Square is your POS at your cafe. Great decision. This article is for those that have already decided to use Square and have transactions occurring in their Square account.

Starbucks has an app. Their app drives a lot of business and keeps customers coming back.

Your cafe app can do the same. 

If you have multiple locations, make sure your app can support the idea that each location could have a different menu. Some items or some modifiers can’t be stocked in all stores. Items run out throughout the day. It is important to be able to mark items as unavailable, whether it be for the remainder of the day, until turned back on, or permanently.

A mobile app experience is an extension of your store operational habits, but it is not exactly the same. For instance, you might want to close mobile ordering 5 minutes prior to in store closing hours. A 10 drink mobile order coming in 5 seconds before closing can certainly be an issue for staff and customers.

There are messages you want to show customers for instructing them on how to pickup their items, whether it is a curbside, counter, or drive thru order. Your app should allow setting these so they show.

In terms of curbside, why not let a customer indicate the vehicle they are going to be arriving in…then give them a chance to confirm or edit that vehicle on arrival. A customer would click “I’m Here” in the app when arriving and this can send a message to your Square terminal so staff knows the customer is there and which vehicle they are in.

One thing that Starbucks has is an in app digital wallet. Digital wallets have become sort of the expected experience with the large corporate chains. You too can have a digital wallet in your app. With a single “points” bucket, you can give customers a Welcome Bonus upon signing up, you can reward them with points as they checkout in your app (2%, 5%, etc), and you can offer an opportunity to deposit $5, $10, $20, etc into their digital wallet. The nice thing with that is the obvious impact seen through multiple orders being placed with the funds, but also, you can save a good amount on processing. If Square charges you 2.6% plus 10 cents per transaction, you can now incentivize customers to deposit $20. This $20 could be enough money to place 4 orders. Rather than 4 transaction fees, now you pay only 1 in this scenario. 

There are an almost endless number of things know. The point of it all is that a mobile app for your cafe can really help drive sales and retain customers. Starbucks and the other large chains are becoming tech companies in many ways.  Your cafe business can have a quality app for customers to use when they order.

Espressly specializes in building apps for cafes and has worked to make the most complete integration with Square as is possible, per what Square makes available to developers. 

There is no setup fee and with a simple 4% commission model (or pay $149 per location*), you can get started without much effort. 

Fill out the CONTACT form or setup a call to learn more.

*fixed monthly amount requires an 18 month commitment