How to get more customers for a café: when they come in, how they find you and how to measure it

Italian cafés in 2025: visits, average spend and competition

According to FIPE-Confcommercio’s Rapporto Ristorazione 2026, 124,917 bar businesses were active in Italy in 2025 (InfoCamere data), 2.2% fewer than in 2024, with 5.6 billion visits a year and an average receipt of just over 4 euros. Lazio, the region of Rome, has 9.7% of them, after Lombardy and Campania.

The figure that matters for winning new customers is another one: FIPE’s research office reports that visits to bars fell 2.7% in 2025 and spending 1.7% compared with 2024. With fewer visits overall, a new customer almost always comes from another café nearby: the real competition is a few steps away, not online. If your visits are flat, you are probably already holding up better than the national average.

About one café in two is still open five years after opening (54% of those founded in 2019, according to the same report): bringing in new customers and getting them back is daily work, not a one-off campaign.

When customers come into a café: breakfast, breaks and aperitivo

Out of 100 visits to Italian bars in 2025, 47 were linked to breakfast, 28 to breaks, 13 to the aperitivo, 5 to lunch, 4 to after-dinner and 3 to dinner (FIPE on Tradelab data, Rapporto Ristorazione 2026). For a daytime café, breakfast is the front door: people who try it at yours and like it come back for breaks too.

The table pairs each time of day with one way to bring in new people. They are ideas to adapt, not measured results: pick one or two for the times your café is already strong, instead of chasing dinner, which is 3% of visits.

The audience points the same way: according to the same report, daytime bars take 60% of out-of-home visits by people over 55, and for 35-to-54-year-olds the daytime bar is the place they go to most. Nearby offices, building sites, schools and clinics are where morning customers come from.

What a new customer is worth once they become a regular

A new customer is worth little on the first visit and a lot if they come back: with FIPE’s average receipt of just over 4 euros, rounded down to 4, someone who comes in three times a week spends about 620 euros a year. The table runs the numbers for three rhythms; these are takings, not margins.

That is why a campaign for new customers should be judged on second and third visits, not first ones. To compare your coffee price with your city, see the price of coffee in Italy; to choose a reward without losing margin, use the reward cost calculator.

Your café’s Google Business Profile: how Google picks what to show

Google says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and popularity (the help section calls it «prominence»), and that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. You cannot choose distance: someone looking for a café mostly sees the ones near them. Relevance and prominence you can work on, with these steps taken from Google’s help pages.

1. Verify the profile

   Only a verified profile lets you manage its information and see performance data.

2. Category and complete information

   Address, phone, website, the right primary category (café, coffee shop or bakery) and attributes such as Wi-Fi: Google says businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up.

3. Real hours, special ones too

   List the hours you are open to the public and confirm holiday hours. For changes or closures of up to 6 days in a row use special hours; from 7 days on, mark the profile «Temporarily closed». The hours on your door should match.

4. The name, with nothing added

   Use the name on your sign. Adding words such as «breakfast» or «pastries» to the name is not allowed and can get the profile suspended.

5. Recent photos and videos

   Google suggests telling your business’s story with photos and videos: the counter in the morning, the window, your real pastries, the outdoor seating if you have it. Real photos of your café beat images taken from elsewhere.

6. Reply to reviews

   Replying shows you value customers’ feedback, Google says. Reply to criticism too, calmly, and do not use replies to offer deals or promotions.

Google reviews for a café: how to ask without breaking the rules

More reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking, Google says, but how you ask matters. Google Maps’ content policy bans offering incentives in exchange for a review: a free coffee, a discount or an extra stamp on the loyalty card are all incentives.

Loyalty cards and reviews are covered in detail in how to promote a loyalty card.

• Yes: ask every customer, with your profile’s link or a QR code, as Google suggests.
• No: rewards, discounts, freebies or stamps in exchange for a review.
• No: asking only happy customers, or discouraging negative reviews.
• No: pressing people to write one while they are at the counter.
• No: giving staff a number of reviews to collect.

Getting noticed by passers-by: window, sign and hours on the door

Many of a café’s new customers already walk past the door every day: distance counts on Google and even more on foot. Before spending on advertising, check that a passer-by understands at a glance what you offer and when.

• A sign you can read from the pavement opposite, lit early in the morning if you open while it is still dark.
• Opening hours on the door, the same as on your Google profile.
• Today’s real products in the window, not faded photos: passers-by decide by looking at the counter.
• A board with one offer of the day, written large; if you put it on the pavement, ask the council first whether you need a public-space permit.
• The loyalty card’s QR code on the counter, where people pay, so first-time customers have a reason to come back.

From the first visit to the second: where the loyalty card fits

A new customer becomes a real customer on the second visit. A loyalty card serves that step, not attracting people who do not know you: a first-time customer gets a concrete reason to come back, such as a coffee after a set number of stamps.

With Iterum the customer scans the QR code on the counter and the card opens at once in the phone’s browser; they can save it to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, and you give the stamp in the «Al banco» counter app. Joining gives no stamp, so stamp the visit in which the customer joins and the card starts already under way. How many stamps to ask for and which rewards work at a café are on loyalty card for cafés; strategies to keep customers are in how to retain customers.

How to tell whether new customers are really coming in

To know whether a choice brings in new customers, you need two numbers, before and after: how many new people come in and how many come back. Simple tools are enough, if you use them the same way for a few weeks.

In the Iterum panel, the home page shows «New customers per week» over the last 30 days, and Results separates «Returning customers» from «One-time customers»: if sign-ups rise after an initiative but returns do not, you brought in the curious, not customers. Keep the background in mind: visits to Italian bars fell 2.7% on average in 2025, so holding your numbers steady is already a result. Compare with the same period last year, because seasons and holidays move a lot.

Mistakes that lose new customers

The most common mistakes cost trust rather than money, and a new customer gives little of it:

• Different hours on the door, on Google and on social media: someone who finds you closed when Google said open trusts you less next time.
• Adding words to the profile name to show up more: it is against the rules and risks suspension.
• Rewarding people who write a review.
• Heavy, constant discounts: they teach customers to wait for the discount and eat into margins.
• Chasing every time of day at once: better to be the street’s go-to breakfast café than one of many for the aperitivo.
• Measuring only first visits: without a second visit, a new customer is just a passer-by.

Sources and method

Sources read on 14 October 2026: FIPE-Confcommercio, Rapporto Ristorazione 2026 (2025 data; bar businesses on InfoCamere data, visits by time of day on Tradelab data); FIPE research office, Consumi fuori casa – Anno 2025; Google help pages: improve your local ranking, special hours, guidelines for representing your business, reviews, Maps content policy, profile performance. The FIPE reports are in Italian.

FIPE counts active bar businesses (124,917) and, in a January 2026 release with a different scope, about 152,000 outlets: this page uses the April report. The time-of-day ideas, the regular-customer arithmetic and the examples are guidance to adapt, not measured results. Information about Iterum is valid as of 14 October 2026.