Second-visit rate self-assessment
How many of your first-timers come back — within 30, 60 and 90 days — what five more points would be worth in your dollars, and where the rest are leaking. Built from your own counts. No industry average, because we don't have one we'd stand behind.
Your second-visit rate
- Back within 30 days15.0%30 of 200
- Back within 60 days25.0%50 of 200
- Back within 90 days32.0%64 of 200
Five more points
Worth $3,120.00 a year
Taking your 90-day rate to 37.0% means 10 more first-timers back each month — $260.00 a month at $26.00 a check, counting only their second visit.
Where first-timers are leaking
First-timers who never come back
In your numbers136 of 200 first-timers weren't back within 90 days.
The fix: The first visit is the one time you're guaranteed their attention. Capture a name and a way to reach them before they leave, and make the invitation back specific — the beer they liked is on again, or something close to it just tapped.
Returners who take too long
In your numbersOf the 64 who came back, 34 took longer than 30 days — more than the 30 who returned inside a month. 14 waited 61–90 days.
The fix: The gap between a first and second visit is where people drift. Reach out in weeks two to four, while the visit is still fresh, instead of waiting for them to remember you.
Measuring it properly
If these are estimates, that's worth knowing on its own. A POS that ties each transaction to a customer turns this from a guess into a measurement — which is what makes a 5-point improvement something you can actually see.
There's no industry average on this page, on purpose. We don't have data we'd stand behind, and an invented benchmark would tell you less than your own numbers do.
How it works
Why the second visit is the one to measure
Every regular you have started as a first-timer who decided to come back. The first visit tells you people can find you. The second tells you they chose to return — and it's the earliest point at which a stranger starts turning into a regular. Total sales can rise while that conversion quietly falls, if a busy season is bringing in plenty of people who never come back.
The rate itself is simple. Take everyone whose first ever visit fell in a chosen period, count how many returned at least once within a set number of days, and divide. The calculator does it at three windows because a single number hides the pattern that tells you what to fix.
Count the right group.Use a period that ended at least 90 days ago; anyone who first visited more recently hasn't had the chance to return yet, and including them drags the 90-day figure down. The three counts are cumulative — someone who came back on day 12 counts in the 30, 60 and 90-day boxes alike. If a later box is smaller than an earlier one, the calculator will tell you rather than guess.
Reading the shape of your numbers
Every judgement the calculator makes comes from proportions inside your own counts, not from a comparison with anyone else. Two patterns can be seen directly.
First-timers who never come backare everyone missing from the 90-day count. Whenever fewer than half your first-timers return, they're the largest group in your numbers, so the calculator sizes them in your terms — “136 of 200 first-timers” — rather than as a percentage that's easy to shrug at.
Returners who take too longshow up in the gap between the 30-day and 90-day counts. When more of your returners came back after the first month than within it, the problem isn't that people don't like you — it's that they're forgetting you in between. That leak is fixed by timing, not by a better beer list.
Some leaks can't be seen in visit counts at all: regulars who only ever come in on weekends, regulars whose loyalty is really to one beer, and regulars who have quietly stopped coming. Those only appear in the diagnosis if you tell the calculator they're true — it never infers them from numbers that can't support it.
What five points is worth
A percentage improvement is easy to agree with and hard to prioritise, so the calculator turns it into dollars. Five more points on your 90-day rate means five more first-timers back out of every hundred. Multiply by your own average check and by how often your first-timers arrive, and you have a figure you can weigh against the cost of whatever would earn it.
By default it counts only the second visit itself — the one extra visit you can be certain of — which makes it deliberately conservative. A first-timer who comes back once often comes back again, but that's a claim about your taproom only you can make. If you know it's true, raise the visits-per-returner figure. The example loaded into the calculator is made up, not a typical brewery; replace every number with yours.
Where this measurement usually goes wrong
Measuring a group that's too recent
First-timers from the last few weeks haven't had 90 days to come back. Count them and the rate looks alarming for no reason. Always measure a period that ended at least 90 days ago.
Counting visits instead of people
Two visits from one regular aren't two returning customers. The rate is about how many distinct first-timers came back, so count each person once however often they returned.
Trusting someone else's benchmark
A retention figure from restaurants, coffee shops or another region describes a different business. Your own rate moving over time tells you more than any borrowed average.
Treating every leak with the same fix
A discount doesn't help someone who forgot you existed, and a reminder doesn't help someone who didn't like their first visit. Diagnose which leak you have before spending on a fix.
From an estimate to a measurement
If you filled in the boxes above with estimates, the most valuable finding may be that you can't yet see this number. Any POS that ties a transaction to a customer can produce it directly.
On Square, Brewlytics backfills 12 months of history on connect and reports repeat-visit cohorts and first-time visitors from real transactions — see customer insights. Toast, Arryved and Lightspeed are on the roadmap. The self-assessment above works either way.
Second-visit rate FAQ
More free tools
If a membership program is how you plan to earn that second visit, run it through the mug club ROI calculator first — it will tell you whether the perks buy new visits or discount old ones. The keg margin calculator covers the other half: what each of those visits earns. Or see all free tools.