The initiative will offer a 20% discount on all drinks bought on Friday evenings and, according to reports, customers can gain a free pint for every five pints of Butcombe beer bought.

The new scheme, which is part of an upgraded loyalty plan can also assist customers in earning discounts on everything from beers through to pub food and even , potentially, overnight stays.

Speaking to the FT, Butcombe chief executive Jonathan Lawson, admitted that getting customers to return more frequently had become “kind of the holy grail” for the industry and revealed that the biggest worry for operators right now was seeing the drop in visits.

Butcombe revealed that sales from loyalty card users made up as much as 22% of the group’s total business in the first three months of the year.

With this in mind, other pub companies are also tapping into the trend. For instance, Greene King, which runs more than 2,700 pubs across the UK, is also currently preparing to launch its first app-based loyalty scheme. Greene King, which also runs the Chef & Brewer and Hungry Horse sites, recently hosted an initiative where it gave away 100,000 free pints where to participate customers just had to walk up to the bar and say: “It’s raining, can I have a free pint?”

Similarly, pub chain Mitchells & Butlers, which has seen “very strong” results over the last year and owns venues such as All Bar One and Harvester, has trialled a new points system to gain customer loyalty while pub group Fuller’s has been testing out rewards schemes like two-for-one meals and free glasses of wine at 30 of its pubs as a way of dipping its toe in the water and has also posted “excellent” results recently.

The UK’s biggest pub group Stonegate which has more than 4,500 sites, recently spent £2 million developing its own loyalty app, which includes a game where users can “spin to win” a free pint.

Describing the move, Stonegate chief executive David McDowall admitted that loyalty schemes were now the pub sector’s “most important marketing tool” and explained how for too long “pubs have been a little behind the rest of the hospitality industry” but that they are now “playing catch-up”.

Speaking about the phenomenon in the national press, Saxon Moseley, hospitality lead at consulting firm RSM told the  national press how “loyalty schemes are quickly becoming table stakes” and warned that, in the current economic climate, any “pubs that don’t offer one risk missing out”.

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