Apps & Technology 9 min read
How to Get App Store Ratings for Your Café App
Star ratings decide whether a curious local installs your app. Here's the compliant way to ask, when to trigger it, and what to do about a one-star review.
Tag
Posts tagged “cafe marketing”
23 posts
Marketing 9 min read
Are Google Ads Worth It for a Coffee Shop?
An honest cost-per-order breakdown of Google Ads for an independent café, the four situations where it's genuinely worth it, and the free work that beats it.
Mobile Apps 10 min read
Where Are Your App Downloads Coming From? A Café Owner's Guide
Impressions, product page views, first-time downloads: what the two app dashboards actually measure, and how to tag your own links so you can tell what's working.
Local SEO 8 min read
How to Get Your Café Recommended by ChatGPT & AI Search
AI assistants answer 'best coffee near me' with named recommendations. Here's how to make your café one of them, using the same signals that already power local search.
Marketing 6 min read
How Much Should a Café Spend on Marketing?
How much a café should spend on marketing, what to spend it on, and why the cheapest 'marketing' is often keeping the customers you already have.
Local SEO 7 min read
Local SEO for Coffee Shops: Rank in the Map Pack
A plain-English guide to the three signals behind Google's local pack, and the specific moves that get a café into the top three for 'coffee near me.'
Marketing 7 min read
Is Square Marketing Worth It for a Café? Cost & Alternatives
Square Marketing is convenient because it sits on your Square customer data. Here's the honest cost breakdown and where cheaper, higher-reach channels beat it.
Guides 8 min read
How to Launch a Seasonal or Limited-Time Drink on Square
The full playbook for a limited-time drink on Square: schedule it, price it, and use scarcity, push, and loyalty to drive the traffic spike.
Marketing 7 min read
A2P 10DLC: How US Cafés Register to Text Customers
If your café texts customers from a 10-digit number in the US, carriers require A2P 10DLC registration. A plain-English guide to brands, campaigns, and fees.
Marketing 7 min read
How to Drive Café Orders From TikTok
Views are not orders. Here's how to build TikTok videos around a clear next step and route the traffic into an ordering channel you control.
Loyalty & Retention 7 min read
Gift Cards vs. Loyalty: Which Drives More Café Visits?
Gift cards and loyalty solve different retention problems. Here's what each actually does for repeat café visits, what they cost, and why most cafés should run both.
Marketing & Growth 7 min read
How to Get Your Square Ordering Page to Rank on Google
A practical SEO walkthrough for getting your Square Online ordering page found on Google — page titles, custom domains, item pages, and the indexing steps most owners skip.
Guides 7 min read
Menu Photos & Descriptions That Sell More Online Orders
Practical, honest guidance on the menu photos and descriptions that lift online-order conversion and basket size — and how to shoot them on a phone.
Loyalty & Retention 8 min read
How to Set Your Cafe's Loyalty Earn Rate & Rewards
The math behind 'buy 9, get the 10th free' — how to pick an earn rate and reward that drives repeat visits without quietly eating your margin.
Local SEO 6 min read
Is Yelp Worth It for Your Café or Coffee Shop?
An honest cost-benefit look at Yelp for independent cafés, what the free page is worth, and the cheaper channels that usually beat paid Yelp ads.
Loyalty & Retention 8 min read
Birthday Rewards for Coffee Shops: Setup and Real Math
A practical, margin-aware guide to birthday rewards for cafés — what to offer, how to automate it, and how to make sure the free drink earns its keep.
Customer Retention 7 min read
How to Build a Customer List From Your Square POS
A practical guide to turning everyday Square sales into an owned, contactable customer list — and the consent rules you have to follow to use it.
Loyalty & Retention 7 min read
How to Run a Refer-a-Friend Program for Your Café
Turn your regulars into a referral engine: how to structure rewards, protect your margin, and actually track who referred whom on Square.
Marketing 6 min read
How to Drive Café Orders From Instagram
Likes don't pay rent. Here's how to convert Instagram attention into actual café orders — the bio link, the content mix, the Stories play, and how to know it's working.
Marketing 6 min read
How to Get More Google Reviews for Your Café
More recent, higher-rated Google reviews lift your local ranking and win the click. Here's a repeatable, no-incentive system to earn them — and how mobile ordering makes the ask automatic.
Loyalty & Retention 6 min read
Customer Lifetime Value for Coffee Shops, Explained
A plain-language guide to customer lifetime value for cafés — the simple formula, a worked example, and what it changes about how you spend on marketing.
Guides 7 min read
How to Get Customers to Download Your Restaurant App
Building the app is the easy part. Here's the operator-grade playbook for actually getting your regulars to download it and order ahead.
Customer Retention 7 min read
Push Notifications for Cafés: How to Bring Customers Back
A grounded guide to using push notifications to bring café customers back — how they compare to email and SMS, what to send, and what they require to run.