The bakery punch card your regulars can't leave at home

Eight is the standard setting for a bakery. Most bakery regulars come in once or twice a week with the weekend carrying the traffic, so eight stamps puts the reward roughly six to eight weeks out — near enough to feel reachable, far enough that you are rewarding a real habit rather than one good month. If you sell coffee and a pastry to weekday commuters most mornings, ten or twelve fits the faster cadence; if your typical order is a €25 weekend cake, six is plenty. You can change the number at any time and existing cards update themselves.

No. The punch card is saved into Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, which are already on the phone — the same place boarding passes and event tickets live. Customers scan your QR code once, tap Add, and the card is there; there is no account to create and no password to remember. All that is stored is the pass and its stamp count, on servers in Germany.

€5 per month, or €50 per year. That covers unlimited customer cards and unlimited stamps — there are no per-stamp or per-transaction fees, no card readers or scanners to buy, and no minimum term. Compared with reprinting paper cards every few months and buying stamp pads, it usually costs about the same or less.

A stamp is one scan from your own phone and takes about two seconds — the customer holds up their wallet pass, you scan it, and the count updates on their screen. Any staff phone works, so you can stamp at the till, at the bread wall, or wherever the queue actually ends up. It is faster than finding the right paper card in a wallet and inking a stamp.

No. Stamps are added only from a phone that is logged into your Stampd account, so the card in the customer's wallet can be shown but never self-stamped. Each scan adds exactly one stamp, and a photo or screenshot of someone else's pass does not earn anything, because the stamp lands on the pass in your account rather than on a piece of card stock. Redeeming a full card is also done by your staff, so a reward can only be claimed once.

Stamp at collection, not at the order. When the customer comes in to pick up the cake or the pre-ordered bread they have their phone with them, so you scan the pass as you hand the box over. That is usually a better moment than the phone call anyway — it puts the punch card in front of the customer exactly when they are already pleased with the order.

One scan adds one stamp, which is what keeps the counter fast, so price the reward off your average basket rather than your biggest one — a free pastry or a house loaf after eight visits stays sensible whether those visits were small or large. If you would rather reward the size of the order, staff can simply scan a second time for a large pre-order or a full bread shop, since every scan adds a stamp. Decide the house rule once, tell the team, and it stays consistent.