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Come for the Bagels, Come Back for the Coupons
Inc.com

March 13, 2015

Many a small business can relate to Jesse Waldman when he says that his company, Pistils Nursery in Portland, Oregon, operated for many years “on instincts rather than data.” The company would, for example, stock up on ceramic planters “when it felt like we were getting low or they seemed to be selling well.”

Sometimes the results of poor instincts are obvious – too much or too little inventory on hand, for example. But other times, there is simply no way to tell whether the decisions you make based on instinct are really the best ones – until a change in the way you operate opens your eyes to all that you’ve been missing.

For Pistils Nursery, that change began with a very basic technology upgrade: it swapped out its analog cash register in favor of an iPad. “The register was more than a decade old and took up too much of our very limited counter space,” says Waldman, the company’s head of Brand Development. “So we bought an iPad and put it in a nice wooden stand we found on Etsy, and that began to change a lot of things about how we operate.”

The biggest change was the ability to move to an inventory management system in which, rather than cluster several hundred items into just five or six broad category codes, the company could assign a name and price to every item. That comes in handy when you sell 30 different kinds of planters and 405 total items (and counting).

Pistils’s improved inventory tracking has been greatly enhanced by using ShopKeep as the point of sale (POS) system tied to the iPad. “We saw right away that we needed a company that could provide the help and support we needed to get smarter about inventory management, one that could grow with us, and one that would interface with our current credit card processor. Only ShopKeep met all three criteria,” Waldman says.

Meanwhile, on the counter, the iPad isn’t just a next-generation cash register: customers are free to use it to research plants and get garden design ideas, and to sign up for the company’s email newsletter, which has had a major impact on the business. “Our email list, which integrates very nicely with ShopKeep, has become the most important piece of our customer communications puzzle,” Waldman says. “Every time we send out a newsletter we see an uptick in sales, website traffic, and workshop attendance.”

The company’s tech-enabled customer outreach isn’t limited to email, however. Given the visual nature of the nursery’s business, Instagram has emerged as an invaluable social media platform. The nursery can showcase its products and even hold contests, which Waldman says has “generated lots of engagement and interaction with the brand.”

“Eighteen months after we moved to the iPad/ShopKeep combination,” he says, “the business is almost unrecognizable in terms of how we generate data to inform purchasing, staffing, and the customer experience. The ShopKeep Dashboard lets us easily track transaction details by hour, day, per customer, and other criteria.”

In assessing the dollar amount of the average transaction, Pistils has realized that this is one of its key metrics. “We’ve set goals with the staff to try and raise this number,” Waldman says, “because when you’re a small business, every cent counts.” It’s working: a typical transaction this past holiday season ran more than 12 percent higher than the year before, and total monthly sales are now about 30 percent higher year over year. Pistils can also use ShopKeep to track both its cost and retail price for every item, allowing it to assess the margin for each. “We’ve definitely been able to save money and increase our profit by seeing this data for every item,’ Waldman says.

As for the future, Waldman is confident that Pistils will never again have to make the sort of seismic shift it experienced in moving from an analog cash register to an iPad POS system, a not-insignificant advantage given how fast the world of electronic payments is evolving. “I was in the grocery store not long ago,” he says, “and I saw someone use Apple Pay, and I thought, ‘Whoa, this is happening!’”

Pistils has already upgraded its card reader to be able to accept Apple Pay, along with the EMV chip cards that will become ubiquitous in the U.S. in October of this year. ShopKeep President and CEO Norm Merritt underscores that this is a real trend. “Retail is changing fast,” he says. “For a long time, it seemed like local businesses were fighting a losing battle against better-equipped big-box retailers. But the last few years have seen more and more Main Street businesses like Pistils Nursery really stepping forward and leading the charge when it comes to embracing new technology early.”

Waldman agrees. “Having this reader and the right technology in general just makes us feel confident that we’re ready for anything. When you look at the wild success of the iPhone and all the things people use their smartphones to do, it seems clear that new ways of paying for things will soon become the norm. In the same way that customers appreciate our switch to the iPad for how it improves their experience, I look forward to seeing how new payment technology can help us grow.”

