Memberships Embedded in Order Flow
Chris Webb, CEO of ChowNow, on the new restaurant stack
Most pandemic era restaurant memberships failed because they added work without becoming part of the daily operating loop. A wine club or paid subscription sounds attractive as recurring revenue, but someone still has to choose the bottles, pack orders, manage pickup or shipping, answer customer questions, and track redemptions. Once dining rooms reopened, operators put their limited time back into dine in, takeout, and direct ordering, which were already proven to matter at scale.
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The restaurant stack that stuck after COVID was the stack tied to core order flow. Direct ordering, POS, delivery orchestration, loyalty, email, and payments stayed important because they help process every order, while side programs like clubs and events often stayed small and manual.
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The economics explain the drop off. Restaurants were already operating on thin margins, with delivery marketplaces taking about 30% and leaving many operators near 1% to 2% margins, so any extra program had to produce real dollars fast or it was not worth the labor.
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The versions with the best chance to last are the ones embedded into normal spend. ChowNow described a membership where a diner pays about $100 up front, then gets discounts over many future orders, which spreads the cost over repeat purchases instead of creating a one time redemption wave like gift cards.
Going forward, recurring revenue in restaurants is likely to survive only when software turns it into a low touch default behavior. That means membership and loyalty products attached to ordering, payments, and CRM, not standalone side hustles. The winners in restaurant software will be the platforms that make repeat spend automatic, instead of asking operators to run a second business beside the restaurant.