When I was building RewardMe, my mobile restaurant loyalty program, I had no idea I was laying the groundwork for the Octalysis Framework. RewardMe was my hands-on laboratory, and restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area actually loved using it.
The Octalysis Framework with its game techniques. RewardMe’s points map to Exchangeable Points under Core Drive 4, and its surprise rewards map to Random Rewards and Sudden Rewards under Core Drive 7.
Here’s a look at how RewardMe established traction in Silicon Valley and what it taught me about real-world gamification design.
Speed Run Notes
- RewardMe was the mobile restaurant loyalty program I built in the San Francisco Bay Area, and restaurants from Denny’s to Coupa Cafe and Pho Garden signed on.
- Thousands of users came back regularly, many of them weekly, because the points and rewards gave them a reason to return to the same restaurants.
- Early traction came from real customers talking about us, including a three-year Yelp Elite reviewer who blogged about the app and people asking about our growth on Quora.
- Points gave customers ownership over their progress (Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession), and occasional surprise rewards made each visit less predictable (Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity).
- Those patterns from thousands of real transactions later shaped the Octalysis Framework, especially how loyalty game loops keep people engaged during the Scaffolding phase.
Table of Contents
About the Creator of the Octalysis Framework
Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003 — years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Google Scholar — with 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
RewardMe: The Dominant Loyalty Program for Restaurants
In a short amount of time, RewardMe established a strong presence and became a fan favorite for restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Some notable places include:
- Denny’s
- Coupa Cafe
- Posh Bagels
- Cantankerous Fish
- Pho Garden
- Barracuda Sushi
- Sweet Corner
- Han’s Korean Cuisine
Our users loved RewardMe too. Thousands of users were using it regularly, even weekly, at restaurants participating in RewardMe, enjoying their points and rewards.
How RewardMe Gained Traction in Silicon Valley
Edo Peno, a Yelp Elite for three years straight, wrote a blogpost on how much he liked RewardMe.
Since we were in the center of Silicon Valley, we also got attention on Quora, where people asked about how we established our initial traction.
We were excited to continue supporting the community and creating closer relationships between stores and their best customers. We expanded to Vancouver, Southern California, the East Coast, and other cities across the US and Canada.
The Behavioral Design Lessons Behind RewardMe
Building RewardMe taught me firsthand how Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity and Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession drive real customer behavior in loyalty programs.
When users earned points (CD4, they felt ownership over their progress), and occasional surprise rewards kept them coming back (CD7, the unpredictability made each visit exciting), the combination created real repeat visits.
These weren’t abstract theories. They were patterns I observed in thousands of real transactions. The experience of building and scaling RewardMe directly informed the Octalysis Framework, especially how the game loops in loyalty programs mirror the scaffolding phase of user engagement.
Updated 29 September 2026. Added Speed Run Notes, the Octalysis Framework diagram showing the game techniques RewardMe used, and a link to how the RewardMe story ended.
Related Reading
- Hotel Loyalty Gamification Case Study: LuckyDiem
- A comparison between Belly and RewardMe, by the stats
- How RewardMe Ended: A CEO’s Account of How His Startup Failed
- How I started my Entrepreneurial Career Freshman Year in College