12 Mobile App Strategies Coffee Shops Are Using to Boost Average Order Value

Starting fresh. So anyhow, this week's weekly webinar, as we mentioned, 12 ways to boost your average order value. And yeah, we just got started on store credit. So again, we offer incentivized store credit. You can set that up in our dashboard. We'll show you how to do that and how it works. And people can also leverage this store credit inside in your store. So they can either, you can search by their name and their phone number, which is the last four digits here, or when they're checking out, you can insert the gift card number when they're checking out, and then the store credit will be applied at the point of sale as well. So as we mentioned, incentivizing higher purchases. So if you do this, obviously if I have stored value in your app, you get that cash right away. So that's one nice benefit of it. And then I tend to spend it faster. I tend to order more things because it kind of feels a little bit free. So whether that's, you know, getting that latte that I usually don't get instead of the Americano, then maybe, maybe that's something I do, or maybe I get a pastry in addition to that. But that's like the outcome of if I have this, I have this money sitting there and then I just want to spend it more. So on the one hand, it's going to lead to increased frequency because when I do want coffee or something to eat, you know, and I have credit already with you, I'm going to go and want to use it. And on the other hand, because I have this large amount of credit, I'll tend to buy more from you guys and then higher redemption rates as well. So 80% of customers redeem their store credit within the first two weeks. So that's, that's obviously great. Once it's there, you feel like you've already spent something. And then also when you spend it, it doesn't feel it doesn't hurt you as much because you've already spent the cash in a way, so you don't feel the pain as much. And then for operators, one thing that's nice about this is that they're redeemed as store credit. So you're only paying that, that extra. I think it's a 30% online fee to square on that initial purchase. So the higher of an incentive that you can give, let's say it's $100 then, and let's say someone purchases 18 to 20 cups of coffee for that $100, then you're not going to be paying that additional 30 cents per online order for those additional transactions. So that's an additional nice savings for you as well. Here's an example of Boba Bliss. They use this as one of their primary loyalty methods. So they actually don't do square loyalty. We'll talk about square loyalty in a moment. But you can see how they've, they've done a nice incentive. They've boosted their revenue by 150 and they're killing it. They, they, they do a ton of orders through their app with a simple discount, pay 45, get 50. And so that's how it works with them. Ethereal Cafe is another one that does really well with this feature. They do pay 100, get 110. I remember they ran like a really right when they launched the app. I think they did even some bigger incentives and drove a lot of just. And so I think they might have even done like pay 100 get 150 right when they launched the app. But if you think about that like then These people have $150 in your app. They're going to come, it's going to become a habit for them. It's going to become like essentially their daily ritual. So it can be worth it in the long run, especially doing like kind of like a flash deal like that. And then you can back that up with sending a push notification, adding a banner in the app, letting people know, hey, here's this limited time, you know, offer, especially with the holidays coming up, those things will be pretty popular in terms of square loyalty. So I think this is kind of a no brainer in terms of increasing average order value. People want their points more than ever. People want their points. So you can see here 78% of consumers spend more with the brand that offers a loyalty program. You can see in this screenshot right here, one of our newest apps, Prickly Boba in Texas. They're going to be giving a five point incentive when people sign up for the app. So boom, you get that right away. You get that adrenaline rush, that dopamine. I got five points now how do I spend it? So that's really nice. Whether that gives you a discount, whether that gives you on your way to a free drink or an entirely a free drink, totally up to you. You can customize that. You can also customize this. So you give the points after their first purchase and then you can promote it as such. So that's another way to incentivize. Again, this is only on initial download. The only way someone's ever going to get. This is the first time they download the app. If they delete the app and redownload it, they won't get this again. Increased visit frequency. So this I think is also obviously a side effect of having points. But you can see customers enrolled in Score loyalty program visit 40% more often. They visit more often, they spend more, especially as they start redeeming points. So you can see here, this is the redemption method on checkout. People can select where they want a discount on this or an entirely free item. And this really does incentivize and this helps people. You know, we have a lot of apps here around me in New York City and, and I use those points and that leads me to order a lot more. I can say it works personally on me, but obviously this is, there's a clear methodology here. And I would say, like these numbers from Square Loyalty are just like, if you're doing it at the POS and what have you, when you have the app, it really, it really ups that. It really makes it a lot easier because it's so much more accessible for your customers. And they see their points when they log into the app. So you can see here Palace Coffee, they're doing some stuff around, you know, it's fall, so they're, they're kind