Quebec is home to more than 23,000 restaurants, second only to Ontario among Canadian provinces, and has a culinary culture that reflects it. Québécois build real attachments to the places they love, and word-of-mouth travels fast in a market where community and cuisine are genuinely intertwined. That’s a strong foundation to build a loyalty program on.
The challenge is finding a platform actually built for this market. Most loyalty software were designed with American chains or English-Canadian operators in mind, which means bilingual support, French-language communications, and Quebec-specific privacy requirements are often treated as secondary considerations or excluded entirely.
This guide is written specifically for Quebec restaurant operators: what to look for, what to watch out for, and how to set up a program that actually works for your customers.
Quebec Restaurants Are Underserved by Most Loyalty Platforms
The glaring difference is the French-first customer communication requirements under the Charte de la langue française, but the problem isn't just language.
Quebec diners expect to be spoken to in French, and they expect their data to be handled with care—it’s a legal obligation under Law 25.
For enterprise platforms, Quebec is often simply not in scope. For smaller platforms, it's frequently an afterthought. The result is a province with a large, restaurant-dense urban population and almost no locally-aware loyalty software competing for their business.
What Quebec Restaurant Operators Want From a Loyalty Program
The fundamentals of a good loyalty program are the same anywhere: drive repeat visits, increase average spend, and give you meaningful data about who your best customers are. But Quebec operators tend to have a few priorities that aren't always top of mind in platforms designed elsewhere.
- French isn't optional: Emails, SMS messages, digital loyalty cards, app interfaces need to work in French. It's a requirement of operating in the province. A loyalty program that can only communicate with your customers in English is not an option.
- Bilingual capabilities for mixed markets: In bilingual cities like Montreal, operators often serve customers who expect French and customers who prefer English. A loyalty program that can handle both without requiring you to manage two separate systems becomes an operational advantage.
- Multi-location growth capabilities: Quebec's restaurant scene includes some of the country's best-known multi-location brands. Operators who are running three, five, or fifteen locations need a platform that consolidates customer data across sites.
- Simplicity at the point of sale: A loyalty program that integrates cleanly with your existing POS and adds one extra step to set up.
How to Run a Program That Works in French and English
Running a bilingual loyalty program is less complicated than it sounds, but it does require thinking through the customer experience from both angles.
Some things to pay attention to:
- Enrolment: Whether you're signing customers up in person, via a QR code, or through a digital app, the enrolment flow needs to be available in both languages. This includes the sign-up form, the confirmation message, and any welcome communication. If a customer signs up in French and receives an English welcome email, that creates a poor loyalty experience before any customer relationship can develop.
- Ongoing communications: Points updates, reward notifications, promotional offers should all go out in the customer's preferred language. A platform that stores language preference at the customer profile level handles this automatically.
- Physical materials: Cards, receipts, and signage should reflect your market. In a predominantly French-speaking location, French-first makes sense. In a bilingual location, both languages on the same material is often the right call.
- Staff communication: Your team needs to be able to explain the program confidently in the language the customer is using. Keep the pitch simple and make sure it works in both languages.
The goal is a program that feels native to every customer who participates, regardless of which language they order in. When it works well, it's invisible. When it doesn't, it's noticeable in ways that undercut the whole effort.
What Quebec’s Law 25 Means For Loyalty Programs
Law 25 (Loi modernisant des dispositions législatives en matière de protection des renseignements personnels) is Quebec's privacy legislation, and it's stricter than the federal PIPEDA framework that applies in the rest of Canada.
It has direct implications for restaurant operators running loyalty programs:
- Explicit opt-in consent is required: Quebec law requires opt-in consent for collecting, using, or sharing personal information. This is different from the opt-out model that many English-Canadian programs use. When a customer joins your loyalty program, they need to actively consent to how their data will be used.
- Consent must be clear and specific: Consent must be granular and specific to each purpose of data use. If you're collecting email addresses to send points updates and you also want to send promotional offers, those are two separate purposes that require separate consent.
- Customers have the right to access, correct, and delete their data: In practice, this means your loyalty platform needs to be able to pull up a customer's profile, edit it, and delete it if requested. Those requests need to be handled within 30 days.
- Breach notification is mandatory: If there's a confidentiality incident involving customer data, you're required to notify the Commission d'accès à l'information (CAI) and the affected individuals.
- Law 25 applies to any business serving Quebec residents: Which means, it doesn’t only apply to Quebec-headquartered companies. If you're operating in the province, the law applies to you regardless of where your loyalty software vendor is based.
Working with a loyalty platform that understands the complex legal implications of operating in different geographical locations saves you the hassle of doing all the heavy lifting yourself. Afterall, the liability of non-compliance sits with the merchant, not the software vendor. So, choosing the right loyalty platform to work with and knowing how they handle your customer data definitely matters.
How DataCandy Serves Quebec Restaurant Groups
DataCandy has been the loyalty platform of choice for some of Quebec's most recognizable restaurant brands (e.g. Cora, Gibby's, Mandy’s) for good reason.