March 12, 2015

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The smartphone has already reached deep into the restaurant industry. Reservation systems like OpenTable and Yelp’s SeatMe allow customers to reserve tables without ever making a phone call. Diners can locate and review restaurants with apps like Yelp and Urbanspoon. And now the smartphone’s newfound tie to consumers’ wallets through mobile payment has it primed for even more influence in the industry.

Already, fast-casual and quick-service brands were leading the way with mobile pay and specially created apps. But industry observers say full-service restaurants are now gearing up for big plays with mobile payments—acceleration prompted in part by the launch of Apple Pay. In September, Apple announced that its new models, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, would feature contact-free payments thanks to a built-in near field communication antenna, which allows customers to instantly pay without ever touching their wallets.

The change comes at a time when retailers are already considering upgrading credit card terminals as the clock ticks toward October 2015, when merchants will assume liability for fraudulent purchases unless they are compliant with Europay, Mastercard, and Visa (EMV) standards. The EMV transition will require chip-and-pin cards—and card readers—rather than the current standard of magnetic stripe cards.

“There’s a lot of change in the marketplace right now with EMV and Apple Pay,” says Norm Merritt, president and CEO of ShopKeep, a cloud-based point-of-sale (POS) provider used by more than 10,000 small businesses.

Apple changed how consumers listen to music, how they think about computing, and how they use the smartphone, Merritt says. So its entrance into mobile pay shouldn’t be ignored. “I think if anybody has the capacity of getting this adopted, it’s Apple,” Merritt says. “The company has timed its entrance in an interesting way.”

With Apple Pay, customers’ iPhones wirelessly connect with a merchant’s near field communication antenna to transfer money. The process uses three levels of authentication, meaning merchants don’t ever acquire credit card data. Plus, an Apple Pay transaction takes only about 10 seconds, Merritt says, while a traditional credit card transaction can take 20 to 25 seconds.

“You don’t have to print out a receipt,” he adds. “You don’t have to sign anything.”

Scott Holt, vice president of marketing and solutions at mobile POS provider ROAM, says this transition means restaurants should try to be as inclusive as possible, offering multiple payment methods and even multiple mobile pay options.

“If a consumer wants to pay with mobile payment, then why not let them do that? If a consumer wants to pay with credit or cash, let them do it,” Holt says. “It’s all about consumer demand.”

Washington, D.C.’s Del Campo restaurant is still feeling out mobile payments. After relying on OpenTable for reservations for months, the South American grill opted into OpenTable’s mobile payment solution in the fall. OpenTable allows customers to pay on their smartphones at the table through Apple Pay or by using a credit card on file in their app profile.

OpenTable reservations were already responsible for more than half of Del Campo’s business, says Chef/owner Victor Albisu, adding that so far, only a handful of customers pay on their phones each night.

“I think a lot of people still don’t know about it,” he says. “This is basically the future of dining. It’s a less intrusive way to finalize your meal.”

With mobile payments, diners can pay their bill and leave as they please without waiting for the check. Chef Albisu says this means servers must adjust their style a bit.

“As the service professional, you have certain ways of ending a meal and delivering a check. It does kind of cut you off, so you have to rework your way of doing things, your way of expressing yourself,” he says. “We focus a lot on hospitality and gratitude for our patrons, so we want to make sure we express that—usually, at the time of the presentation of the check. Now, we have to be a little more proactive about it.”

Searching for the Mobile Pay Leader in Full Service

Tech companies agree that the full-service segment generally lags behind the quick-service and fast-casual worlds when it comes to mobile ordering and payment systems. Starbucks is considered a standard bearer for its app that houses both a mobile payment option as well as the brand’s loyalty program. But with lower frequency and less need for speed than on the quick-service side of things, it’s difficult for full-serves to ask their customers to download custom apps, experts say.

