For almost 15 years, Mango’s Sports Bar has thrived in Columbus, Ohio. Mere minutes away from Ohio State University, the business started as a lounge, added on a bar, expanded into a restaurant, and is now exploring retail. Managing many moving parts isn’t a new concept for Ayham Alammar, co-owner of Mango’s Sports Bar. With a varied background in entrepreneurship to real estate, Alammar poured all of his expertise into Mango’s to create something special.
“Mango’s is the first business we ever truly owned,” Alammar said of the business he owns with his brothers. “It’s our baby.”The success and longevity of the business are paramount for the brothers behind the business, so when their previous point-of-sale system began to create long lines and frustrate staff, Alammar began to explore other options. Eventually, he consulted his food supplier representative at Sysco who helped him make the change to Square.
How it started: Stalled growth and manual operations
Over the years, Mango’s has made a number of changes to the business to improve the overall experience. In addition to adding a restaurant and a bar, the business expanded its footprint into a front patio that can now seat over 80 guests. Customers would walk inside to order more drinks or food at the counter only to wait in a long line, often changing their minds about placing additional orders altogether. With inside and outside operations, customers and staff alike grew frustrated with the ordering experience.
Counter staff had to swipe through multiple screens just to record orders, and because the system wasn’t connected to the cloud, it made looking at customer order history, if needed, a manual and difficult process. The team also gave customers pagers that would vibrate once their orders were ready. During busy periods, staff would encounter pager shortages that created issues and extra work for staff.
Another problem presented itself when it came to ringing up age-restricted items like alcohol at the register. Staff would have to check IDs and manually enter the customer’s birthday to proceed with the order, and checking multiple IDs on a busy night proved cumbersome and also contributed to lines. Alammar craved a way to make things easier on staff while protecting the business against fake identification.
How it’s going: 30% increase in sales and a self-serve business model
In the two months since Mango’s adopted Square, open tools with advanced technology have allowed Alammar to make his systems “bulletproof.” He and his team created a script that allows their ID barcode scanner to talk to the Square Register. If a customer wants to purchase an alcoholic drink, staff simply scans the barcode on the license or ID, and the script verifies the age of 21+ and allows the order to proceed. If the customer is underage, it stops the order, helping to prevent the business from serving underage customers.
“We get a lot of audits and a lot of inspections. We ultimately want to stay in compliance with the rules and regulations, and the only way to do that is to invest in the system,” explained Alammar.
Another investment Alammar made in the business is adopting eight Square Kiosks and strategically placing them throughout Mango’s. Now, regardless of whether a customer is in one of the three seating areas—the front patio, the main area, or the back area—they can order at multiple points within the business, eliminating congestion at the counter. At Mango’s, the counter is now primarily used to pick up orders or ask staff questions, activating a near-full self-service model.
The push toward self-service has had a significant impact on sales and customer relationship building. “Square Kiosk drives a 30% increase in sales for our business,” said Alammar. “It’s also helping us to collect valuable guest data for personalized marketing campaigns — we’ve seen over 800 new contacts collected in our first few weeks. And our customers are really enjoying the ability to order at their own pace without pressure,” he added.
Collecting customer information at the kiosk allows Mango’s to connect with customers outside of the four walls of the business, a first for the business. Being able to reach out to customers who haven’t visited in a while or simply say ‘thank you’ to customers also creates an opportunity for an even higher increase in sales by keeping Mango’s top of mind.
The impact: Smarter, seamless enterprise with room to grow
Strong technology and tools have ultimately empowered Mangos to work smarter. For example at 10 p.m., the business charges a cover fee for entrance into its lounge, previously only accepting credit cards through clunky devices. Since adopting Square Handheld, operations at the door have become more efficient and geared toward customer preferences. “It seemed like all of our customers preferred to pay at the door via CashApp,” said Alammar. “Square Handheld’s ability to accept CashApp payments is a huge benefit,” he added.
With the ability to get customers through the door with ease, Mango’s is working toward making the experience as full as possible. The team has soft-launched its retail component selling imported cigars, wine, beer, and other goods so that customers can take parts of the in-person experience home. “We got our license upgraded because now we have a system we can rely on. We’ve gone all out with everything,” said Alammar.
Alammar even expressed deeper confidence in creating a spin-off of Mango’s. “We’re currently exploring spaces for us to create a restaurant focused on authentic Greek and Mediterranean food,” he said. With flexible tools that enable multiple parts of the business at once, Alammar and his team can handle everything whenever, wherever, creating more room to cook up ways to continue building on the Mango’s brand.
