Payment Solutions for Businesses

Buns From Home

As the world went into lockdown, a business was born. Notting Hill fell in love with homemade laminated croissants. Every day, a little army of riders would drop off sweet buns from home to doorsteps around the London hamlet. Two years later, the bakery has risen, catering to customers in seven locations around the UK. Anna Mansfield, the operations manager, reveals how they earned their crust.

Keeping up with an exponentially growing business.

On the heels of opening its first Buns From Home location, the team was missing one final ingredient: a point-of-sale system. ‘We needed something fast. We had seen Square around London. It felt like a trusted brand’, Anna said.

Beyond the brand’s credibility, she also appreciated the design of the Square Reader. ‘I know this sounds a little bit vain, but it was just good-looking. We thought it was best. It was a slick little card reader.’

Learning how to use Square products was really seamless.

Ramping up locations meant ramping up staff. Primary for Anna: making sure anyone front of house could pick up the payment terminal and service customers quickly.

‘With front of house, we don’t really have to do anything. The menu is there in the app. We categorise it and that makes things faster for staff. On weekends, they’ve got to be able to move fast.’

Hear how Anna benefitted from Square Payments

“We took on Square really quickly and it just seamlessly grew with us. As we got more and more shops, Square was the just the thing we turned to and it was just the easiest. We didn't ever have concerns about our front of house members knowing how to use the interface – that part of the training wasn't something we ever needed to spend too much time on.”

It’s all done right there.

Square Analytics also helps staff run their back-end planning without complicated onboarding or training.

‘I’ve never had to do any kind of training with the operations team. It’s not as if I have to compare anything and extract any data and analyse data myself’, Anna said. ‘Square automatically shows you your information from last Monday and compares it to previous weeks. It’s just done right there.’

Easy.

Adopting a new payment type has allowed the Buns From Home team to also expand its offering. Thanks to Square Online Checkout, the business has launched a new service: corporate orders.

‘For larger orders, we don’t need someone to come into the bakery and pay with their cards’, said Anna. ‘Instead, they put in an order ahead of time and pay with a payment link after. Easy.’

How Anna gets work done

Get business insights from business experts

The seller was reimbursed for the time they spent being interviewed.