Sometimes it’s a passion. Other times it’s a necessity. For Kayla and Max Palmer, building Bagelshop — one of the best places to get a bagel in Nashville — was a combination of both.
In 2019, Max Palmer was in the middle of a job search while his wife Kayla was on maternity leave. Between caring for their baby and preparing for interviews, Max learned how to make bagels. The couple were already avid home bakers. But as Max perfected his bagel recipe, he started sharing his progress on Instagram. “Somebody was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this looks good. Can I have one?’ I said, ‘Sure!’ and that turned into a business,” he told Square.
Over the last five years, the Palmers have grown their business from running home deliveries out of their kitchen to participating in pop-ups to renting a commissary kitchen in downtown Nashville. In 2023, they opened a brick-and-mortar store in the city’s blooming Donelson neighborhood, where the couple lives. They offer seasonal specials and serve top-selling classics like The Benny — an egg and cheese on a bagel with house-made everything aioli. But beyond selling great bagels, their vision is to become a third space for the Donelson community, where customers are inspired to return to and stay a while. So they also host events like a monthly book club and a run club.
Growing Bagelshop didn’t come without its challenges. As they moved from downtown Nashville to Donelson, the Palmers had to work to build back loyal regulars. And while they navigated peak traffic periods at their new location, they needed to revamp their kitchen technology for efficiency. They turned to Square restaurant tools, including Square Kitchen Display System, to help streamline their order flow and keep their customers and staff happy.
Reconnecting with neighborhood regulars
In the early days of the business, the Palmers built a reputation with Nashville locals doing home deliveries, farmers markets, and pop-ups. But when they moved into their commissary kitchen downtown, they lost their regulars.
Not only is downtown Nashville a hot spot for tourists, but parking is scarce, which makes it a less appealing hangout for locals. “We lost 98% of our business from our clientele that we made,” Max Palmer explained. “Business was great. Don’t get me wrong. We made it all up with tourists. But we looked back on our reports, and our repeating versus new customers every month was like 98% to 2%.”
After they moved into their shop in their neighborhood, it was easier to connect with locals, which did good for their business. “The community has just welcomed us with open arms. Every single month, we have done better than the month before. And we have basically seen a profit every single month that we’ve been open,” Max Palmer explained. Today, nearly three out of five customers (57%) are returning guests.
Setting staff up for success with smart order routing
To build back their connection with their community of customers with top-notch service, Max and Kayla needed to tweak how they ran the business behind the counter. First, they changed their kitchen display system provider to Square so all their restaurant tools communicated with each other. In addition to Square Restaurants POS app, Bagelshop uses Square Payroll, Square Online, and Square Loyalty to accept orders, pay their staff, and reward their customers. “I just wanted to be able to integrate everything directly with Square, just because I knew that it would be easier. Everything that we do is built into Square already,” Max Palmer explained.
After the team transitioned, they added a second KDS screen and programmed it for maximum efficiency. Because after one particularly busy Saturday, simple orders like a bagel and cream cheese took longer than 30 minutes to complete due to a backlog of complex orders. To make sure this bottleneck never happened again, the team added a second, smaller Square KDS screen and implemented an order routing system.
With input from their staff, the Palmers programmed their KDS so that simple orders, like bagels and cream cheese or avocado toast, are directed separately from the main order queue. While simple orders go to the small KDS, more complex orders show up on the larger screen. The team also reorganized the kitchen stations accordingly so staff could prepare and serve simple and complex orders at the same time.
The new system keeps lines moving quickly, which helps out the staff and keeps customers happy. “Our kitchen is so small, and every inch of space is important, and now we have that one person dedicated to doing that item. I wish we would’ve done it from the beginning,” Kayla Palmer explained.
A continued focus on serving the community
Today, the Bagelshop team can focus on reaching target ticket times of eight and 10 minutes. After this much time has passed, items are flagged on the screen as either yellow or red for staff to expedite. With the current setup, the team has time to uncover the advantages of the technology.
“There is a feature that I didn’t know. The team found it while they were looking at all the settings. It highlights a certain menu item and color codes it,” Kayla Palmer explained. “If you see five grays, you just tell the guy on the grill, ‘Hey, I need five eggs.’ So that is a feature that we found in the KDS that has really worked for us.”
With a solid setup behind the counter, the Bagelshop team also has more time to connect with customers and continue to build on their goal of becoming a local staple.
“It’s exciting to know that we get to be one of those places that somebody in Nashville has a friend in town and they’re like, ‘I know exactly where we should go. We should go to Bagelshop.’ And it’s always fun. We know that happens all the time, and people coming to work on their computer over here and being involved in the community is really important to us,” said Kayla Palmer.
