Katie Donahue

I'm Katie Donahue, and I grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts, in a big Irish American family where Sunday dinner was loud, crowded and full of stories. My grandmother saved coupons in an old coffee can on the counter, and the rule in our house was simple: hands off. I think that can is where my soft spot for a good deal began.

For twelve years I ran the front of house at a family diner in Worcester. I seated the booths, poured refills, rang up checks when the line backed up and learned exactly how each regular liked their eggs. Weekdays could be painfully quiet, so one slow week I had a stack of paper punch cards printed on cheap cardstock at the local copy shop. The first batch had "coffee" spelled wrong on every single card, and we handed out all five hundred anyway because a reprint wasn't in the budget. Nobody seemed to mind, and over the next year those cards helped turn our sleepy Tuesdays into a room full of familiar faces.

That's why I write here about loyalty programs, low-budget marketing and filling slow nights. I'd love for more small owners to stop paying outside apps for guests who could be their own, and to learn the names of the people sitting at the counter instead. I get frustrated by rewards nobody can actually reach, by whole budgets blown on one flashy month, and by programs so complicated the staff can't explain them. I'll share the stories that worked, and I'll be just as honest about the ones that flopped, because I think a good mistake teaches more than a polished success story. Your street, menu and season will shape your results, so I won't promise you a number. What I can promise is plain talk and ideas a small team can actually pull off.

When I'm not writing, I'm usually in some diner booth with a light coffee, no sugar, reading the community board and quietly counting the stamps on the punch card of the person next to me. I also keep a shoebox stuffed with menus and flyers I've picked up along the way, and I still can't walk past a good one without taking it home.

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