The table in the back: What brands get wrong about loyalty

There’s a restaurant in Rome I return to every time I’m in the city. Tucked away on an unremarkable street, it hasn’t changed in decades. The artichokes are never perfect, but good enough. The Lambrusco stays predictable. The waiters go through their well-rehearsed motions. I always sit at the same table, no matter who I’m with. Not much is exceptional about the restaurant. Except that I return. Every single time.

We rarely talk about brand loyalty like this. Instead, we talk about retention. We engineer user flows, A/B test personalisation, and build reward programmes designed to keep people coming back. But the kind of loyalty that actually matters is more esoteric. It’s built on emotional familiarity and sentimental repetition.

Psychologists call it the mere exposure effect: the more we encounter something, the more we tend to like it. Familiarity becomes affection. I don’t love the restaurant because it improves year after year, but because I understand it. I can predict it. And the things that become part of our rhythm become part of our story. This is how we form attachment; to places, to rituals, and, if companies are lucky, to brands.

I don’t return to that tiny restaurant because of innovative menus or immersive interiors. I return because it’s familiar. I know how to order the artichoke. I know which Italian opera star’s watchful eyes I like to sit under. I even like the way the unimpressed maître d’ asks if I have a reservation, even when he knows I do. Loyalty hides in these details. We return to our favourite things not because they surprise us, but because they rarely do.

Many digital loyalty experiences fail here. They’re optimised for performance, but rarely for emotional resonance. Apps often try to lure us in with something new each time: a reshuffled feed, an A/B-tested headline, a hyper-personalised collection of content. But in doing so, they trade the warmth of consistency for the logic of behavioural prediction.

The strategic gap is easy to spot: brands often mistake engineered stickiness for emotional loyalty. They pour effort into retention mechanics while paying little attention to the emotional architecture that makes people want to return. To design for loyalty that lasts, brands should borrow from placemaking, creating digital and physical environments that feel human. Familiar. Emotionally tangible.

A consistent tone, meaningful interactions, and small moments of recognition allow us to settle in. But these are design and strategic decisions, not just aesthetic ones. They sit at the intersection of brand, product, and experience, and they require a different kind of thinking. Less growth-hack, more emotional choreography. Less polished brand speak, more co-creation. Less closing off, more letting in.

The kind of loyalty that lasts, like what we feel for a neighbourhood bistro or a record shop from our teens, isn’t built through grand gestures or once-in-a-lifetime offers. It’s built through small emotional wins. Through comfort and through the sense that something is yours. Brands don’t need to shout louder. They just need to stay a little longer.

Designing for loyalty, then, looks less like building a sales funnel and more like laying down a familiar sidewalk. It leaves room for habit, memory, connection. Digital experiences should borrow from the quiet confidence of my favourite restaurant in Rome: always there, whether I’m celebrating or heartbroken, with a seat waiting in the corner. Not always remarkable. But unforgettable, because my favourite table is always waiting there for me.

This is the kind of work we do with brands: loyalty shaped not by gimmicky tactics, but by thoughtful, repeatable moments, whether through brand evolutions, targeted interventions, or digital products. Curious to hear more? Drop me a line: matilda@hishine.co