Some casual-dining chains like Chili’s and Applebee’s have responded by offering mobile payments in the form of tabletop tablets that allow customers to order, pay, and play at the table. But there’s no consensus among full-serves about which platform or vendor is best. Apple, credit card companies, and other technology vendors are all trying to get a piece of the mobile payment pie. And full-service restaurants are increasingly looking toward mobile payment systems as a means to collect valuable data on customers that will inform their marketing.

“Because it’s so fragmented, a lot of technology companies see opportunity there,” says Jackie Rodriguez, a senior manager at foodservice consultancy Technomic. “Right now there’s no dominant player. The field is open for someone to establish themselves as a leader.”

For now, many are looking at Apple’s entrance as a sign of its future command over mobile payments, if for no other reason than its dominance in other tech sectors.

“If Apple decides everyone’s going to use their phones to pay for things,” Rodriguez says, “then we’re going to use our phones to pay for things.”

Seth Priebatsch, founder and CEO of LevelUp, one of the nation’s largest mobile payment networks, says Apple’s entrance definitely got the attention of full-service operators. “That has signaled to the full-service environment that this is going to be the future, this is something you’re going to want to offer,” he says. “But I also think there’s still a fair amount of uncertainty as to how that mobile interaction occurs at full-serves.”

About 95 percent of LevelUp’s clients are in the fast-casual or quick-service segments, Priebatsch says, though more full-service concepts are coming on board. Historically, the company has had to convince restaurants that mobile payment is coming, and then show them how the data and convenience it includes could be beneficial.

“Now, the first part of that conversation is almost a given,” he says.

The problem, observers say, is full-service concepts can’t decide on the best route to open up mobile payments. Full-serves have no central register or counter where customers pay, leaving them to decide between tabletop tablets, servers who bring antenna-ready devices to the table to connect with diner’s phones, or consumer apps.

“While we think we’ve nailed the fast-casual and quick-serve user experience, we’re not sure exactly what the perfect full-service experience is yet,” Priebatsch says. “The fact that we’re not sure is probably echoed in the full-service industry in general.”

March 12, 2015

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Archers BBQ is a multi-location restaurant that prepares all its food in one place. Its cloud-based tech strategy mirrors that approach.

William Archer Bagley, founder of Archer’s BBQ in Knoxville, TN, learned the hard way that location matters. His first attempt at opening a barbecue restaurant was a bust, situated as it was in a hard-to-see spot in a part of town that, as he says, “no one ever goes to for any reason, even great barbecue.”

Four years later, however, the site of that failed restaurant remains a critical part of his company, having been transformed into the hub of a thriving four-restaurant business, one built around a centralized “commissary” model. All the food is prepared at this 1,800-square-foot location, then immediately trucked to the company’s retail locations, each of which seats about 45 people and offers take-out service as well.

William Archer Bagley, founder of Archer’s BBQ in Knoxville, TN

“Our Executive Chef/Partner Clark Cowan was the main force behind that idea,” Bagley says, “and the efficiency gains have been huge. So when I was developing our technology strategy, I followed the same model: We moved everything to the cloud, and that really gives us an edge over other restaurants.”

Bagley’s embrace of the cloud began three years ago, when he used Google Drive to post staff schedules so employees could find out when they were supposed to work without having to consult a hard-copy printout at work. “It sounds so simple,” Bagley says, “but even now hardly anyone does it. Employees can check their schedules from their smartphones, and we don’t have to print out and post schedules at four locations.”

Next up, Bagley embraced the cloud version of QuickBooks. That made online banking a logical next move. “Just $10 a month,” he says, “and no stamps to buy!” On the marketing and advertising side, where his wife handles photography and other duties, Adobe’s cloud-based Creative Suite makes it easy to manage images for various social media feeds. He even sees the value of a cloud-based video surveillance system. “It’s actually free if you’re just monitoring the video feeds in real time, but not storing footage,” he says. “So it lets us look into all our stores and make sure everything is being handled as it should be.”

