I built the mechanic around a named reward currency: customers collect Beans in a Bean Jar. Two tiers sit on top, Brew Crew and Brew Master, alongside badges earned for specific activities, Daily Grinder for five days running, Brewtally Loyal at ten brews, Hopper & Proud for sharing. Brew Master earns 20% more Beans, so the upper tier has a concrete reason to exist.

The programme starts in the café. I designed QR table tents carrying the same illustration system, so customers move from the table to the microsite in a single scan with nothing to download.

The real design tension wasn't whether to gamify, but how to keep a multi-layered system of tiers, badges, and points legible rather than confusing. I built the experience mobile-first and prioritised making a customer's status obvious at a glance: Bean balance, current tier, and earned badges all visible on the home screen without digging through menus, so the gamification added motivation without adding friction. I designed and built the microsite myself using AI-assisted development, which kept design intent intact from prototype through to the shipped product.

• Named reward system: Beans collected in a Bean Jar, two tiers, and activity-based badges

• Brew Master tier earns 20% more Beans, giving the upper tier a concrete benefit

• QR table tents designed for in-café sign-up, moving customers from table to microsite in one scan with no app download

• Mobile-first home screen surfacing Bean balance, tier, and earned badges at a glance

• Original cubism-inspired illustration set extended across badge cards and in-café collateral

Five months after launch, the programme has 2,383 members, 79% more than the platform it replaced, with around 200 people joining each month and no paid acquisition behind it. The clearest signal that the earn-and-burn loop works is redemption: 96.1% of claimed rewards were actually used in store, and three in four members who bought once came back. Monthly active members grew every month, from 397 to 790.

The commercial numbers need reading carefully. Member baskets run slightly below anonymous ones, because the programme attracts individual regulars rather than large group orders, and any member who pays without scanning is invisible in the data. The case for this programme is frequency, not basket size.

Designing and building it myself meant nothing was lost in handoff, but it also meant owning every trade-off directly: what to ship, what to simplify, and what to leave for later. The gamification could have gone much further. The discipline was in not letting it, and keeping the loop legible while the programme found its feet.