of done a new, a new look and feel to the app, including some, some nice pictures with pumpkins. And then they're giving 25 additional points, you know, after your first order. So great. That's another incentive you can do. You can also offer just 25 points on any order that you do. You can put spend thresholds on that. You can do that in per diem. And then you can also set that up in square. So for instance, let's say you want to do a happy hour, you know, and maybe some of your slower days, like a Tuesday and a Wednesday from like, you know, 2 to 5 or 3 to 5. So you can set that up either in square, where you're giving additional points during those hours, or you can set that up in per diem, where you're just turning that on and off at a, at a given time. But that's, that's certainly something that they're taking advantage of here. You can also, you know, when you're setting up Square Loyalty, obviously you're going to decide whether you want to have those points be redeemed on dollar amount or to specific items and categories. So here you can see we do merchandise. If you do select the, the category or the items to apply, like different Sets of points to. To that. Then you can see how we merchandise that in the app. And that can really lead to people purchasing different things because they're going to get more points. So that's something that you can strategically do the same deal with, you know, just paying with points in general. If it's, you know, if you have certain drinks that are six, seven dollars and other drinks that are three, four dollars, then a dollar a point, and basing your point program on that would obviously work really well, too. So we have a bunch of places that do that, including Lucky, as you saw there, and then some of the things that we're building on top of square loyalty. So square loyalty is great, and Starbucks has proved that out in terms of a loyalty program, being able to redeem and get free drinks and free food and whatever you want to give there. But gamifying that, making that a little bit more memorable is also something that we've added this new twist, this kind of spin the wheel. So the way it works is on the back end, you set up how much you want to give, how many points, and at what payment threshold. So here you can see in this example, it's $40. Anytime you spend over $40, you get a spin at the wheel. You can also do this at certain times. Maybe you can just set it as all your orders get a spin at the wheel. But maybe it's something that you do like on Fridays or something like that. So up to you how you want to utilize it. Again, this sits on top of square loyalty. So if you don't do square loyalty, it's unfortunately not going to work for you. But if you do, it's just built into the app and so you can customize it with your look and feel. You can see here gamification features increase customer engagement by 47%. And then the way it's set up, obviously, to increase average order value is you can promote, hey, guys, spend whatever your average order value is. Let's say it's, you know, 11, $12, which is, you know what? I've seen a lot for a lot of coffee shops, hey, let's do this at 15, $20. Spend over 15, spend over $20. Get a spin at the wheel, get extra points and see how that works for you. You know, it's again, something that you don't have to roll out permanently. You can do it kind of on a test basis. But again, it's fun, it's interactive. It's giving your customers, you know, some excitement. So here you can see a Great way to promote the spin the wheel, too. This is one of our busier apps, Cupcake and Espresso Bar. They put out this announcement banner, spend $20 or more for a spin at the wheel. So as simple as that. And there you go. And that'll get people thinking about it. And maybe not this time, but maybe next time when they're really close, they'll add that extra pastry into their. Into their shopping cart. Build a box. So this is something that we've built into the app recently. You can see here the way it works is basically you set up any modifiers, any modifiers that you have on your product. And then on our side, we can basically customize it. You can create whether you want those modifiers to be created as like a six pack or a 12 pack or a baker's dozen, whatever it is. And then we take those modifiers and we essentially cap them. So if, let's say you have. You've already have this kind of build a box set up, but it has like, let's say you want to do a box of 12 and it has like 12 different flavors of cookies. Well, in that case, you can have people go through and select each one one by one, which might be a little bit of a, you know, it's not going to convert entirely. Well, or the way we've set it up, you can see here, you simply select. The modifier will pop up the screen. You select the quantity of that cookie. And so again, if you're selling a six pack here, I would select, as you can see, two vanillas and four chocolates. And then, boom, I can just check out right then, right there. If I had five or seven, it wouldn't let me check out just when I have six. So this is a great way obviously, to bundle things. If people are buying one or two pastries from you, bundle them into. Into more. And so one, one. One of our stores that's really taking advantage of this is crave Cookies, actually. So you can see Crave cookies. They're really killing it in terms of their build a box. They've actually built it. They. They do have these modifiers set up in square as like required modifiers. Pick cookie one, cookie two, all that stuff. So you can do it that way and set it up through square as required modifiers. Or you can set it up on our side too. Totally up to you. Chip City. They do something a little bit different, but it has an equal impact. So they have this basically, you buy five, you get one free. So any discount that you set up in square and they set this up under their square category. Discounts. Any, any like obviously