Vita Mojo sheds light on loyalty scheme change
Vita Mojo concluded the scheme to be unsustainable.
In a statement, the brand said: Many of you have been asking about our rationale for changing the loyalty scheme and we wanted to be fully transparent.
First of all, many thanks to all of you that have shared your honest opinions. It’s really important for us to know how changes are perceived and we completely understand that some of you may feel slightly disappointed in the slight decrease in generosity that comes with Mojos.
We want you to know that we debated a lot about the value of this scheme internally but unfortunately leaving the loyalty programme as it stands was concluded to be unsustainable. This was not an easy decision, but an important one for the business.
To give you context: with our old loyalty cards we gave approximately £1.15 back for every order made with us. Considering how much our meals cost this presents, on average, an almost 15% discount every time a loyal customer orders with us. Talk to anyone in the restaurant industry and they will tell you that this was one of the most generous loyalty schemes ever.
When you think about it, most chains offer a free coffee or maybe a muffin/cake/etc (which typically costs next to nothing due to high margins on these products) after you visit them more than a certain number of times.
Even massively profitable mega-chains like Starbucks ask that you visit them 15 times before they give you anything for free. Other quick-service restaurant chains like LEON and Pret don’t offer loyalty schemes at all. As we are still young and digital first we want to pioneer concepts like digital loyalty in the space, but unfortunately cannot do so at a cost which isn’t sustainable for the business.
Some of you have said that the current loyalty set-up made our ‘high prices’ manageable. We often find these comments surprising as we actually think we’re pretty cheap. We wrote about how we compare to others vis-a-vis price in this: Do you know the true cost of your meal? This might help shed a bit of light on how competition gets away with the perception of being ‘cheaper’. We’ve needed to increase our prices because we don’t benefit from economies of scale like larger chains (we only have two restaurants — 3rd opening soon) and the quality of our produce demands it for us to make reasonable margins.
Digital loyalty redemption rates are a lot higher typically than with paper cards. This is in part why we’ve put up the number of meals needed (effectively to 10 with our minimum balance of ‘Mojos’) to be able to manage the transition. Just think about those cards that you’ve lost or forgotten at home… This might help you understand why making this slightly higher was important. If it appears that our hypothesis was wrong, we will definitely consider bringing this down.
We have lots of ideas on quirky rules with Mojos (coming soon) and having this online loyalty system will allow us to be a lot more creative and generous with our most loyal customers. We’ll truly be able to surprise and (hopefully) delight you, rather than simply give you a set discount for coming to us an arbitrary number of times. We also plan on allowing you to get Vita Mojo merchandise and selected partner gifts using your Mojos. So there will be a lot more flexibility in how you use ‘Mojos’ and get rewarded for your loyalty. More on this very soon.
Doing personalised food at scale isn’t easy, and doing so in a way that grows the business sustainably while rewarding loyal customers isn’t an easy balance to get right. Thank you so much for your support over the years, Vita Mojo would not be the same without our loyal fans!
We hope this sheds some light as to why we’ve taken the steps to change our loyalty scheme and really look forward to seeing you in store again soon.
