The right loyalty program for a tea or beverage chain

Tealive puts itself at "over 900 outlets across three continents". The first four rules are from its FAQ and the last two from member-benefit pop-ups that its homepage carries, read on 10 October 2026. The last column is our arithmetic, not Tealive's.

The pages did not agree that day. An "Earn Tpoints" pop-up, carried on the homepage, the Loyalty App page and the FAQ page alike, said "Earn 1 Tpoint for every RM1 spent". The Loyalty App page itself said "Up to 4X Points Every RM1 Spent*" and "Get 4 Points With Every RM1 Spent*", and the FAQ dates its 2, 3 or 4 from 9 October 2023. A rule with this many parts is hard to keep straight, even on the company's own pages.

The 301 and 1,001 in the table are what it takes to reach Silver and Gold. Keeping a level has its own figures: within three months of their last transaction, a member must earn 300 Tpoints for Silver or 700 for Gold. At Silver's 3 Tpoints for RM1 that is RM100 of drinks, and at Gold's 4 it is RM175. At RM7.70 a drink, the price line in the welcome offer, Silver means about one drink a week and Gold nearly two.

A Gold member who spends exactly RM175 in three months earns 700 Tpoints, worth RM7.00. The same spending at Bronze's rate earns RM3.50. Over three months, Gold is worth RM3.50 more than the bottom level. The FAQ says "The higher your tier, the greater the benefits," and sets out none in numbers except the earn rate.

So the part with the most rules moves the least money. The ten-drink offer gives back more than twice what Gold does, in one line.

Tealive has an app to do the explaining: "When you download & register the Tealive App, you will automatically become a member", and at the counter the member is asked to "flash your membership barcode". A smaller chain with no app has the person at the counter, and the queue behind the customer.

Levels are common in this trade: CHAGEE's App Store listing in Malaysia says "Earn Experience to reach higher tiers for greater benefits", with no rates. The research on taking a level away is less encouraging.

A paper published in 2009 reports two experiments, in which people were given a scenario and asked about their loyalty, and a field study using a company's own sales data. Its abstract concludes that "loyalty intentions are indeed lower for demoted customers than for those who have never been awarded a preferred status." A customer given a status and then moved down ended up less loyal than one who never had it. We read the abstract only, and it is not about drinks.

A second study, also read in abstract, covers 358 grocery banners in 27 European countries. The plain kind of program, one "that offers direct and immediate rewards", had a positive effect, and that effect "disappears when retailers operate a more complex progressive-reward system". An earn rate that rises with the level looks progressive to us; the abstract does not define the word.

Under Tealive's three-month rule, a student who was Gold all semester and spent the long break at home can come back to find they are Silver.

native.cards has none of this. There are no levels and no earn rate that rises with spending. Points and Stamps do not expire. It holds no stored credit, so an offer tied to prepaid money is out too. If your plan depends on any of those, it is the wrong tool. What is left is the part that gives back the most.

Your customers already know the ten-drink deal. In native.cards it is a Stamp card with Stamps to fill a card set to 10 and a free drink as the reward. Size it so a regular fills it in about a month: at the campus café in How soon should customers earn their first reward?, finished ten-coffee cards took 24.6 days on average. That is the study's main count of ordinary cards, not its separate head-start test.

Tea is often bought in rounds. A stamp is "Given only after staff confirm a qualifying purchase at the counter", one for the purchase and not one for each cup, and staff cannot add stamps by hand. The customer who pays for four drinks gets one stamp.

If rounds are a large part of your sales, count Points instead, because Points follow the amount. Leave Points per unit of spend at 1 and set the price of the reward under It costs. As an example with made-up prices: where drinks sell at about RM9, a free drink for 90 Points is ten drinks' worth of spending, and a RM36 round earns four times what one cup does. Switch on Can be earned more than once, which starts off.

Points cost time at the counter. Where a program counts only Stamps, the serving screen reads This visit and asks for no amount: scan, Staff PIN, Record purchase. With Points the crew member also types the Purchase amount, for every member, at every outlet. Choose before you submit, because a live program's earning rules cannot be changed. See Points, stamps or visits: which should you use?

Two more things are worth copying. Tealive's five cheap drinks give a new member a reason to return five times. native.cards has no joining bonus, and a new card cannot start with stamps on it, so record the drink a customer is buying as they join and they leave with the first stamp. The Thursday second cup is a weekly reason to come in. List a deal like it under Rewards And Benefits as an Offer, with It comes with membership, shown to Members only. Your crew ring up the price at your POS, and native.cards checks the wording before members see it.

A new drink is the news a tea chain has most often, and it does not go to everyone. When you write a notification, What is it about? gives four choices. News about your business is described as "Opening hours, a closure, a new outlet." A new drink is not on that list. native.cards checks new wording before it goes out, and phrases such as "new menu", "just launched" and "now available" read as promotion. So a launch goes out as An offer or promotion, which "Only reaches members who agreed to offers."

Members agree when they join, by ticking an optional box that starts unticked: "Send me offers and news in Wallet." The box appears only if you wrote the wording for it. In program setup the step is Offers and news, if you send them, and it says: "Leave it blank and people are simply not asked." A chain that left it blank has nobody to tell about its next drink.

Then count. On Home, the Audience view shows Can get offers: "Card holders with offer notifications on." The notification form shows the count before you send, as members who "agreed to offers". As an example with made-up numbers: if 1,000 members hold your card and 400 ticked the box, your launch reaches 400.

Submit the wording ahead of launch week, because it is checked first, and choose At a set time for launch morning. Zero notification fees.

An opening is different. "A new outlet" is on the list, so that news reaches every card holder.

One program covers the chain. In setup, Outlets that take this card lists your outlets, each with the note "Its counter can serve these members." A member can collect stamps at one outlet and claim the drink at another. The rules and rewards are the same at all of them: see How to run one program across several outlets.

A Staff member "Serves customers at one outlet", and the outlet setting says "Their counter access works at this outlet only." Someone covering a shift elsewhere needs that changed under Team Access first.

Give each outlet its own join sign. In QR Materials, under Ready-made QR codes, use Your own to add a category named for the outlet: "Shown in Performance, never to customers. Its code is live at once." A new outlet, though, is reviewed before it appears, so add it well before opening week.

Then open Locations, under Counter. New members who came back is "Of members whose first visit at an outlet was 30 to 180 days ago, the share who visited again within 30 days". It names your best outlet beside your weakest once two outlets each have 20 such first visits. A campus kiosk and a mall outlet differ for reasons no crew controls, so compare each outlet with its own earlier months first.