• Wall Street Journal, Monday, August 9, 2010 10:58 AM

Restaurants are following the lead of the travel industry by offering "experience"-based rewards such as rare coffee beans and sneak-nibbles at forthcoming menu items to their most loyal customers, Julie Jargon reports.

Outback Steakhouse club members can earn points to win CDs, the cologne and or autographed cowboy hats from Tim McGraw, for example. "My Outback Rewards" members also have a chance to win a free trip to see the country singer perform in Australia next month. And Red Lobster's "Fresh Catch Club" has had contests featuring a trip to coastal cities in New England and the Florida Keys. Jargon also cites new customer-loyalty programs from Starbucks, Panera Bread, T.G.I. Friday's, and P.F. Chang's China Bistro.

"Having dollar menus and value menus has become unsustainable, from an operating profit standpoint, so restaurants need to be able to establish consumer continuity with loyalty programs," says Burt P. Flickinger III, managing director of Strategic Resource Group. "Instead of getting customers in three or four times per year for special events, they need to get them in two to three times per month."

Read the whole story at Wall Street Journal »