DataCandy's loyalty platform was built for Canadian operators, which means bilingual customer communications are part of how the platform works. Points updates, reward notifications, and automated marketing messages can be sent in French, English, or both, based on the customer's stored language preference. Enrolment flows and customer-facing materials are available in both official languages.
For multi-location groups, DataCandy consolidates customer data across all your locations into a single view. A customer who earns points at your Laval location and redeems them in Longueuil is one customer in your program. That unified profile is what makes it possible to understand how loyal customers actually behave across your network and what it takes to keep them coming back.
The platform also integrates with the POS systems most commonly used by Quebec operators, which means adding it to an existing setup is operationally straightforward. Setting up a restaurant loyalty program typically takes under ten days, and the program is designed so front-of-house staff can explain it in one sentence.
For operators looking at how DataCandy compares to other options, the best loyalty software for Canadian restaurants guide covers the landscape in detail.
Loyalty Program Setup for Quebec Operators
If you're setting up a loyalty program for the first time, or moving away from a platform that doesn't fit your market, here's what the process typically looks like.
1. Define Your Program Goals And Reward Structure
How your program structure looks should reflect how it best fits your operations, pricing, and how your customers behave.
Examples of goals include:
- Increase repeat visits
- Boost average order value
- Collect customer data to create stronger campaigns
- Drive traffic during slow periods
There are two common loyalty program models used within the restaurant/food and beverage industry: Visit-based programs (digital punch cards) and points-based programs. Both simple to explain, easy for staff to promote, and intuitive for customers.
While points-based programs directly tie rewards to revenue, a visit-based program rewards customers for visit frequency, which typically works well in business operations with lower-value transactions like coffee shops, bakeries, and dessert shops.
2. Set Up Your Language Preferences
Decide whether your program will run in French only, English only, or both.
For most Quebec operators, French-first with English available is the right default. Make sure your platform can store language preference at the individual customer level so communications go out in the right language automatically.
3. Review Your Consent Process Against Law 25 Requirements
Before you launch, confirm that your enrolment flow collects explicit opt-in consent for each purpose you'll be using customer data. This includes transactional communications (points updates), marketing communications (promotional offers), and any data sharing with third parties.
4. Promote It Where Your Customers Can Find You
If you’re trying to drive loyalty sign-ups, you need to increase your program’s exposure. So make sure your loyalty program shows up where your customers can find you:
- Counter signage
- Receipts
- Social media
- Email and SMS (if available)
If you need some inspiration, there are some ways you can further encourage your customers to join your loyalty program.
5. Train Your Team
Apart from strategically placing printed and digital loyalty program promotions, your frontline employees also play an integral part in driving loyalty sign-ups. They’re the ones interacting with customers on a daily basis, which means they need to know how your loyalty program works and how to clearly communicate it to customers.
The pitch for joining a loyalty program should be one or two sentences, in whatever language the customer is speaking. A simple “Do you have a loyalty membership with us? Loyalty members earn 100 points for every $50 they spend which can be accumulated as credits towards your next visit and get a free birthday treat. Would you like to join?” clearly describes the benefits of the loyalty program in one sentence, and can be the difference in a new regular customer or a one-time visitor.
We’ve also put together a guide to help you turn your frontline employees into loyalty advocates with tips and examples.
Final Thoughts
Quebec's restaurant market deserves to be served by platforms that understand the importance of legal compliance obligations, bilingual communication requirements, and a consumer culture that responds to being treated as a local rather than an afterthought. All of which mean that the loyalty platform you choose matters.
If you're ready to run a loyalty program built for how your business actually operates, DataCandy serves Quebec operators in French and English, with the compliance infrastructure Law 25 requires.
We work with Quebec restaurants of all sizes, from single-location operators to multi-location groups.
FAQs
Does my loyalty platform need to be bilingual?
If you're operating in Quebec and serving French-speaking customers, yes. The Charte de la langue française requires that customer-facing commercial communications be available in French. Look for a platform that stores language preference at the customer level and sends communications accordingly.
Are there Quebec-specific loyalty regulations I need to follow?
Law 25 is the primary one. It requires explicit opt-in consent before collecting customer data, gives customers the right to access and delete their information, and mandates breach notification to the CAI and affected individuals if there's a confidentiality incident. These requirements apply to any business serving Quebec residents, regardless of where the business or its software vendor is headquartered. Beyond Law 25, the standard consumer protection provisions of Quebec's Loi sur la protection du consommateur apply to loyalty program terms and conditions.
Can I use DataCandy with Quebec POS systems?
Yes. DataCandy integrates with the major POS systems used across Quebec, including systems commonly used in quick-service restaurants (QSR), casual dining, and café environments. If you're running a less common system, the DataCandy team can confirm compatibility during the setup process. Most integrations are straightforward and don't require significant technical work on the operator's side.
What happens if I already have a loyalty program that isn't Law 25 compliant?
The first step is an audit: what data are you collecting, for what purposes, and what consent did customers give when they enrolled? If your existing enrolment flow didn't collect explicit opt-in consent, you should consider re-enrolling with updated consent language to be thorough. This is worth doing properly, because the Commission d'accès à l'information has enforcement powers and the fines for serious violations are substantial.