Retail Stores | Canada | 2 Stores

Small business owner Matthew Nahdee uses CandyBar to grow his business by rewarding customers, tracking sales, and sending text message promotions to customers. Here’s how he does it.

Matthew Nahdee runs two businesses, Fiddler’s Green and TWIGS, in Walpole Island, a small rural community in Ontario, Canada.

Fiddler’s Green is a legal cannabis dispensary on Walpole Island. When Matthew opened the business in 2017, he faced fierce competition. There were 7 cannabis stores within the community, and 12 other stores within an hour’s drive.

Matthew also runs The Walpole Island General Store (TWIGS), a convenience store and rest stop selling snacks, gas, and tobacco right next to Fiddler’s Green. TWIGS also faced competition from long-standing tobacco stores that had been operating since the 90s.

Matthew needed to offer a great in-store experience in order to stand out. He also knew that he needed to balance the rewards offered with the margins of his business. He decided to use CandyBar to grow his business in three ways:

• As a loyalty program, to reward customers for in-store visits;
• As a dashboard for business insights, to ensure he was pricing his products correctly
• As an outreach platform, to get customer feedback and retention

Fiddler's Green set up its loyalty program in August 2019. Customers earned a stamp for every store visit with a purchase and could redeem five stamps for a 10% discount or a free gram of product.

In just a few months, the loyalty program had become extremely popular with customers:

• 97% of loyalty reward earned have been redeemed!
• Over 9,000 stamps have been issued. On average, each customer has earned 7 stamps, On average, each customer has earned 7 stamps,
• 50% of customers have earned 2 or more rewards.

Matthew also used CandyBar for TWIGS, with a 25% off discount for every 10 store visits. He is happy with how many customers have registered for the loyalty program.

“Last I checked, we reached more than 2,500 customers on Fiddler’s Green and 2,000 on TWIGS. To build that customer base [for a rural area] in 1,000 days is pretty good.”

He also remarked that the program was well-received by customers, some of whom became loyal repeat customers because of the program.

For Matthew, growing the customer base is important to his business as well as letting him gather more data on customer visits.

As a small business owner, Matthew needed to manage his finances carefully. He knew that his customers were price-conscious, but he also needed to balance the value of the rewards with the margins of his business.

CandyBar allowed Matthew to monitor the frequency of customer store visits, as well as how much he was paying out in rewards. He shared that he often ran the numbers, using CandyBar and his Point-of-Sales (POS) software side-by-side to track the cash flow of his business.

“I knew what price points I wanted my products to have and how many customers I would need to make it sustainable.

“I was looking for data - how frequently people were coming to the store, how much they were spending, and what they were spending it on.”

For Matthew, growing the customer base is important to his business as well as letting him gather more data on customer visits.

Previously, Matthew used paper loyalty cards, but there were no records of when stamps were issued and to whom. With CandyBar, Matthew has a record of how many stamps were issued, to which customer, the purchase amount and the purchase time, making it easy for him to connect it with POS data.

Previously, Matthew used paper loyalty cards, but there were no records of when stamps were issued and to whom. With CandyBar, Matthew has a record of how many stamps were issued, to which customer, the purchase amount and the purchase time, making it easy for him to connect it with POS data.

Matthew also used CandyBar to identify and reach out to customers who hadn’t made a visit in a while. For these customers, Matthew would text them personally, or send a customer satisfaction survey.

“Some of them have simply moved to a different community. For the others, we were able to offer a one-off discount of 10% to incentivize them to come back and keep shopping.”

Matthew has also made use of CandyBar’s promo messages feature to send out promotions via text messages to customers. This was especially helpful, as Walpole Island residents are less receptive to social media posts and digital ads.

Matthew uses CandyBar in an ingenious way to grow his business, his brand, and his customer base. And the biggest proof of his success? “Customers tell me other stores have started trying out loyalty programs as well.