During lockdown, Tom Haydon began delivering trays of his slow-cooked beef shin lasagne across London. The dish quickly achieved cult status, winning fans far beyond his neighbourhood. Now located in Hackney Downs Studios – a converted printworks that’s home to a thriving community of creatives – Tom’s Pasta is a restaurant and deli serving hearty Italian food.
On any given evening, up to 250 guests might arrive for dinner, with many of them keen to try the lasagne that made Tom famous. “The dish has gone massive on social media,” Tom says. “If people keep liking them, I’ll keep making them. But it needs to be consistent.”
Maintaining consistency is just one of the challenges that come with scaling a passion project into a business. As covers grew, so did the operational complexity of managing staff rotas, payroll, suppliers, and stock. To keep service seamless, Tom turned to Square.
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Challenge: managing a juggling act
The restaurant has experienced rapid growth in just a few short years, and Tom quickly realised that running on instinct alone wasn’t sustainable. “When I started, I was sort of ‘guesstimating’. I wouldn’t really track hours and would do things off the top of my head.”
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However, he soon understood that with a team of 15, this approach wasn’t reliable and he needed to implement a more structured approach to planning, one that enabled him to monitor staff schedules and sales patterns to ensure the restaurant was prepared for busy periods and produced minimal food waste. The pressure was felt most by Tom in three areas:
1. Food preparation and stock planning: Tom needed clearer data to avoid over-prepping dishes and wasting expensive Italian ingredients, or under-prepping when demand spiked. “People are very unpredictable. We need to try and get into their minds with reporting. That helps us see what the flow of people is saying.”
2. Service efficiency: Taking orders on paper and re-entering them at the counter slowed staff down and left room for mistakes. Losing tickets was a constant worry.
3. Payroll and staff management: With 15 staff members and multiple roles across the restaurant and deli, Tom needed an accurate, easy-to-use system to track hours, schedule shifts, and ensure everyone got paid correctly.
Solution: Square Handheld in action
Tom’s Pasta now runs on a full Square ecosystem. The restaurant uses the Square Terminal for taking orders, the Square Register at the front for printing bills and monitoring for floor, and the new Square Handheld, which fits in a pocket so staff can carry plates while still keeping service moving. Tom’s already seeing the benefits of this recently launched, compact piece of kit: “It’s a nifty little device… It’s going to be extremely useful going forward.”
In fact, Square Handheld has already transformed how the team interacts with guests, as orders are routed seamlessly to those that need them. For example, cocktails go to the iPad at the bar, while mains go to the kitchen display system. “If it saves 30 seconds off each order, that’s amazing,” says Tom. “That all totals up over a night. It makes the whole service really efficient, gives the staff more time, and makes everything run smoother.”
The device also speeds up payments, by making it easy to accept gift cards and split the bill among several diners on one table without having to engage in any mental mathematics. Plus, it’s built to withstand the demands of a busy restaurant. “It’s water-resistant, which is great for wipe-down,” says Tom. “And the battery lasts all day, because the last thing you want to do is charge it during service.” On the deli counter, Square Handheld proves equally valuable, with a barcode scanner and camera that save time searching for items in the retail area.
Impact: Running the restaurant with confidence
With Square, Tom’s Pasta runs smoothly from front-of-house to back office. Staff clock in and out via the Square Terminal or their phones using the Square Team app, and hours are logged automatically. “It keeps track of everyone’s time and makes sure they get paid right,” says Tom. “It’s very useful, very easy for me and a lot quicker than keeping track manually.” Once the timesheets are exported and sent to his accountant, payroll is handled, saving hours of admin each week.
Meanwhile, reporting features give Tom an insight into customer behaviour, restaurant industry trends and inventory needs. “I’m a big fan of the reporting function. It really helps with orders – if we’ve sold 80 of something last night, we know to get more for the next delivery. Or if the lasagne is selling a bit slower this week because of the weather, we can adjust prep accordingly. That’s really useful just to see what people are doing.” Square also integrates with OpenTable, helping the team anticipate table turnover.
Square hasn’t just helped with service and scheduling – it has also made staff training faster and more efficient. Whereas training on other restaurant point-of-sale systems could take a week, new team members can now get up to speed in about an hour – thanks to how easy and intuitive it is to use.
From delivering lasagnes by bike to his committed customers, to overseeing a fully-fledged restaurant with ambitious expansion plans, Tom’s Pasta has seen a 3,000% increase in business, and Tom credits Square with helping him scale confidently. The results speak for themselves:
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Smoother service: Square Handheld and Square Teams streamline operations, saving hours each week.
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Better planning: Reporting ensures the right amount of food and supplies, reducing waste.
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Efficiency gains: Training is faster, orders are quicker and payments are seamless.
“Having everything in one place makes it so smooth. Square is extremely intuitive – you don’t have to worry about what it can’t do – because it does,” says Tom. “And as our needs grow, we just ask our account manager to help us find the functionality we need.”
