I once made the mistake of telling a barista at a mid-range airport terminal cafe that I’d have “the usual,” despite having only visited that specific concourse twice in the previous three years. It was a moment of profound social overreach. I wanted, for a fleeting three seconds, to feel like the kind of person who has a “usual”-a regular whose presence is woven into the fabric of a place.

Instead, the barista, whose name tag said “Gary” but whose eyes said “Please stop talking,” stared at me with a blankness so total it felt like a physical weight. He didn’t know me. He didn’t want to know me. He was trained to process a transaction every 42 seconds, and my attempt at a relationship was a literal clog in the gears of his efficiency. I paid $7.85 for a lukewarm latte and walked away feeling like a ghost. I haven’t been back to that chain since, not because the coffee was bad, but because they made it very clear that my loyalty was an inconvenience.

The Central Rot of Modern Commerce

This is the central rot in our modern commercial landscape. We have an entire sector of industry-from digital retail to service hospitality-that has collectively decided brand loyalty is a relic of the mid-century, right up there with gelatin salads and affordable housing. They operate on the cynical, data-driven belief that you, the customer, are a fickle creature of pure impulse.

They assume you will leave for a nickel’s difference in price or a shinier banner ad. And because they believe this, they design experiences that are so cold, so transactional, and so devoid of human recognition that they actually manufacture the very disloyalty they claim to lament. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy of the highest order.

The Specialist’s Promise: Lessons from 1929

This shift in thinking isn’t just a quirk of Marcus’s office; it’s a structural error that has infected the DNA of modern commerce. We have forgotten the history of why loyalty existed in the first place. Consider the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, better known as A&P.

In the early 20th century, before it became a sprawling supermarket giant, A&P transformed the way Americans shopped by doing the exact opposite of what Marcus is doing. They realized that in a world of inconsistent quality and fluctuating prices, a brand could be a promise. By 1929, they were doing $1.4 billion in sales-a staggering sum for the time-not just because they were cheap, but because they built a “specialist” reputation. People didn’t just buy tea; they bought A&P tea because the store had spent decades proving they knew tea better than the general store down the street.

They didn’t assume loyalty was dead; they assumed it was the only thing that could keep a business alive through a depression. But today, we’ve traded the specialist’s promise for the generalist’s clutter.

The Digital Flea Market

You see this most clearly in the world of online retail, particularly in niche categories where trust should be the primary currency. Take the adult vapor market, for example. It is a sector currently drowning in its own cynicism. The average online “vape shop” looks like a digital flea market. They stock 400 different brands, half of which are of dubious origin, and they treat their customers like a high-volume churn statistics.

They assume the customer only cares about the lowest price and the fastest “add to cart” button. Because they offer no expertise, no curation, and no authenticity assurance, the customer naturally behaves as a “mercenary”-scouring the web for a coupon code and never looking back. The tragedy is that the customer actually wants to be loyal.

As a water sommelier, I spend my days explaining to people that “wet” is not a flavor profile and that the source of your mineral intake matters. I see the relief in a client’s eyes when I stop treating them like a mouth to be hydrated and start treating them like a person with a specific palate.

People are exhausted by choice. They are tired of the “scroll-forever” culture of generalist stores where everything is a blur of neon packaging and vague promises. A specialist, however, changes the gravity of the room. When a business decides to go deep instead of wide, they are making a radical bet on the customer’s intelligence.

A store that focuses exclusively on a single, high-quality line-like a dedicated catalog of authentic Lost Mary products-isn’t just selling a device; they are selling the absence of anxiety. They are saying, “We have done the filtering for you. We know this brand’s Berry family is distinct from its Tropical family. We know the difference between the draw of a Turbo model and a Pro model.”

By organizing a chaotic market into a clear, filterable, and trustworthy destination, a specialist earns the loyalty that the generalist says doesn’t exist. When you provide a space where an adult can confidently compare Lost Mary vape flavors without the fear of stumbling onto a counterfeit or a dead-end link, you are building a relationship. You are no longer Gary at the airport terminal staring blankly at a “usual” order; you are the curator who remembers the preference.

Loyalty is a Byproduct of Competence

I’ve often thought about my dentist, Dr. Aris, while sitting in his chair with a mouthful of cotton and the high-pitched whine of the drill as my only soundtrack. He’s a specialist who refuses to do “cosmetic packages.” He only does what is necessary for the health of the tooth.

He’s the most expensive guy in the ZIP code, and his waiting list is 14 weeks long. Why? Because in an industry that has mostly pivoted to “selling smiles” as a transactional product, he is loyal to the craft of dentistry. And because he is loyal to the craft, his patients are fanatically loyal to him. We don’t want the cheapest drill; we want the guy who knows exactly how deep the nerve sits.

The “loyalty is dead” crowd misses this entirely. They think loyalty is a reward you give to a brand after they buy you a sandwich. In reality, loyalty is a byproduct of competence and narrow focus.

But if a brand invests in a dedicated, specialist catalog-one where I can see the puff capacity, the flavor profile, and the authenticity verification all in one place-I stay. I stay because the “cost” of leaving is the loss of that clarity. The industry’s error is thinking that loyalty is an emotion. It’s not. In the context of commerce, loyalty is the result of reduced cognitive load.

The vending machine demands a coin while the specialist offers a catalog, and we wonder why the cold metal of the slot never warms to the touch of our loyalty. We are currently living through a “Great Thinning” of brand relationships. The middle-management strategy of “acquisition at all costs” has led to a world where we have 1,000 choices and 0 preferences.

“He doesn’t have a ‘loyalty program’ with plastic cards and 5% discounts. He has a relationship built on the fact that he knows something the customer wants to learn.”

– Elena T., Spirit Sommelier

I remember talking to Elena T. (another sommelier, though she focuses on spirits while I stick to the H2O side of the fence). She told me about a boutique bottle shop that only carries whiskies from three specific regions of Scotland. They don’t have the big names. They don’t have the stuff you see on billboards. But they have a line out the door every Saturday morning. The owner knows every customer’s preferred peat level.

Stop Transacting, Start Conversing

This is the path forward for any business currently feeling the “churn-and-burn” fatigue. Stop trying to be everything to everyone. Stop assuming that your customers are just walking wallets waiting for a 15% off pop-up. Instead, become the specialist. Build the “Complete Collection” of whatever it is you do.

Make it so easy, so authentic, and so deeply understood that the customer would feel like a fool to go anywhere else. Loyalty isn’t a ghost of the past; it’s a premium product of the future. But you have to be brave enough to earn it. You have to be the one who stops the transaction and starts the conversation.

You have to be the specialist in a world of Marcus-types, and you have to realize that the most valuable thing you can offer isn’t a lower price, but a higher standard of knowing exactly what you’re talking about. Only then will you see that the customer isn’t fickle-they were just waiting for someone to finally recognize them.