Loyalty points mean more when customers can see them.
A café's regulars were collecting points only the staff could see. We turned them into a public leaderboard and a game that grows with every coffee.
Mona is a moon-themed café in Medan with two outlets. Its regulars collected points and climbed tiers named after the phases of the moon. But the points sat in the till, where only the staff could see them.
Most loyalty programmes work like that. Customers rarely ask the cashier how many points they have. The programme exists, but nobody feels it.
We didn't change how points are earned. We changed who gets to see them.
The leaderboard reads the till.
storyofmona.com now has a Hall of Fame: the café's top regulars, ranked by points, next to the house favourites and the moon-phase tiers. It updates from the café's own sales every five minutes. A coffee bought this morning moves the ranking before lunch.
Two rules keep it from feeling like surveillance. Customers appear only as a first name and an initial. And no phone number or email leaves the till. The site reads a narrow, read-only feed from Rubicon, Mona's point of sale, and that feed carries no contact details.
Now a regular can answer "how am I doing?" without asking anyone, and see who else keeps coming back.
Every coffee grows a creature.
Moonies is a game in the phone's browser, with nothing to install. Each customer hatches a creature for their zodiac sign. Every Rp1,000 they spend at Mona pays a Moon Coin to the player who linked that phone number. Coins buy experience, duel energy and boosts.
Players duel across the table: one phone shows a QR code, the other scans it, and both watch the same fight. New quests arrive daily and weekly. Those marked with a cup can only be done at the café, such as one bill of Rp100,000 or more today.
The top creatures make the arena leaderboard on the café's website, next to the Hall of Fame.
Three choices made it work.
- Visible, not only stored. Points customers can see and compare are worth more to them than points in a database.
- Real money only. Coins come only from paid bills, and refunds take them back. Every fight and coin is settled on the server, so nobody can cheat.
- Nothing for the staff to do. Everything updates itself. Nobody at Mona edits a page.
Are your customers earning points they never think about? Tell us about your programme. The points are usually already there.