Most recently, Archer’s has tapped into QuickBooks payroll, a cloud-based service that, as Bagley says, “lets us do the payroll in 25 minutes, at a cost of about $1.50 a paycheck.”

Next up on his agenda is a retooled website that will facilitate online ordering for customers and also provide better tracking behind the scenes for the company’s internal operations. “Right now, the stores order food by texting the commissary,” he says. “We want to move that to a Web system where we can track it in more detail and apply some analytics.”

Bagley is already using analytics on the customer-facing side, thanks to the Marketing Dashboard capabilities of ShopKeep, the company’s point of sale (POS) system. “We can track customers by visits and purchases at each individual store,” Bagley explains. “Shopkeep is able to email customer receipts, and those emails contain trackable social media links that direct customers to our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages.” That ever-growing customer list allows Archers to reward customers by sending out free rewards and other promotions.

The company has just begun to augment this customer-analytics capability by switching to a new company for credit-card processing. While it’s early days, “we see a big role for analyzing customers’ spending patterns by looking at credit card data,” Bagley says. “The fees we pay are very low, yet we gain access to a lot of data and data-driven services, which we think can really boost retention.”

Bagley says that the ability to switch from one credit card processor to another was a major factor behind the company’s choice of ShopKeep for its POS. “It was essential to us that we use a system that can work with any processor,” Bagley says. “We wanted it to be iPad-based, and the fact that it’s subscription based, with no big cash outlay required up front, is something I love. That pricing model is a big part of what makes moving everything to the cloud so appealing to us.”

So is the ability to integrate with other technologies, including email systems that can leverage customer data into better marketing outreach. “I try to take advantage of technological advances everywhere I can,” says Bagley, who was educated as a civil engineer and worked for many years in software and database design before entering the restaurant world. “We couldn’t have run the business the way we do now 15 years ago,” he says. “When you look at how many facets of the business are affected by the power of mobile, it’s incredible.”

An app seems unlikely to displace the culinary magic that has enabled Archer’s BBQ to quadruple in sales during the past four years, to $1.2 million. But if there were, you know Bagley would take a careful look at it.

March 11, 2015

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ShopKeep, a cloud-based technology provider, has launched Serverless Sync, a feature that allows merchants to open and close checks from multiple registers, with orders seamlessly updated across all devices in real-time, with or without an internet connection.

Serverless Sync is designed to remove the need for costly servers and cables to keep registers in sync.

“With Serverless Sync, waiters and bartenders will no longer have to return to an individual register to update their checks or wait for a register to become available to input orders,” said Jason Richelson, founder and chief strategy officer of ShopKeep, in a statement. “Instead, open checks will be accessible from any register running on the same WiFi network, allowing staff members to spend more time providing the best possible service.”

March 5, 2015

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Serverless Sync is designed to remove the need for costly servers and cables to keep registers in sync.

March 5, 2015

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ShopKeep Unveils Update to Sync Registers Wirelessly

FSR Magazine

February 27, 2015

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Warren Buffett helped me build my business — even before I decided to try my hand in entrepreneurship. Several years before I founded my own company, a colleague gifted me Warren Buffett’s biography. His ideology and approach to communication and management continue to influence me to this day.

While it’s universally recognized that Buffett has exceptional investment acumen, his fearlessness and willingness to go against traditional business norms have inspired me to build an organization that does the same.

Here are three Buffett quotes your business should live by:

1. “There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.”

Warren Buffett’s laser focus on his areas of competence has been essential to his success. As he says: “I’m no genius, but I’m smart in spots, and I stay around those spots.”

It’s very common, especially amongst accomplished executives, to achieve a level of success then branch out into other areas in an effort to expand their businesses. Though Buffett has made his fortune in investing in several industries, he’s remained focused on the areas he knows best. Put simply, he’s an expert in identifying the most basic opportunities that show long-term potential and executing on them flawlessly.

The best business owners are great at determining their area of competence and focusing on how they can capitalize on that competitive advantage, rather than trying to do everything and solve unnecessarily complex problems.

