“Square is a great integrated solution that enables us to make transactions with our customers a lot easier. It’s a lot more seamless and it’s easier with being so digitally based. It’s so easy to do physical transactions and also do online transactions. So it is very easy, very enabling, and it has huge potential and possibility with it.”
Dave Flynn, Co-Founder.
The Happy Pear’s business overview
Happy Pear started in 2004 and is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. They started out with a fruit and veg shop and they have grown to have a retail shop, cafe, sourdough bakery, a four-acre regenerative farm and their branded food range consisting of 80 products is distributed to nearly a thousand stores around Ireland with expansion plans for the UK this year. Behind the success of The Happy Pear is a dedicated team of 80 employees.
The Solution: Square for Retail, Restaurants & Loyalty
Happy Pear decided that at this stage in their growth, it was time to introduce a new system to run their business. The technology they had in place wasn’t setting them up to grow and scale their business efficiently.
They had noticed that a lot of other businesses in their local area had chosen Square and after speaking to these businesses and getting their feedback they decided it was the solution they needed too.
Taking into account all parts of their business, Happy Pear decided to use Square for Retail for their shop, Square for Restaurants for their cafe and Square Loyalty to grow their community engagement. The key advantage of the solution was that all of these would seamlessly connect and centralise their information.
“Square has simplified our processes within the shop. It’s made it easier for our staff. It really is easy to use and the back end is very useful. Square has helped speed up how quickly we deal with customers.” - Conor Savage, Project Manager
Start selling with Square.
Key Challenge: Lengthy queues and slow payments
Their business had evolved over time and the systems they had in place were adding unnecessary complexity to the day to day management. With their previous payments system, they struggled with having lengthy queues at busy times because it could take 30-40 seconds for the payment to process and at peak service times, this was hindering how quickly they could serve customers.
Since Happy Pear started using Square to power their business they are:
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Saving 30 - 40 seconds with each payment moment
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Reducing item creation time from 20 minutes with the previous system to almost instantaneously via POS, mobile Terminal or online dashboard.
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Reducing customer queues at peak times by using Square Terminal to take orders on the go.
Intuitive Reporting
The intuitive reporting functionality within Square allows Happy Pear to be proactive on making business decisions rather than being so reactive in a busy retail and food environment. In real time, they are able to analyse and share information internally on menu performance, inventory management and supplier management. Everyone from the store manager to their accountant can access the information via the POS, the mobile terminal or the online dashboard. Having all the information within the one system has simplified and streamlined so many processes for them and given them time back to focus on new projects within the business.
Inventory Management & Food Waste
The low stock alerts within Square have been really helpful for The Happy Pear.
“Having an alert pop up on your phone to reorder or send a PO to a supplier, just makes life so much more seamless. It adds another safety net for our store managers to not run out of our best selling products and takes one more admin job away from them.” - Conor Savage, Project Manager
They have also reduced food waste because the kitchen can now see real time information and are more equipped to plan.
“It’s easier to get word back to the kitchen of what we need when we need it. We are not over ordering stock and we are more on top of stock-takes and ultimately not sitting on excess stock.” - Conor Savage, Project Manager
Loyalty
Happy Pear is based on community and it is really important for us to reward our customers. Square Loyalty allows us to pick ways that we can give back to our regular customers. It is so easy for customers to enroll from the screen on the register and there are so many ways in which we can personalise our loyalty programme.
Square Hardware
Happy Pear uses both Square Register and Square Terminal:
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Square Register is the double facing counter-top display (one for the customer, one for staff) with integrated point of sale and bookings software that allows customers to see what they are buying as well as securely enter any type of card payment.
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Square Terminal is the all in one portable payment device where you can manage your bookings, check out clients and print receipts directly from the shop floor or cafe queue.