In June 2025, Henry Laporte, the social media star known as Salt Hank, opened his first sandwich shop in the West Village neighborhood of New York City. The restaurant, aptly named Salt Hank’s, has regularly sold out of its menu items since. The limited menu features a French dip sandwich, fries, and a few canned sodas, alongside Salt Hank’s cookbook and merchandise—an intentional way for Laporte to test the waters in an industry he’s respected for a while.
“Being able to actually make the food and then serve it to the human that’s going to eat it is an incredibly fulfilling experience. It scratched an itch I’ve had for a really long time,” Laporte explained. “As a content creator, I knew I couldn’t just ride ASMR videos off into the sunset. I had to find my thing.”
It’s safe to say he found it. Since opening day, Salt Hank’s has regularly had a line that wraps around the block and a menu that sells out hours before closing time. He’s also had rave reviews and even a feature in The New York Times. With less than six months in business, Laporte is always on the hunt to optimize his burgeoning business and improve the experience.
That’s why he began leveraging Square AI saying, “This is going to be a game changer.”
Using Square AI to answer key business questions
Square AI enables business owners to talk to their business. Owners can ask the tool direct questions about their business, and Square AI will unveil visual insights and business data to help inform decision-making on a deeper level. Questions like, ‘What are my best sales days?’ and ‘What are my sales like day-by-day?’ are two questions Laporte often wonders, especially as a new restaurant owner, and now he can simply type the question into his dashboard and get an answer.
Laporte quipped that because everything he writes has a typo in it, Square AI’s ability to “figure it out” and understand him anyway is crucial. “This is cool, because I’m actually very dumb. So this is helpful,” he joked.
Laporte initially theorized that Thursdays are one of his best sales days because customers nearby often come from offices in the area during the lunch rush and order 50 sandwiches for their company. Square AI pulled up sales data from every Thursday since Salt Hank’s opened and found a positive trend of transactions heading upward on Thursdays during the lunch hour. But, to Laporte’s surprise, Fridays were often better sales days than Thursdays.
“My business partner is going to love this,” Laporte said. “I get very confused by numbers, but my numbers man is going to be so, so, so happy. I feel like a kindergartner could understand what’s going on here.”
Deepening the customer relationship with crucial data
Laporte has also wondered who his repeat customers are and who his top spenders are. Square AI was able to pull up a list of customers who have made more than three visits and even showcased his top spenders by transaction amount. For example, an $800 transaction stood out in the data, alongside a customer name and phone number, making it easy for Laporte to thank those who’ve really shown support in the few months the shop has been open.
“This is great information to have, because sometimes we look for this kind of thing, but can’t find it,” he said.
Understanding the ins and outs of what’s working
As a business that sells merchandise alongside food, Laporte is also interested in understanding trends in his merchandise sales. He asked Square AI: “What are my best-selling merchandise items?” As he waited for the data to load, he theorized, “I’m sure it’s the hat, but I hope it’s the cookbook.” Spoiler alert: it was the hat.
The data showed that hat sales have been crushing it, confirming that Salt Hank’s recent decision to shift to a new hat design was a smart move. “We got new hats. The old ones sucked, and then we got new ones. And now they’re [clearly] doing very well,” he explained. Being able to gather data quickly and on-demand can help inform crucial business decisions like whether to stop selling or change a certain item.
Now, with visible insights into merchandise performance, Laporte can find ways to make hats more pronounced throughout the shop to boost sales or even create a flash sale to encourage more customers to buy, building off of what’s working.
Finding support whenever needed
Another feature of Square AI that makes life easier for Laporte is being able to easily find help or support when needed. An unexpected challenge of owning a restaurant, according to Laporte, is staff retention. “We’ve had people just not show up some days or quit in the middle of a shift,” he explained, emphasizing the need to know how to deactivate an employee.
When Laporte asked Square AI how to do so, it pulled the answer up right away. Because Square AI is a conversational tool, Laporte can ask as many follow-up questions as needed to ensure a thorough understanding of how to complete the step or figure out what to do next.
“Look how easy this was. I spent like three hours Googling this. Genuinely, I think this is going to change everything for us,” Laporte said. Being able to dive into his biggest questions surrounding his business health, sales data, and customer trends gives Laporte a leg up as a new business owner. He summed up his thoughts saying, “Any piece of data is just right there at your fingertips with Square, so [choosing it as a technology partner] was a pretty simple and easy decision. The software speaks for itself.”
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