Proposed · Not Yet Built
Subscriptions, loyalty & the full integration forecast
A loyalty program built the way Mimi's actually works — a free way in that costs nothing to try, a paid tier for the regulars who'd happily pay for a standing perk, and a family option for the households who are already here every week. Everything in this section is a proposal for Joe to weigh in on, not a decision that's been made or a system that's been built.
Why a tiered model, not just a punch card
A free punch card earns loyalty but no revenue. A single paid tier earns revenue but caps out at whoever's willing to pay one price. A few tiers instead capture different kinds of customers at once: the casual regular who just wants something free, the committed regular who'd pay monthly for a standing perk, and the family who's already here every week and would rather pay once for everyone than juggle separate visits. An early-supporter price on top of that rewards the people who join before it's proven, and gives the shop real cash up front to fund the rest of the build.
Proposed membership tiers
| Tier | Price | What it includes |
|---|
| Scoop Card (free) | $0 | Digital punch card via the site, birthday scoop, first look at new flavors by email/text — the free tier's whole job is building a real customer list, not revenue. |
| Sweet Treats Club | ~$9.99/mo (proposed) | One free regular scoop every month, 10% off every visit, member-only social content, early access to limited flavors before they're posted publicly. |
| Family Scoop Pass | ~$19.99/mo (proposed) | Everything in the Club tier, covering the whole household — multiple monthly scoops, a standing Family Fun Night reservation perk, and a credit toward party bookings. |
Founding member pricing (capped, limited-time): the first 100 or so Club and Family sign-ups lock in a lower rate for as long as they stay subscribed. Once the cap is hit, new members pay the standing rate above. Rewards the regulars who join on day one, and gives everyone else a real reason to join now instead of "eventually."
Every price above is a starting proposal, not a decision — real small-business loyalty pricing needs to be checked against actual margin per scoop before anything goes live.
A fifth funnel goal: LOYALTY
The four funnel goals already running (STORE, FOLLOW, TRUST, WEB) would gain a fifth: LOYALTY — content whose one job is turning a follower into a paying member, or a free Scoop Card holder into a Club subscriber. Member spotlights, "here's what Club members are getting this month" posts, and a founding-member countdown would all fall under this goal, same as every other post gets labeled with exactly one job before it's built.
How it all connects — the full integration map
Website — needs real account infrastructure: sign-up, tier selection, subscription billing (Stripe is the standard fit here), and a simple members page showing what's included and when the next perk resets.
Point of sale (Clover) — a member needs to be recognized at the register to redeem a perk. This plugs directly into the Clover integration already wired up for the owner dashboard this year — the same connection that reads sales data can be extended to check membership status.
Email & text — the free tier's entire value is the list it builds. That list is what makes the paid tiers sellable later — you can't upsell a Club membership to someone you have no way to reach.
Social media — becomes the discovery layer for all of it: every post above still does its STORE/FOLLOW/TRUST/WEB job, and a LOYALTY post occasionally invites the audience to become a Scoop Card holder, then eventually a Club member.
Rollout forecast — start free, earn the paid tiers
Phase 1 (now-ish): launch the free Scoop Card only. No billing to build yet, no commitment from Joe — just start capturing emails/texts through the site and in-store, and start posting LOYALTY content that frames it as "join now, more coming."
Phase 2 (once the free list has real size): introduce Sweet Treats Club and Family Scoop Pass, with founding-member pricing open for a capped, limited time to convert the warmest part of that list first.
Phase 3 (ongoing): founding pricing closes, standing rates take over, and the weekly review loop already built into the content process starts tracking a real number for the LOYALTY goal — sign-ups and conversions — the same way it already tracks the other four.
3-year subscription revenue forecast
This is a modeled estimate, not a promise. The population numbers below are real and sourced; everything about how many people actually join and stay is an assumption built from typical small local-business loyalty programs, not from Mimi's own numbers — because that data doesn't exist yet since the program hasn't launched. Treat the range between the three scenarios as the honest answer, not any single number in it.
The real anchor: who's actually reachable. Delta city itself is about 10,000 people (median age 40.3, median household income $45,250, growing about 1.6%/year). Delta County as a whole is about 32,200. A realistic trade area for a Main Street shop — city plus the closest reachable pockets of the county — lands around 16,000 people. That's the ceiling this whole forecast works within; there's no version of this where Mimi's has 50,000 potential subscribers, because Delta doesn't have 50,000 people.
The assumptions doing the work (all estimates, not measurements): free Scoop Card adoption reaching roughly 3–8% of the trade area cumulatively by year 3 depending on scenario; 5–15% of active free members eventually upgrading to a paid tier as the program proves itself; a 75/25 split between the Club and Family tiers; monthly churn easing from around 7% in year 1 (before the habit sets in) to 4% by year 3; and founding-member pricing available to roughly the first 100 paid sign-ups before standard rates take over.
| Scenario | Year 1 (partial-year launch) | Year 2 | Year 3 | 3-year total |
|---|
Conservative
slow word-of-mouth, higher churn | ~20 paid members
~$900 revenue | ~55 paid members
~$5,200 revenue | ~95 paid members
~$10,800 revenue | ~$16,900 |
Base case
steady local adoption | ~30 paid members
~$1,400 revenue | ~86 paid members
~$7,800 revenue | ~156 paid members
~$16,900 revenue | ~$26,100 |
Optimistic
strong word-of-mouth, low churn | ~45 paid members
~$2,100 revenue | ~135 paid members
~$12,600 revenue | ~245 paid members
~$27,200 revenue | ~$41,900 |
Base case exits year 3 around 156 paid subscribers — about 1% of the entire trade area — bringing in roughly $1,870/month in recurring revenue by that point, still climbing. That's a deliberately modest, believable number for a single-location shop in a town this size, not a hockey-stick projection.
What would actually sharpen this: Mimi's real current unique-customer count (from Clover), current social following size, and actual margin per scoop. Plug those in and every number above gets replaced with a real one instead of an industry-typical assumption. Worth running the free tier alone for a full quarter before committing to paid-tier infrastructure spend — real sign-up data from that quarter would replace most of the guesswork here.
Population/income/age figures sourced from World Population Review and USAFacts county data, 2025–2026 estimates. Everything past that point (adoption rates, conversion, churn) is a modeled assumption, not a citation.
What Joe actually needs to decide before any of this gets built
Real pricing. The numbers above are placeholders based on typical small-business loyalty pricing, not Mimi's actual margin per scoop.
Payment processor. Whether Stripe (or an alternative) is the right fit alongside the existing Clover setup.
How perks get redeemed in-store. Whether staff check membership manually, via a Clover lookup, or a simple app/card scan — this determines a real chunk of the build work.
Whether a "family" tier makes sense for a shop this size, or if two tiers (free + one paid) is the right amount of complexity to start with.
