Pick a type and we pre-fill industry benchmarks. Swap in your real numbers wherever you know them.
Turn each lever on or off and adjust the assumptions to fit your group.
Card data shows which regulars have gone quiet while there's still time to bring them back. Without it, they just disappear.
69% of first-time guests never come back, but guests who reach visit four almost always stay (95%). Seeing who visited once lets you reach them before they forget you.
The smallest lever there is: each regular comes in just once more a year, from a timely reason to return.
A regular at one of your spots already trusts you. Today you can't see that they've never tried the others.
How the math works, and what to do with it.
Multiply your average check by how many times a regular visits in a year. That gives you what one regular is worth annually. For example, a casual full-service regular with a $39 average check who visits 18 times a year is worth about $702 a year.
Multiply that by your number of regulars and you get what your regulars bring in today, which is the baseline this calculator starts from.
A regular is a guest who comes back on a predictable rhythm, visiting about as often as is typical for your type of restaurant. That could be several times a week at a coffee shop or a few times a year at a fine-dining room. The calculator pre-fills a typical visit range for each restaurant type, which you can replace with your own numbers.
69% of first-time guests never return (Upserve Guest Data / Magid). Usually it isn't a bad experience. More often there is no reason or reminder to come back, and the restaurant has no way of knowing who visited once. Guests who make it to a fourth visit are a different story: 95% keep coming back (Paytronix 2025). Getting first-timers to that point is one of the biggest levers a restaurant group has.
The most reliable source is your guest data. A POS that recognizes returning cards, like Upserve's guest book, can show who visits, how often, and who has gone quiet. If you don't have that yet, a manager's estimate is a reasonable place to start. The calculator uses one, and you can refine it once you have real counts.
Revenue. The calculator estimates added sales, not margin. To estimate profit, apply your own margin to the total. Repeat visits from existing guests generally don't carry the marketing cost of finding new ones.
It's an estimate built from published industry benchmarks, and each one is labeled as hard data, derived, or estimated in the notes under the calculator. Every number is editable, so the result is as accurate as the inputs you give it. Treat it as a way to size the opportunity, not a forecast.
Yes. Add a row for each concept with its own type, average check, visit frequency, and number of regulars. Once you have two or more concepts, a fourth lever appears that estimates the value of introducing regulars at one concept to your others.