anything that falls under this cookie category. Once you add six of those into your shopping cart, then we'll automatically give a discount on one of those. So that's another way to kind of, you know, do kind of a build your box, give that same perk in terms of a discount and get people to, to pay a little bit more. Instead of like two or three cookies are going to buy now six. And then you'll just be able to, to basically turn that on. So another great way to, to increase that average order value, upselling. So this is one of the nicer new features that we've built recently. On the checkout page, you can sell, you can select which items you want and we won't show any items obviously that you already have in your shopping cart. So you can see we would never show that single espresso, even if it is something that you have as an upsell item. So you can see upselling in General can add 10 to 15% to each order on average. I've seen people do, whether it's drinks, food, you know, different merch, you know, whether it's coffee cups, T shirts, that can work too. But as we say in here, you know, you might want to promote your high, high margin items. Definitely a good strategy to use there. And then, yeah, add on drinks. As you can see here again, Prickly Boba, that's another way you can increase order size by 20%. I think one thing that isn't specifically mentioned here, we pick up all your modifiers too in square. So obviously paid modifiers are another way to increase your, your order size and you can do that. So whether you're doing paid or unpaid modifiers, totally up to you. But that's clearly a way that, you know, hey, I want that oat milk that's really important to me. So you can upcharge me 5075 cents for that. And I think in today's world people are happy to pay that. Another example here from Ambi Coffee, how they're upselling their, their breakfast combos and, and how that kind of looks in the app. But they're doing a great job as well. Delivery. So delivery overall, just in general, I think the overall dynamic of delivery and, and we work with, with DoorDash. We also work with UberEats, but our primary partner is Door Dash. If you have an exclusive arrangement arrangement with UberEats, then we can accommodate that as well. So one of the nice things about delivery though that we've realized is that it really does increase aov. So you know, the use case is a little bit different. You're ordering in, maybe you're at the office, maybe you're at home and you got the kids around. So the order sizes tend to be higher. There's probably a little psychology too. Most of our merchants pass the delivery fee, so by default it's going to be a little bit higher. And so if you're already paying more then you know, maybe you'll throw a little bit more in because you feel like, hey, I'm paying for this delivery. So let me, let me add a few items. There are another. And so we've seen actually a pretty big increase. I've seen instances where it's like actually the average order value is like double on a lot of deliveries specifically with the app. And some of our better merchants here we can see do and Co delivery orders have an average order value that is 1.65 times higher than pickup orders. Do and Co has actually gone exclusive with their delivery with per diem. So keep in mind they're still able to, able to benefit from DoorDash's third party delivery system, which is amazing. It's an amazing logistics network. But they're just not promoting themselves on the DoorDash marketplace anymore. They have a big enough client base where they can offer delivery just through the app and people are happy to do it. So they've had a lot of success obviously with pizza. So you can imagine you're getting that delivery, you're paying that delivery fee. Hey, maybe I'll add on, you know, an extra appetizer or something like that. So you can see how that would be, would increase your average order value. Oops. Tika Shack. So Tika Shack, interestingly so they had, they have a lot of levers into delivery. So they set a free delivery threshold which you can set up in the app at 49. So hey, spend 49, get free delivery. And then their minimum Delivery too is $29. So our minimum delivery overall in per diem is $20. We have to do that. It's some sort of square requirement where that just has to be $20. So but they said that 29. So you could do something like that too if you want to get those order values up. Obviously they also, they incentivize so you can set this up in per diem to. They incentivize people with a lower delivery fee. So they actually charge 299 flat delivery fee and then they Charge a service fee on the back end. I believe it's 10%, it might be 15%. But that way they can promote 299 delivery as opposed to the typical delivery. If you're pushing all the delivery fee to the end user, it's anywhere between 7 and $10 from DoorDash. So this way they're promoting it as 299. But then there is that service charge on the back end that, that they're charging. So you know, it's kind of. But, but they have different levers and they do pretty well with delivery. So food for thought but definitely leveraging. Whether it's the minimum delivery size or the free delivery threshold to help to incentivize people, I think is a next a nice perk. Subscriptions. So this is our Panera style subscription program. This is kind of, you know, a big build on this is frequency. So but at the end of the day, you know, it's maybe not tied directly to AOV but you can see subscription members spend 11 times more annually than non subscribers. And it actually does lead to aov. It's just indirect because people are ordering more from you anyhow at a higher frequency. So sometimes those numbers don't come through. But as we show you, for instance, the Fresh Baguette Club, this is Fresh baguette in Washington D.C. area. There are seven locations. And what they offer is this. $10 a month. And at $10 a month you're getting 50% off all their