Discounted footfall, or booked revenue?

Short answer. PerkClub and Paace are not competitors — they sit at opposite ends of the funnel. Paace is a consumer app where users earn points for walking and spend them as discounts at 400+ partner venues, mostly in London. It's a footfall and partnership marketing channel; the customer belongs to Paace. PerkClub is a white-label subscription platform that gives you a Pret-style recurring membership under your café's brand, with the customer relationship sitting with you. Pick Paace as a marketing channel for off-peak footfall in London. Pick PerkClub for owned monthly recurring revenue.

Who is Paace for?

Paace is for a venue — typically a London café, restaurant or fitness business — that wants extra footfall, particularly during off-peak hours, without paying upfront for advertising. The product is consumer-facing: users walk, earn points, spend them as discounts at partner venues. It works because it pulls customers who would not otherwise have walked through your door for the simple reason that they get a small discount when they do.

The model is partnership marketing dressed up as a consumer wellness app. For the right kind of venue — one with capacity to fill at 11am on a Tuesday — it's a sensible top-of-funnel tactic. Paace's London density makes it especially useful in central postcodes where 400+ partner venues create a real network effect for users.

The honest framing: Paace is a marketing channel. It is not a loyalty product for your customers. The customer belongs to Paace, the discount comes out of your margin, and the relationship is built on the discount, not on you.

Who is PerkClub for?

PerkClub is for the café, barber, salon, bakery or pet groomer that wants a Pret-style monthly subscription under its own brand. The job is owned recurring revenue: 100 members at £25/month is £2,500 of MRR, or £30,000 a year — usually enough to cover rent on a B-grade UK high street unit.

The platform is white-label. Customers join your club, not PerkClub's. Billing is Stripe in GBP. There is no POS integration to negotiate. Setup typically lands inside two weeks.

PerkClub isn't a footfall product. It will not bring you customers who didn't already exist. What it will do is convert your existing regulars into recurring revenue — and that's a different category of value entirely.

Where Paace is the stronger pick

Off-peak footfall in London. If your operational problem is empty seats between the morning rush and lunch, Paace gives you a low-friction way to fill them. You're trading a small discount for a customer who otherwise wouldn't be there.

Brand exposure in dense markets. Being one of 400+ venues in a wellness app puts your brand in front of a self-selecting, health-conscious user base. That's a useful piece of free top-of-funnel.

No financial commitment from customers. Paace customers don't sign up for anything paid at your venue. For a market segment that won't commit to a monthly bill, this lowers the barrier.

Marginal-cost economics. When you're trading off-peak capacity for footfall, your incremental cost is tiny — coffee margin, not staffed time. Paace's economics work because of this asymmetry.

Where PerkClub is the stronger pick

Recurring revenue, not just visits. This is the core difference. PerkClub books cash in advance. Paace generates discounted visits. They are not the same outcome.

Customer ownership. A PerkClub member's email, billing relationship and visit history belong to you. A Paace customer's belong to Paace.

Brand control. A PerkClub member sees your branding through every touchpoint of the membership. A Paace customer sees your venue in a list.

Margin protection. A subscription customer pays £25 and visits 12 times a month. The marginal cost of a flat white is roughly £0.40. Your margin per member is comfortable. Paace customers come for a discount; you absorb the cost of the discount on each visit.

Geographic reach. PerkClub works UK-wide. Paace's network density is strongest in London. Outside the M25, Paace's value to a venue thins quickly.

Which should you pick by scenario?

"I have empty tables at 11am on a Tuesday." Paace, if you're in London. PerkClub doesn't fix off-peak directly — though over time it does smooth visit patterns.

"I want £30K of guaranteed annual revenue." PerkClub. Paace will not book future revenue.

"I run a wellness-adjacent venue near a busy commute route in London." Paace is well-targeted to that audience.

"I have 200 weekly regulars and want to lock in their value." PerkClub. Subscriptions monetise the relationships you already have.

"I'm outside London." PerkClub works nationwide; Paace's network density may not yet support meaningful lift in your area.

"I want both a footfall channel and a revenue contract." Run both. They don't conflict and they target completely different customer groups.

The customer ownership question

Paace and PerkClub make opposite choices about who owns the customer. Both are defensible — but they create different long-term outcomes.

In a Paace-only model, your venue is one of hundreds in someone else's app. The customer's relationship is with Paace's product, not your café's. You see the customer when they walk in for a discount. You don't see them between visits. You can't email them. You can't message them with a winter offer or invite them to your launch night. Your channel-of-record is Paace.

In a PerkClub model, the customer signed up to your club. Their email is in your list. Their billing flows directly to your Stripe account. The membership card on their phone says your café's name. When they tell a friend, they tell them about your café — not about a wellness app that happens to include you.

74% of restaurant leaders run a loyalty programme of some kind (Square, Future of Commerce 2025), and 79% of daily coffee drinkers say a loyalty programme influences where they buy (National Coffee Association, 2025 NCDT). The strategic question for a café owner is whether that loyalty programme builds equity in your brand or in someone else's network.

Pricing: how do they actually compare?

Paace charges venues partner fees and operates a marketplace economic model — you pay to be on the platform and you absorb the cost of customer discounts. The headline number is small; the absorbed-discount number is the real one to model.

PerkClub charges a flat monthly platform fee plus standard Stripe processing on what you bill your subscribers. See the PerkClub pricing page. The fee doesn't scale with member count, so per-member cost falls as you grow.

The comparison that matters isn't fee-to-fee. It's revenue-to-revenue. Paace might bring you 20–60 incremental visits a month at a discounted price. PerkClub, properly executed, books £30K/year of guaranteed revenue from your existing regulars. Different problems, different tools.

Running both: how it actually works

A pattern that works for cafés in central London with the capacity to fill off-peak hours:

Paace runs as the acquisition rail. Off-peak users discover your venue through the wellness app, walk in at 11am for a discount, and roughly 10–20% of them become repeat visitors at full price.

PerkClub runs as the retention rail. Once a Paace-acquired customer is a regular — say, four visits in a month — your staff have a single line: "If you're going to come this often, the club is better value." A monthly subscription replaces the discount-led pattern and locks in cashflow.

For a deeper comparison of marketplace and footfall apps, see RWRD vs Paace.

Bottom line

Paace and PerkClub are different categories of product. Paace is footfall marketing in dense urban markets. PerkClub is owned recurring revenue under your brand. Use Paace for the visits you don't yet have; use PerkClub for the regulars you do. If you'd like to talk through which combination fits your venue, the PerkClub team is happy to walk through your numbers.