A regular is a customer whose visits have become a habit. They come on a rhythm you could almost set a clock by: the weekday flat white at ten past eight, the Saturday loaf, the fortnightly bag of dog food. Staff know their face, often their name, and usually their order before they say it. Regulars are a minority of the people who walk through the door and a large share of the money that does, and they are the customers a loyalty card exists to thank.
There is no official threshold, but a working one helps. A shop might count anyone who visits at least twice a month for three months running as a regular. The right number depends on the trade: a cafe's regular comes most weekdays, a butcher's every fortnight, a boutique's a few times a season.
In practice
A suburban cafe rings up about 2,100 sales a week. The owner and staff list the customers they would call regulars and estimate how often each comes. They reach 320 people averaging 3.6 visits a week between them, which is 1,152 sales, or 55 percent of the week's trade. The other 45 percent is spread across hundreds of occasional visitors and passers-by, few of whom anyone could name.
That number changes how the owner thinks about the shop. Losing a passing customer costs one sale. Losing one of those 320 regulars costs about 3.6 sales a week, or roughly 165 sales over a 46-week year, and at $6 a sale that is close to $1,000 walking out the door with them.
Regulars also notice everything first: a new barista, a price rise, a change to the card. They are the first people to tell, and the first to ask when something seems off.