espresso drinks and 15% off all their food. And so you can imagine how they're not necessarily some of the subscription programs that we do will give free coffee. And so you can imagine, you know, that's obviously I'm getting a free drink, but even on those, there's going to be a higher chance that I'm going to spend extra on a croissant or something like that because I'm already getting something kind of for free, you know. And If I'm paying 20, you know, here I'm paying 10 bucks a month, but I am going to want to get more out of my subscription. So you could see that this, this how this would boost what we, what we do know for sure is that it boosts in store frequency or just order frequency by about 30%. So this is another thing similar to square loyalty. It's just our program that we've built which has a nice uptick and has its own perks. Prevail Union. They do this as well. You can see they have the, they do do the free espresso drinks, but they're charging more. So here you can see they're charging 50 bucks a month. And with that you get, I think it's up to three drinks a day and then you're getting a certain percentage off on all their food and, and items like that. So again, the big play here on subscriptions is it you get them in at a lower cost on the coffee and then you upsell them on the food. That's kind of the play. That's how you increase the average order value, at least with the Panera style subscriptions that we've built into the app. So let's look at a few additional strategies to help improve aova, you know, high quality images. So we talk about this a lot. The better your images are, the, you know, the more they'll sell the old adage, you know, a picture is worth a thousand words. Nothing is truer in a mobile app. So we, once you start, we'll provide stock imagery if, if you're missing any images. But ideally you can take some nice captivating imagery of your own items with, you know, the ones we've seen that are really good, have a nice backdrop to them, whether it's something in store on a nice like wooden table or something like with your branding typically that's something that I see too, that's pretty common. So having like, you know, whether it's that sleeve on a cup or maybe it's a mug that has your branding on it, but that, that reinforcement is really nice. So we've seen just nice pictures. It has a nice boost. You can see 30% highlighting items. So you're able to tag certain things especially as you're promoting them in the carousel here. So whether it's a best selling item and stuff like that, but you can see that can boost conversion 12%. And obviously anything that you're going to promote in this carousel, you're getting more eyes on it. There's a higher likelihood that I'll purchase. So it's a good opportunity for you to put some of your, you know, higher, higher ticketed items there as well, things that you want to move. So that's another strategy, obviously, one click reordering. So this goes into the whole ethos of just making it easy for people. And so you can see this, this is again more on the retention side but can help on, on aov. Once you combine it, you make it really easy for somebody to add these things into their cart. And then obviously with the upsell feature you can sell them a little Bit more limited time offers. So these are, these are huge. And, and our push notifications are a great way to do flash offers. So send something out. You know, we've seen stuff where it's like today only, this afternoon only, whatever it is. And keep in mind, push notifications are really like here and now. These are things that like, I'm not going to remember tomorrow. What push. You know, like I get these all the time. It's like, do I want to get lunch from sweetgreen today? Okay, I'm going to take advantage of that push notification they just sent me. So the same thing for you, you know, if you send these out, if there's a hook to it, even if you're just introducing a new menu item, that's still a limited time offer. That's something you want to talk about. And then there are other ways that you can obviously move that. So great way to move those items which, which tend to be higher margin and stuff like that. Referrals. So we've built our own referral program. It sits on top of Square Loyalty and it's really cool. You can see here, anybody can refer someone to the app and then after their first purchase we'll both get points. You can determine how many points people give. Then you can see people that are referred, they tend to have a much higher lifetime value, they tend to spend more. There's that extra added credibility to those types of users. So it's a really slick program. We built it kind of with Uber in mind. They obviously became really popular and famous with their referral program. So basically we're giving, you know, all kinds of, you know, smaller businesses that aren't, you know, a mega trillion dollar business like Uber, the same capabilities essentially. And it's pretty slick. So if you haven't turned that on, you're using Square Loyalty. We recommend that you do. And like, keep in mind, I gotta tell my friend about this. It's, you know, I'm putting my kind of neck out there, so be kind. I don't think, I don't think if you. I would give more than less. If you're going to use it, I would give more than less because like, it's not like there's going to be, you know, if there are great, if people bring thousands of people in, all the better. But like you want to incentivize, you want it to be like a nice little, you know, something. And so just. That would be my advice on that one. Yeah. So unless there are any questions, happy to take some questions. But Otherwise we can jump right in and we can show you how some of these features work in the real world. So I'll stop for a minute. I think we got something in the chat. Okay, thanks, Martin. Cool. So just let me tie up to my phone. All right, well, hopefully you guys see my phone now.