2. “What’s nice about investing is you don’t have to swing at every pitch.”

Despite many misconceptions, Buffett rarely invests but and when he does, he is in it for the long haul. He’s always invested in companies that have a strong brand and a personality with the right leaders driving them forward.

If you want your business to succeed, think like Buffett: big and long-term. Invest in your brand, hone in on what you’d like to accomplish and stick with it.

3. “Be greedy when others are fearful, and be fearful when others are greedy.”

This quote describes Buffett’s strategy to a tee — an aggressive market player when others deem an investment unworthy. Think back to the salad oil scandal of 1963 when Anthony “Tino” De Angelis, a savvy conman from New Jersey, discovered a way to exploit an American Express program that gave business loans based on collateralized inventory. Through an elaborate system of deception, De Angelis was able to obtain loans on an oil inventory greater than the total national holdings combined. While everyone stood clear of AMEX stock, Buffett did the opposite. He visited local businesses and observed that business owners were continuing to accept American Express Travelers Cheques and consumers were still using them. Contrary to virtually every investment expert at the time, Buffett purchased more stock and established a 5 percent stake in the company. It reportedly cost him $20 million at the time but now 50 years later, it was obviously incredible foresight.

Whether you aspire to run a multinational company or your local mom-and-pop store, this is an important lesson to apply. Innovate and solve a problem rather than following suit with the rest of the industry.

Apply these ideas to your company’s operations and you’re bound to see a substantial improvement. More importantly, you’ll feel liberated by your ability to confidently make sound choices — especially when you’re going against the grain and doing what’s best for your business.

February 26, 2015

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An exemplary customer care experience can completely redefine how someone feels about a brand. It can turn a one-off purchase into a lifetime of loyalty and transform an average consumer into a passionate brand advocate.

Wowing your customers is a powerful tool, but when it’s done right, it should also hurt a little. Why? Because providing an above and beyond, truly memorable customer-service experience actually involves going out of your way for people. It’s not easy, or else everyone would do it.

Exceptional care means actually doing more than what your customers expect — and believe me, your customers expect a lot. For anyone looking to implement this kind of result in their business, I believe it’s about instilling the following beliefs in your teams.

Everybody can wow a customer.

A few years ago I was staying in a hotel on business in California and woke up early for a meeting only to find that the hotel’s café wasn’t open yet. While I was trying to decide on an alternate course of action, a maintenance man from the hotel unlocked the door for me and insisted on helping me in any way he could. Before I knew it, he was preparing a bagel and orange juice for me — even though the café was still closed.

The point? Great customer care isn’t just about having a well-trained customer care team. It’s about empowering everyone in your company to use their discretion to go above and beyond. Don’t just pay lip-service to this. Ingrain this mentality into your employees: Everyone, across your entire organization, is empowered to do what’s necessary to wow the customer.

The customer is god.

I was once lucky enough to travel to Japan on business. There I learned there that while we in the U.S. are proud to say, “the customer is always right,” Japanese corporate culture follows a different, more extreme, maxim: okyaku-sama wa kami-sama desu or “the customer is god. This might seem a little over the top, but remember, the customer is the creator-in-chief of your business.

We’ll always have moments where our customers frustrate us with seemingly outrageous demands but without them, your business doesn’t exist. Your employees should treat them accordingly.

Swans only need to look good above water.

While it takes a great deal of stress, training, process, software and general hard work to provide effective support, it’s also vital that your customers never sense that effort. It is one of the great ironies of customer service.

For the customer, a delightful customer experience appears like a swan on the water: You might be paddling like a madman, but the appearance above the water should be serene. This isn’t easy, but it’s genuinely what separates a good support experience from the people they tell their friends about.

So remember, to really stand out in the world of customer service you need to commit to empowering your employees, elevating your customers and concealing the behind-the-scenes work required to deliver great care. It might hurt you a little, but your customers will love you for it.

February 20, 2015

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