8 Square Hacks Every Coffee Shop Owner Needs to Know

If you run a coffee shop, you already know that your to do list never ends. Lucky for you, Square's been developing some great tools alongside their point of sale to help you really streamline your operations and smooth out all those inefficiencies. So today we're going to talk about the eight Square hacks that every coffee shop owner needs to know. Square hack number one, automate repetitive order handling either through a printer or a kitchen display system. Once you get really busy in the mornings during those rushes, the last thing you want to do is mishear people or get an order wrong. And this is where these tools really help to streamline your operations. All your orders, whether they're coming from your App, your website, third party platforms like DoorDash or in store are going to be centralized or either going to print out, go right to the kitchen display and it's going to be easy for whoever's preparing that order just to move on to the next ticket or the next order and then to just to move the other one around. It'll lead to a lot higher guest satisfaction as well, just because at the end of the day people won't be waiting as long. The second Square growth hack is to balance workloads using Order Ahead. This can come either through your website, this can come through a branded app built by someone like Per Diem, or this can come through third party platforms like Uber Eats or DoorDash. This the idea is that you don't have to take every order at the counter in store. This takes up a lot of energy from your staff and time. And this way the orders are just going right through like we talked about, either to your kitchen display system or to your printer. And it's really easy for your staff to prepare those and to really stay on top of things. Furthermore, you can send out incentives at certain times of day, later in the afternoon when things are slow, to really like balance out your business as well. The third score efficiency hack is to get smarter with inventory management. So you can mark certain items as out of stock or you can put a count on certain items. Hey, we have a dozen baguettes left. This obviously helps to set guest expectations and also enables this element of scarcity, which is nice. Hey, if you're running out of baguettes, that means that I kind of want one even more. But really it saves you from those awkward moments where someone orders a sandwich or whatever it is and you're out of whatever they ordered and then having to refund them and going through and needing them to reorder outside of it not being a great guest experience, it just eats up a lot of time from your staff. The fourth Square Efficiency hack is to keep your menus synced everywhere. We at Per Diem automatically integrate with Square's catalog. This means anything that either is out of stock or is on account, or let's say you change your price or you change a modifier set, it's automatically going to get updated number one on your online ordering site and number two in your branded app that are both delivered by Per Diem. Any third party tool that you're using ideally is going to have a direct integration with Squares catalog so that you don't have to manually go update that menu. Ultimately that's going to be a time sink for you when you're running any type of campaign and again it's just going to lead to poor guests experience. The FIS Square Efficiency hack is to reduce the communication clutter and to automate the order notification. So through Per Diem, whenever you update your order status in Square, we'll get that and we'll send out a push notification to the end user. Hey, we got your order. Hey, we're working on it. Hey, your order's ready. Hey, thanks for picking it up. This obviously sets the right guest expectations. They're not going to be coming to the counter asking about their order if they're getting those notifications and it's just an easier way for you to to streamline things. So in addition to that, if you don't have time to manually update the statuses in Per Diem, you can set that based on prep time so it'll automatically go out at a certain time. The six Square Efficiency hack is to automate your marketing by using Square's smart groups. So squirrel automatically track your top spenders, your VIPs, any lapsed users, and then you can create campaigns, whether it's through Square's email marketing tools or by using tools like Per Diem through push notifications or even banners in the app. And these can be targeted just to those groups. So let's say you're rolling out our subscription feature and you have this really like high end subscription. Maybe you target your top spenders or if there is like a promotion out there that you want to put to anyone that hasn't visited in a while, send out a push notification to your lapsed users with a little offer. These are gold. And in today's world, personalized marketing is really where it's at. The 7 square efficiency hack is busy mode. So this can be done at the point of sale itself. Or this can be done in tools. Again, like per diem. Busy mode in per diem will let your guests know that, hey, we're running a little bit behind. You can set this up in a couple of ways. You can say, hey, for this specific category, if we ever do X amount of orders in, Y amount of time, then extend my Prep time by 10 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever it is. Or you can simply turn on busy mode in real time and then it'll automatically do that again, letting your guests know, hey, we're running a little bit behind and setting the right expectation. The eight score efficiency hack can only be done in per diem, and this is enabling in store access to special amenities like your WI fi, bathroom codes or whatever it is. And really, this is done in per diem by adding a little snippet there. And once people open the app, they'll be able to see your WI fi code, you'll be able to see your bathroom code and all that. And this is going to save your staff a lot of time, a lot of questions. Hey, what's the bathroom code again? You know, in the middle of them preparing drinks and what have you. And it's again, a smoother experience. It's a little bit of a growth hack because then those people are going to download your app and then they'll have your app and then they end up ordering from you. So that's a good incentive as well. So that's it for today's show. Thanks for joining us. These were Square's eight efficiency hacks to really streamline your coffee shop operations. It's all about setting the right guest expectations, making sure your staff is happy and that they're efficient and. And also ultimately becoming a much more profitable business. Thanks and see you next time.