Yep.

Awesome. So basically once people log into the app, you know they're gonna see, assuming you're. You're doing score loyalty, they'll see their points. Here you can see here we're calling them beans, the referral program. We merchandise that really nicely throughout the app. So you can see I'm going to tap refer. I could just go ahead and click. I can send that to Isabella. It'll have the, the invite. So boom, you can see how that's sent. And then if I go to. So here you can see what the landing page looks like. You just got referred by Tomer. And then, you know, I can go ahead and click that. And then right within that, that page, basically the App Store profile show up here you can see this is a tiered rewards program. Were offering different. This is a square loyalty setup where we're offering per category per item. But as we mentioned. So this is one way to do it. And then I'll show you guys how this is merchandise through the app. But the other way that we see that is pretty common is, is basically by dollar amount. So here you can see the cappuccino. You get five bean for merchandising that. But then come down and you see chai latte. And I'm only getting two, two beans for that. So I don't know that this is how you'd actually set that up. But nonetheless, you know, that's, that's certainly available to you. So going back to the, to the homepage and the store credit. So here you can see by adding, adding funds, you can come out with any type of discount you want here. Here we're doing pay 85, get a hundred bucks. So you can see I already have 91 in my wallet. And so, yeah, so then I'll just. Oh, and the tags as well. So you can see here, this is one of our best sellers and so really easy just to label those in our merchant dashboard again to help move certain items, you know, whatever you want to put on them. So. And then we talked about modifiers. So you can obviously upcharge for certain modifiers. So hey, I want to get the almond milk and, and I don't know many people that upcharge for sweeteners, but let's. Let's play the game. Let's add a few more things to the card. I think there's a $20 minimum average. I'm sorry, $20 threshold in order to spin the wheel. So here you can see I'm on the checkout. Okay, awesome. These items are not in my checkout cart, you know, so, you know, again, you can be. We haven't yet. It's in our. It's in our roadmap to kind of add a little data science into here and to really personalize this right now, it is more or less set up the way you set it up in the dashboard. But as I mentioned, it's really easy. Hey, just, boom. I just added that to my cart. And now you can see that item isn't. Is no longer there. So it's as simple as that. Here you can see I can check out. I can apply this discount because I'm using square loyalty. Oh, and I forgot to show you guys one thing in terms of the build a box feature. So if we go to the dessert page, and here we can see this is this box of cookies. So here are the modifiers that are set up in square. And then on our side, in our dashboard, we simply set up, you know, what's the cap on this item? So you're going to say, hey, this is a six. Box of cookies or box of cookies. Choose up to six. Right. And so here I'll be able to choose different flavors. And then you can see, okay, I got six out of six. Once I have six out of six, boom. I can just go ahead, and then I can check out. So that's how that works as well. And then you can see, once I purchase store credit by default, we apply the store credit at checkout. So I'll go ahead here. I'm getting 18 beans for this order, plus I'm getting a little bit off. So great. Now the order is going to go through, and you'll see here. Great. I spent $54, so I get to spin the wheel. So I'll go, you know, again, a nice. I'm waiting for my coffee or whatever. Obviously, I can. I can. I can skip this as well. So. But nice little feature to. Oh, we have to fix the. We have to fix that. Maybe we should only let you get an extra spin once. But it looks like I'm in the extra spin zone. We'll try one more time. There we go. Big winner. And so now you can see my orders in. And so, yeah, I think. I think in terms of you know, at least. At least some of the things that you can use to leverage to boost aov. So that. That's a few of them right there. And yeah, so I think that's just a real quick hitter. Yeah, I think that just about does it for this week. Again, happy to dive into anything. Martin, in case you have any specific questions, is there a way people can offer in the people also buy upsell section where the items being upsold are 5% giving us. I see. So in the people, is there a way we can offer. Yeah, so I think we don't have that. I think that's a good idea. So basically, if we have, would you already have a discount on them or would you say in that scenario maybe you would want to say, hey, get 5% off the cappuccino. Is that kind of the idea?

