Know Your 500 People.
Freddy Szydlowski moved to London at 19 to work at Joe and the Juice when it had four locations. He ended up running multiple hospitality venues, spotted a gap in how the industry understood its own customers, and built Embargo to fix it. During the pandemic, he bought an e-scooter and rode around London chatting up coffee shops and bakeries. That is how you find product market fit when you have no marketing budget.
Most Hospitality Businesses Are Sitting on a Data Goldmine They Cannot See
Here is the uncomfortable truth Embargo's data reveals again and again. Owners think their business depends on thousands of customers. The data shows it actually depends on a few hundred.
That is not a crisis. It is a gift. It means you do not need to spend on constant customer acquisition. Your business is a community. Grow that community, increase how often they visit, help them spend a little more each time. That is the entire playbook.
The problem is that without data, you cannot see it happening. The customer who used to come twice a week and now comes twice a month does not disappear overnight. They just quietly drift. By the time you feel it on the bottom line, the damage is already done.
Takeaway: Before you spend anything on new customer acquisition, find out how many of your existing regulars are quietly churning. That is where your revenue is leaking.
A Stamp Card Is Not a Loyalty Program
Most hospitality businesses think loyalty means a free coffee on the tenth visit. Freddy is direct: that is a reward mechanic, not a loyalty strategy.
Real loyalty is knowing who your customers are, understanding what they buy, communicating with them when they are not in the venue and engineering the relationship so it does not begin and end at the till. The stamp card exists because the in-venue experience is chaotic, staff are overstretched and there is no time for anything complicated. Embargo's entire product is built around that reality: make it as simple as possible to capture data, then make that data immediately actionable.
Takeaway: If your loyalty programme cannot tell you who has not visited in 60 days and send them a message automatically, it is not a loyalty programme. It is a coupon.
Do Things That Do Not Scale First. Then Scale Them.
Embargo barely spent anything on marketing for years. Instead, Freddy built a sales process that doubled as a research process. Every conversation was a data point. Every rejection was a signal. By the time they were ready to grow, they knew exactly who their ideal customer was, what they cared about and what they did not.
The Airbnb founders knocked on host doors. The Deliveroo founder delivered food himself. Freddy rode an e-scooter around London during a pandemic. The framework is always the same: get close to your customer before you try to scale anything.
Takeaway: Do not export a broken model. Nail your proposition first, find the people who cannot live without it, then grow.
Find Product Market Fit Before You Do Anything Else
This is Freddy's advice to every marketer he meets. Before you think about campaigns, channels or content, ask three questions. Is the market big enough to hit your financial goals? Who within that market will sign up fastest, churn least and recommend most? What actually makes them buy or walk away?
Marketing without answers to those questions is just noise. With answers, it becomes a system.
Takeaway: Henry Ford's customers asked for faster horses. Your job is to listen carefully enough to understand what they actually need, then add your own creativity to build something they did not know they were waiting for.
Freddy Szydlowski: Linkedin
Suds Singh B2B Video Content Specialist London for Interesting Content, LinkedIn.
YouTube: https://youtu.be/dOJQMh_wPX8?si=wouMehmUjfAmhDIw
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6elhtgDUnO2A2nQPkaWUw0?si=tKq071XtRNiuo5Umon2Ttw