I went to the Chiquitos Mexican restaurant the other day with my wife and we arrived to find that the menu had changed which wasn’t surprising as we haven’t been for months. They seem to be going for a more original Mexican feel rather that the English-Mexican feel they have historically been known for.

They have a new menu, which in my opinion is a bit in your face with questionable choices in colour however it does sport a new selection of meal choices and much to my delight the Duck Fajitas have returned, and yes I can confirm that they are even better than they were before!

After an enjoyable meal we asked for our bill and it arrived along with a scratch card. Now I typically class all scratch cards as a waste of time and discard them, however the waitress was keen to give us the “hard sell” and she explained what it was all about.

Chiquito's scratch card promotion

The premise is this, don’t scratch the scratch card. Bring it with you on your next visit and at the end of your meal your waitress/waiter will scratch it for you revealing one of 4 prizes:

• 25% off your meal
• 50% off your meal
• 100% off your meal
• 2 free cinema tickets

You’re guaranteed one of these prizes, you just don’t know which one. Even two cinema tickets would come to over £13 at my local cinema so from a marketing point of view I think they’ve come up with a really good idea for generating return custom.

What’s even more clever on their part is by not revealing what prize the customer will win until after the meal they reduce the risk of having to foot large bills because if you know you’ve got the 100% off prize you could make a return visit with all the family and order the most expensive items on the menu.

Could this be appplied to the web?

I’ve not seen anywhere else doing this particular type of promotion (obviously thats not to say that there isn’t anywhere else) but I think it’s an idea that could easily be translated to the web, for example imagine a stock photography site employing this kind of discount system for credits. You purchase £10 worth of credits and you are given a code. Upon the purchase of your next £10 worth of credit you enter the code and are told that you have either saved £2.50, £5 or £10 off your invoice. You’d almost be guarenteeing return custom.

A promotion model that could work? What do you guys think?