I can only do audio briefly here. I'm in the corner of the coffee shop where you see cappuccino. It says seven bucks. It would have like a red line that goes through it and say 5% off or something like that. Just as, hey, you know, I can get to save a little money if I just add to cart versus just the regular price. Yeah.

And so. And so that's something where specifically you're saying show it on the add to cart page versus like on that page.

Right there where you said the last page, where they were there as the recommendations.

So not necessarily show it here, but then show it on the add to cart.

Yeah, but only there where it says people also buy where you see.

Right, right.

Latte and a cappuccino right there where it says eight bucks, seven bucks.

Yeah, we. I think there's certainly ways that we can merchandise this. Right now I'm trying to think if we have that enablement, probably didn't. We'll have to look into it with our product team. But I like it. I like the way of, you know, what's an extra. Like something you can dangle? What's an extra carrot you can dangle here to help, you know, move these things? So, yeah, right. Today we. We don't do that. But. But certainly that's something that we can look into that in term also, like merchandising, like if you do get points on the items or something like that, ideally would you want it to be a percentage or like extra points or what do you think?

Actually the percentage, because they always look at dollar value as there. But it wouldn't be if they went into the regular system and looked up the cafe latte. They'd still pay eight bucks. If they did it through that, like clicking that very button, they would get 5 or 10% off.

Right.

Even if it's something that because it's paired up, it's something they always buy as a combo anyway. It's still rewarding them for being regulars, but in many cases it would just upsell something they wouldn't have thought. Norma.

No, no, I love it. I love it. And so, yeah, let us chat with our team and think of ways that we can kind of, you know, make this a little bit more eye popping and appealing for people.

Yeah, Only where it says people also buy. Right there. Just right.

Yeah, yeah, in the upsell section. Love it, Love it. Cool. Yeah, we. These are the promoted items. The promoted items also appear in the search. So potentially in these two, even though this is probably less, you know, when I'm on the checkout screen is when I probably am most ready to commit in terms of a purchase. So this would be the place to show them something Cool. Thanks for the feedback. All right, well, thanks. Thanks again for another. Another week. We'll be back next week with more fun stuff. So thanks everyone. Have a great autumn. Sell those pumpkin spice lattes and we'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Nice.