How Kahwa Coffee Transformed Loyalty with a Lean Team in <100 Days

• Built for a lean team: Self-service marketing tools and automations help Kahwa do more without adding operational complexity.
• More than discounts: Kahwa can engage guests through targeted rewards and promotions while maintaining a 2.3% effective discount rate.
• Connected ordering and loyalty: Thanx's Olo integration creates a seamless experience across digital ordering, loyalty, and restaurant operations.
• Flexible and easy to manage: The team can launch promotions, test new ideas, analyze performance, and make program changes themselves.

Kahwa Coffee spent nearly a decade with one loyalty provider. When that provider shut the program down, Kahwa had to replace it with a lean team and a POS few loyalty platforms support. They were live on Thanx in 99 days. The app updated overnight, and the next morning guests opened the same app they already had, signed in with their email, no password to remember, and found their points and rewards already in their accounts. No new download, no new enrollment.

With a historically small marketing team, Kahwa needed technology that could make sophisticated loyalty marketing easier to execute. Thanx gives the team self-service control over promotions and automated campaigns, eliminating the need to rebuild recurring programs from scratch. Built-in A/B testing and analytics also make it easier to test, learn, and optimize without requiring additional resources.

Kahwa uses loyalty to build frequency without relying on broad discounts. 44% of first-time purchasers return for a third visit within 120 days, while the program maintains an effective discount rate of just 2.3%. Automated reminders, targeted promotions, and rewards give the team more ways to bring guests back while protecting margins.

Thanx's Olo integration connects loyalty and digital ordering from the guest experience through restaurant operations, with real-time updates to products, hours, and other critical information. Kahwa has also extended loyalty into its Bite kiosk experience, allowing guests to access and redeem rewards across more ordering touchpoints as the brand's technology stack evolves.