How to Price an Unlimited Coffee Membership

Start from cost, not from a competitor's price

The most common pricing mistake is picking a number because it sounds reasonable, or because another shop charges it. Start instead from your actual cost per drink, milk, cup, labor share, and work up from there.

Model usage as a range, not an average

Unlimited plans attract heavier users than metered ones. If your average customer visits twice a week, your membership base will skew toward people who visit more than that, sometimes far more. Price against a realistic heavy-use scenario, not just the average customer you have today.

As an illustrative example, LoyaltyLovin's own product demo models a coffee shop membership at $19 a month with one included drink per visit. That number is specific to that demo's assumptions, not a universal benchmark for what any coffee shop should charge.

Account for displaced purchases

Some members would have bought a coffee anyway, at full price, without a membership. Their membership fee replaces revenue you already had, not revenue you're adding. Others visit more often because the marginal cost of a visit is now zero to them, that's the incremental behavior a membership is actually trying to create.

Separating those two groups, even roughly, is the difference between collected revenue and actual profit from the program. See the profit calculator for a worked version of this split.

Price add-ons deliberately

Size upgrades, alternative milk, extra shots, and food discounts are usually where a membership program's real margin comes from, not the base fee itself. Price these based on their own cost, not as an afterthought.

Leave room to adjust

Treat the first price as a hypothesis. Watch redemption rate and average visits per member closely in the first few months, and adjust the included allowance or price before losing money on a segment you didn't anticipate.