So, actually, I think this part is potentially a problem Insom:

“Every time a platinum customer comes into my store, send them a push notification telling them to show this message to the host to get priority seating.”

This is a strong point of the app. That is providing real value to customers. But, right now, this is just another feature or added benefit of the app. In my opinion, an app that solely allowed people to get perks at restaurants they visit most is a much stronger idea. It might be worth considering a plan that begins as a perks app and grows to allow messages between merchant and customer, or grows to add recommendations based on your transaction history, or grows to add public reviews that are verified by transaction.

I think it's a problem because I'm proving to kleinbl00 that I read Predictable Irrationality, a behavioral economics book by Dan Ariely, and am absorbing it. More specifically, I think that when you establish a trackable, tit-for-tat system for the perks that come with frequent restaurant patronage, you move a customer's relationship with a restaurant further into the market norms category.

Market norms are economic norms. Money is a market norm. When we look at things in market terms, Ariely has observed that we act more selfishly. We are less inclined to do favors for others. We want tit for tat, a fair exchange, to get what we paid for.

Based on my experience with the bars and restaurants I frequent, I've established a social normative relationship with the place and/or, more accurately, with the people who work there. Social norms are basically the norms of personal interaction; of friendship, humanity, and exchanges that occur within relationships. I have affection for the restaurant and its workers. That's why I keep going back: for a feeling, not a product.

Gifts are social norms. That's why it's okay to bring a nice bottle of wine to Thanksgiving dinner for your girlfriend's mom who cooked, but not okay to give her $100 to pay her for cooking. Gifts represent gratitude and relationship but keep the money and numbers out of it. I'd say that the perks that established restaurant patrons, or "regulars," enjoy, are like gifts. There's no directly stated price value to a better table, an especially helpful waitress, a heavy-handed pour from the bartender, a free drink when the bartender accidentally pours an order wrong. I'd even say that because you don't see your receipt/tab til the end of the night, comped drinks seem more like gifts. Tips, of course, introduce market norms - but at the end of the evening after all the social interaction. They don't put an immediate value on each interaction (unless you're paying cash and closing out after every drink).

On the other hand, creating an app with a system where you have to "check in" so many times to earn the next "reward level" where then you have to show a manager some screen on your app in order to get one of these "regulars' benefits" strips away all the humanity of it. It also creates a system where the benefit is directly tied to a price/number of some sort. I think it would damage bars'/restaurants' social relationships with their customers, and since I think it's the social relationship that establishes regulars (as much as the food or drinks) I think that could be a detrimental pairing in the long run. Maybe tips would go down, for instance, as customers have already "paid" for their benefits via checking-in.

I really still think verifying reviews via transaction is overkill. I would frankly be worried about security, where the information was coming from, what would be displayed publicly on the site (like what you ordered, for instance? would it be a digital copy of a receipt - I wouldn't like that at all), stuff like that.

In addition it totally kills reviews for anyone who generally pays cash or is "underbanked," i.e., doesn't for whatever reason have access to the banking benefits of the general public. Who could afford to eat at a restaurant but might not be able to open a bank account? Well, felons for one. (There's no law against this; I've only heard of one bank who denies accounts to felons to date, but hey! It's a thing!) Or maybe consumers under 18 - who didn't go out on a couple expensive fancy dinner dates for V-Day and whatever with their bf/gf at age 16? (I am aware a counter-argument can be made that we are limiting the population to "people who have devices that use apps/internet" and ALSO "people who have bank accounts," and that cross-section is less likely to have cash users and underbanked consumers in it, but I'd be really interested in some stats.)