A loyalty app that hit №1 on iOS at launch.

Wagamama had no loyalty scheme while its rivals did. They needed to lift visit frequency and build a relationship with guests beyond the four walls of the restaurant, but there was no proven model for what loyalty should even mean for a brand built on food and hospitality.

I started with discovery to set the loyalty strategy, rather than jumping straight to features. We ran dual-track agile with heavy user research, and chose a flexible content platform so the product could keep evolving after launch.

The insight that shaped everything was to design the loyalty loop around the real in-restaurant moment: check in at your table, earn a stamp, redeem a reward, all while you are actually there.

I led a cross-functional team of 30+ from inception, and owned the proposition design and the loyalty mechanic itself. Soul Club is a check-in flow tied to your restaurant and table, a stamp-based rewards engine with redemption and minimum-spend logic, a content-led feed of recipes, events and editorial, and an ordering and split-bill flow with a web-wrapped payment journey.

The app launched around nine months after build began.

Soul Club launched at №1 on the iOS App Store for Food & Drink. Over a million people signed up in the first nine months, and visit frequency rose 58% after launch. Floor staff folded check-in into the way they welcomed guests to the table, so the product became part of the actual dining ritual rather than a separate app.

Loyalty is not points, it is a reason to come back. The content feed drove incremental visits as much as the rewards did. And designing for the physical table moment, instead of a generic loyalty app, is what made people actually use it.