prerequisite Tip: If you want your reward to apply only to specific menu items (like espresso drinks or wine), build an Item Filter under Configuration > Item Filters first. If you plan to send automated text/email notifications, build your templates under Marketing first.

3. Creating Your First Plan 🚀

Click Loyalty in the portal to choose from three setup methods:

Option A: Start with Nexy AI (Fastest) 🤖

Click Start with Nexy AI and describe your vision in everyday English:

"Buy 9 coffees, get the 10th free"

"1 point per dollar spent, $5 off at 500 points, points expire in 90 days"

Nexy generates a complete Draft Plan. Nothing is live or sent to guests yet. A purple banner explains Nexy's choices so you can adjust settings before saving.

Option B: Guided Setup 🧙‍♂️

Click New plan > Guided setup. NX walks you through a 4-step wizard:

Basics: Name your plan or pick a ready-made template (like Coffee Punch Card or Spend & Save).
How Guests Earn: Set spend, visit, or item rules.
The Reward: Define the payout or point threshold.
Review: Sanity-check your settings before saving.

Option C: Blank Plan 🛠️

Select Blank plan to configure every parameter manually from scratch.

4. How Guests Earn 📈

Configure your earning rules using intuitive fill-in-the-blank sentences:

[Insert Screenshot Here: The 'How guests earn' settings card displaying the fill-in-the-blank sentence configuration tool]

Spend for Points: "Every $1 a guest spends earns [1] point".
Visits for Rewards: "After [10] visits, a guest earns [Free Coffee]".
Items for Punch Cards: "Every [10] qualifying items a guest buys earns [Free Coffee]".

🔍 Important Earning Rules

What Counts as Spend: Points generate from the food and drink subtotal, before tax and after applied discounts. Gift card purchases do not earn points.
Punch Card Quantities: Quantities count! Ordering 3 lattes on a single check counts as 3 punches.
Bonus Rules: Speed up earning for specific categories by setting multiplier rules (e.g., "Items matching [Wine] earn [2]x base rate"), while the rest of the menu earns normally.
Expiring Points: Leave set to 0 so points never expire. If set, guests receive advance warnings before points clear.

5. Setting Up Rewards 🎁

Pick your reward type and assign a guest-facing name.

[Insert Screenshot Here: The 'The reward' configuration card showing selected reward types and guest-facing text fields]

Reward Value & Maximum Discount: Set ceilings on free items so guests cannot turn a free drip coffee into an elaborate drink with six extra shots.
Max Rewards Per Check: Prevents a large catering order from clearing multiple punch cards at once. Excess items roll forward toward the guest's next card.

6. Checking Your Work Before Going Live 🧪

As you build, two side panels update in real time:

What the Guest Sees: A live preview of the digital wallet card showing your custom colors, wording, and reward names.
How Long to a Reward?: Enter a typical check size and visit frequency to calculate average earning time.

⚠️ Sanity Check: If the calculator reads "About 40 weeks to first reward", your threshold is too high! If it reads "This visit", you may be giving away too much too quickly.

7. Turning the Plan On 🛑➡️🟢

All new plans start Paused by default so you can test safely.

When you're ready, flip the Active / Paused toggle switch in the top right corner.

💡 Auto-Enrollment Warning: If "Enroll guests automatically" is enabled, activating the plan immediately enrolls every guest in your database. If welcome messages are active, those guests will receive an instant notification.

8. Managing Guests & Bulk Actions 👥

Click the Guests tab to view your enrolled database, active point balances, lifetime totals, and available rewards.

Select guests using the checkboxes to open the blue action bar:

Action	What It Does
Enroll Guests	Adds existing database guests to the plan.
Award Points	Adds points as a goodwill gesture or for missed visits.
Adjust Points	Corrects a balance up or down (requires an internal audit reason).
Grant Reward	Issues a reward directly to an enrolled guest.

🛡️ Safety Guardrail: Bulk adjustments are capped at 500 guests at a time to prevent accidental mass changes. Before applying changes, click Preview to review a line-by-line before-and-after breakdown.

9. Understanding Program Analytics 📊

Open the Overview tab to track overall program health, active member counts, issued rewards, and outstanding liabilities.

[Insert Screenshot Here: The Overview dashboard showing enrollment metrics and the 'New guests per week' chart]

Outstanding Balance: Tracks the total financial value guests could redeem today. This serves as your accounting liability metric.
Points Plan Totals: Points plans display exact lifetime totals instead of weekly trend graphs because points operate as a single running balance.

10. Common Step-by-Step Setups 📋

Coffee Punch Card: Run Guided Setup > select Coffee shop punch card > link your Espresso Item Filter under How Guests Earn.
1 Point Per $1 ($5 Off at 500 Points): Run Guided Setup > select Casual dining points template.
Double Points on Wine: Open your spend plan > click Add bonus rule under How Guests Earn > select your Wine filter > set multiplier to 2x.
Paid VIP Club: Run Guided Setup > select Paid VIP membership > set subscription price and billing intervals.

Need Help? 🛠️

A guest didn't earn points on their check.

Check these items in order:

Is the plan set to Active?

Is the guest enrolled under the Guests tab?

Did their spend clear the threshold after discounts and before taxes?

If using a By-Item plan, did they purchase items matching your filter?

Why is my Save button greyed out in the portal?

Check the footer bar at the bottom of your screen. The portal names the missing required field (e.g., missing reward name or threshold value).

Can I run multiple loyalty plans at the same time?

Yes! Guests can be enrolled in multiple active plans simultaneously (e.g., earning points on total spend while earning punches on a seasonal drink card). Keep in mind that both rewards accrue on the same check.

What happens if I delete a plan?

⚠️ Deleting a plan permanently erases all guest enrollments and earned balances with no undo. If you want to stop a program temporarily, set the plan to Paused instead to preserve all customer data!