Square products used by buns from home
- Square Reader
- Square Terminal
- Square Point of Sale
- Square Payments
- Invoices
- Square Analytics
- Square Payment Links
For well-renowned bakery chain buns from home, choosing Square as their payments provider was an easy decision tells their Operations Manager, Anna Mansfield. Initially bought into the appeal of the small and compact reader which reflected their ‘from home’ branding, they’ve continued with Square as they’ve grown from an at-home side hustle to a multiple location market-leading bakery in the heart of London in the space of two years.
Describing Square as a reliable choice for their multi-location business, they’ve found that the solutions on offer fit their needs perfectly as they scale. Find out how Square was the final piece of their business below.
Like any business, buns from home had its unique set of challenges:
As a new player in the bakery industry, opening their first doors in 2020 in one of the most competitive cities in the world at an economically tough time during the Covid-19 pandemic, buns from home required a payments provider that would not only empower them to reach their goals and take payments but go above and beyond.
To support this, buns from home need to:
- Operationally and logistically manage multiple locations with ease
- Acquire data to help make informed business decisions
- Invest in a payments provider whose hardware can keep up with the speed of the business
- Find a payments provider with a dynamic and omnichannel offering which can scale as they do, eradicate the need of switching providers down the line
- Offer an unforgettable customer experience
How Square Offered Solutions
By partnering with Square, buns from home revealed they benefited from an easy user experience for the front-of-house team. Devices required no training time, which meant getting up and running with staff and customers immediately. Square terminals show itemised orders, save paper with eReceipts, allow offline payments (meaning no downtime should your WiFi go out) and it’s easy to track inventory. Square devices are clear, intuitive and easy to use.
“Also, I know this sounds a little bit vain, but it was just (so) good-looking. We just thought it was the best.”
- Anna Mansfield, Operations Manager, buns from home
This was especially important to them as they have a business model which historically operates from home, markets across London and stores. Square’s range of products and services meant they were able to adapt their approach (and hardware used) to their location and business model at the time.
On the decision-making side, a holistic view of business performance across their multiple locations, matched with the right data and analytics that matters to buns from home, helped aid them in making informed decisions, benefiting the business further.
Implementation
“We took on Square really quickly and it just grew with us. As we got more and more shops, Square was the thing that we turned to because it was the easiest. Learning how to use Square products was seamless.”
- Anna Mansfield, Operations Manager, buns from home
buns from home described getting up and running with Square as ‘quick and easy’ and ‘seamless’. After seeing Square in multiple businesses in London, Anna felt like they were in good, trustworthy hands. These feelings have been reinforced since experiencing the product firsthand. The ease of experience since the beginning has been unparalleled and Anna wouldn’t consider switching to a different provider. They never had concerns about front-of-house members knowing how to use the interface nor needing to invest valuable time or resources in training. Square’s user-friendly devices allowed for more room to concentrate on parts of the business which are essential for growth.
The all-in-one powerful card machine.
From managing items and taking payments to printing receipts and getting paid - Square Terminal does it all.
Square Point of Sale
Powerful point of sale software to help you manage your team, inventory, customers and more.
Square’s Impact on Business as told by buns from home
‘Square just has changed everything for us.’
- Anna Mansfield, Operations Manager, buns from home
Expansion decisions
Using their Camden Passage bakery as an example, buns from home’s decision to open here was backed by Square data. They knew it would be a great location as it was a similar profile to one of their other successful locations. They also used Square data to inform opening hours and prepping for busy periods before opening doors.
“Square has helped the business grow probably mostly through the back-end data. It’s been really critical for insights. It helps identify sales trends, whether it be the time of day that people are coming in or the type of product they are buying. Then similarly, the profile of the store. We know where would be a good place to open.”
- Anna Mansfield, Operations Manager, buns from home
Modifying opening times
For existing shops as well as new ones, buns from home models their opening hours against Square data. Most shops open between 8am and 6pm but Square gives them a blueprint for the best hours to operate within, enabling the best results. Using their Bank branch as an example, Square data signalled towards opening an hour later which led to a 733% increase in transactions. Anna also called out other cost-saving benefits to this such as staffing, deliveries and product waste, given the buns have a shelf life of three hours. This is a feature they continuously refer to, making changes where necessary.
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Faster service
Square’s terminal allows buns from home to categorise menus which has made services faster; this is especially beneficial on weekends when staff need to be able to move fast. Anna revealed that over the past six months, the features and speed of the Square terminals have led to being able to double the number of customers being served on busier days. With 58 transactions being put through one of their busiest half-hour periods at Covent Garden.
buns from home Notting Hill often has a queue out of the door, so for locations like these, fast-working hardware is a necessity Square meets. The team better manage table turnover and maintain superb customer service.
Inventory management and forecasting
Anna is especially grateful for the automatic data which is used daily e.g. day-on-day performance metrics without the need for timely comparisons and manual extractions. This feature helps aid inventory management decisions such:
- How much of a certain cream to produce to avoid out-of-stock or wastage which both have negative financial impacts.
- Identifying the most popular products to aid production number decisions, and on the flip side, if any products should be phased out.
- Being able to profile stores, for example, the Soho store out-sold the other locations for cheesecakes. It allows deliveries between stores to be more accurate reducing waste and costs.
- Insight into the performance of weekend specials helps buns from home to understand the palette of their customers more e.g. do they prefer fruity or chocolate specials? Does this vary by location?
- The ability to look back in time assists with yearly forecasting and identifying trends to push the business forward e.g. creating data-backed production schedules.
The heavy lifting of numbers is already done and makes a huge difference. Giving their customers exactly what they want.
Staff management
“We’ve been able to see when our busy periods are and if we’re going to be over or understaffed. We couldn’t have done that ourselves.”
- Anna Mansfield, Operations Manager, buns from home
As well as being able to identify busy periods with Square data to produce rotas that work, buns from home are also able to manage the movement of staff throughout the day where necessary.
With some locations being a stone’s throw away from each other e.g. Covent Garden, their busiest store and Soho. Square enables them to make quick and financially beneficial decisions such as requesting someone for a couple of hours from the Soho store which might be a bit quieter at the time.
Scheduling lunchtime and breaks to align with busy and quiet times for their 84 staff members where possible has also allowed them to maximise their sales. Year-on-year data also allows them to plan effectively for busier and quieter periods (e.g. January) effectively.
Supporting new product and service launches
By using Square Payment Links and Square Invoices, buns from home have been able to launch a new product: Office/Corporate Orders. Referring to the interface as simple with minimal space for error, like the rest of Square products, buns from home are fans of the collaboration Invoices enables between staff where multiple persons within the business need access. It’s been a game changer for them to be able to simply send out payment links, as they don’t need someone to physically come in and pay with their cards or take over-the-phone orders.
“We thought about a competitor originally, but we haven’t ever considered changing. We’ve had people come into the shop and try to sell us their POS, but we’ve never considered anyone else now, which is great.”
- Anna Mansfield, Operations Manager, buns from home
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