Inside Cafe Bernie’s Email & SMS Playbook for Restaurant Customer Retention

Small neighborhood restaurants with little foot traffic can boost repeat business by segmenting their guest database, using SMS for nearby regulars and email for broader audiences, and timing messages before meal decisions.

What happens when a restaurant has zero foot traffic?

Cafe Bernie in Miami doesn’t have a sign. It's tucked in the back of a condominium building in Miami, with no window facing the street and no foot traffic to speak of. Grant, the restaurant’s manager, describes it the way regulars do: “It’s kind of like a speakeasy, hidden vibe. If you know, you know.”

Most restaurants spend enormous energy trying to get discovered. Cafe Bernie never really had that option. Without a street presence, the only people who find it are the ones who were already looking—neighbors, locals, people who heard about it from someone else and made a point of seeking it out. “We are for locals, by locals,” Grant says. “We have zero foot traffic.”

For a long time, that felt like a constraint. Now it looks more like a model built on restaurant loyalty.

How does Cafe Bernie keep regulars coming back? 

The Regulars Report, recently published by Toast and Resy, found that at a cohort of restaurants, just 7% of guests—the ones who come back more than once—can generate up to 50% of total order volume.¹

The guests who make up that fraction may behave differently than everyone else. They spend more per check because they trust the kitchen and aren’t anxious about ordering. They tip more generously because the staff feels familiar. According to Toast survey data from the Regulars Report, 77% of regulars tip more at restaurants where they’re known.² These guests don’t need to be acquired over and over. They just need to be kept.

That’s the whole job at Cafe Bernie. There’s no passerby to convert, no window display to catch someone’s eye. If Grant isn’t staying in touch with the people who already love the restaurant, Cafe Bernie is harder to find than it needs to be.

How can email and SMS drive restaurant customer retention at a hidden neighborhood spot?

For a while, Cafe Bernie was doing what most small restaurants do: posting on social media, sending occasional emails, hoping something landed. 

“We were sending emails, but we didn't know if the copy was effective, the graphics were compelling, or if the time was the best time to send,” he says. A campaign would go out and something would happen or it wouldn't, and it was rarely clear why. So the next one got built on the same assumptions.

The shift came when Grant started thinking more carefully about who was actually on the list. “Some of our local people, we can consistently rely on them—they’re going to be in two or three times a week. We know they live in the area,” he says. A text message to that group lands differently than a broad marketing blast. “Not everyone opens their emails, but people open their texts.”

The channel data from the Regulars Report supports that instinct. Among restaurants actively using Toast Marketing in Q1 2026, 83% of orders driven by SMS, and 86% of orders driven by email, came from guests who had already dined there.¹ The people receiving those messages already had a reason to come back. The message just gave them a nudge.

This means that retention carries more weight in Cafe Bernie’s marketing than it might at a restaurant with a busier corner. Reaching the right people at the right moment, through the right channel, before the window closes.

How to preempt slowdowns with SMS

Cafe Bernie is also an outdoor restaurant. When it rains in Miami, the business stops. No indoor seating, no foot traffic buffer, and nothing to absorb the drop.

So when rain is coming, Grant makes a point to push online ordering early—before people have already figured out lunch, before the decision of where to eat for the day is made.

“It’s raining outside,” Grant says. “If we don't have a way to communicate to our guests, we’re dead in the water.” The window for a rainy day promotion is narrow. You have to move fast, and you have to have the infrastructure to do it.

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What results did consistent retention marketing produce?

This past January and February, Cafe Bernie outperformed its own sales benchmarks from both 2024 and 2025, month over month.* That might sound like a small thing until you know the context: 2024 hadn’t beaten 2023, and 2025 hadn’t beaten either. The trend had been moving the wrong direction for two years. 

This year it reversed, during the two months that typically hit hardest across the industry. “We hadn’t done that in forever,” Grant says.

Grant is careful not to attribute it all to marketing. Miami has had more visitors this year, and events like the World Cup have brought people to the area. “There’s probably some give and take there,” he says. But the consistency of the outreach, and the timing of it, made a difference he can feel.

What can any restaurant copy to increase repeat business?

There’s a version of Cafe Bernie’s story that only applies to hidden restaurants in the back of condo buildings in Miami. But the underlying puzzle—a loyal guest base that isn’t being consistently reached and a customer list that exists but isn’t effectively tapped into—shows up everywhere.

Most operators have regulars. Most of them have more leverage with those regulars than they’re currently taking advantage of. The guests are already there. They trust the kitchen, know the staff, and have a reason to come back. The question is whether the restaurant is showing up for them consistently enough to keep that true.

Cafe Bernie figured out that the answer to that question is the whole business. No sign out front. Still beating last year’s numbers.

*Numbers self-reported by customer