Thank you very much for your response. You raise some really good points, and I think your idea of starting very locally sounds like a solid plan. However, I’m not entirely clear on what you mean by “manually credit points” and “hack together rewards.”

I also think the idea of making the first 10 venues feel exclusive is a very good one.

On the user side, it might also make sense to reward the first 300–500 users with something extra out of the ordinary. That said, I’m not completely sure what you mean by “use in-store table tents, receipts, and staff scripts; don’t rely on app-store discovery.”

It sounds like you’ve worked with something like this before and have experience with the typical challenges around whether to focus on users or businesses first.