How it works
A lot of cafes have those "buy 10 get 1 free" deals. They give you a paper card and you have to remember to use it everytime you visit. We created a system to make these cards digital.
I co-founded Gainsters with three other Waterloo students. I was in charge of design and operations. We got 700 users in the first week and launched at five stores in Waterloo. This was the first start-up I worked on and I learned a lot about launching a product.
A lot of cafes have those "buy 10 get 1 free" deals. They give you a paper card and you have to remember to use it everytime you visit. We created a system to make these cards digital.
I pitched our product to local store owners and got 5 stores to try our program. I worked very closely with the store owners, to understand their pain points and improve the product. During our promotional events we decorated the stores and generated a lot of traffic.
I created colorful and fun illustrations for our marketing materials.
I decided to stop working on Gainsters because restaurants had bigger issues to solve. We were in a university town and students loved the digital stamp cards because. However, this additional step slowed down the lines, especially during lunch time. In addition, stores wanted to reward the loyal customers so that they keep coming back but digitalizing the stamps only made the reward less special.