No Quit in Quitman: A ShopKeep Referral Success Story
Learn how Kelly Kieke and Speakeasy Coffeehouse revitalized a Texas town with some help from ShopKeep.
For nearly the entire 21st century, Quitman, Texas was a town past its prime that couldn’t keep up with the times. Downtown was home to one pizza shop and several law offices, hardly a recipe for a vibrant community. Enter Kelly Kieke.
In 2016, Kelly, a long-time local resident, resolved to create a place for Quitman residents to rest and rejuvenate their bodies and spirits, a neighborhood spot offering high quality coffee and specialty drinks in a space that encouraged creativity and togetherness. In honor of the historic 1920s building that would house her new shop, she called it Speakeasy Coffeehouse.
Three years later, Speakeasy is stronger than ever and downtown Quitman is keeping pace, having added boutiques, antique shops, and restaurants to the mix, building a truly vibrant local community. Here’s how Kelly and her town made it happen.
Finding the Right POS System Fit
All successful businesses start with research and a plan, and Speakeasy Coffeehouse was no different. As Kelly began the process of preparing to open her coffee shop, she enlisted her husband, Rodney, to research point of sale systems. He was familiar with Square, but wanted to use something different, and while he was in the midst of his research, he and Kelly visited a small boutique in Dallas that just happened to be using ShopKeep. It was love at first sight.
The rustic wooden stand was a perfect fit for the look they were going for in their store, and things only got better from there. When Kelly and Rodney called into ShopKeep to learn more they were blown away by how easy it was to use ShopKeep and how friendly their sales representative was. Signup was a breeze and it was time to get down to business.
Running a Smarter Business with ShopKeep
Once the shop was open for business, ShopKeep allowed Kelly to easily track her most popular items and busiest times of day. This enabled her to intelligently plan staff schedules to maximize productivity and sales, something she has gotten better and better at, now that she has nearly three years of data and trends. But that’s not all.
At the end of each month she was also able to run a single report to find her sales tax liability and set that aside for proper payment, saving hours of calculations, a huge benefit for an owner who strongly prefers the creative side of her business to the numbers side.
Lastly, like many ShopKeep merchants, Kelly is in love with the Pocket app, which lets her quickly check in on how her store is doing anytime, anywhere right from her phone. And since she lives close by, she’ll often pop in to help out if she sees the shop is getting busier than expected!
Making Quitman a ShopKeep Town
Given her experience with ShopKeep and passion for the development of her town, Kelly could not be a better fit for the ShopKeep referral program. Any time that a new business is set to start in Quitman, they typically visit Kelly for advice and the first thing she tells them is “You need to get ShopKeep!”
ShopKeep offers these new small businesses an easily accessible and affordable level of technology that they’re not used to in their small town. As she says, “It’s not just a dinky old country calculator” and her fellow downtown Quitman business owners have found the system just as easy to use.
So while ShopKeep’s system has been helping her fellow business owners get off to flying starts and revitalize downtown Quitman, her cash referral bonuses from ShopKeep have been helping her refresh and renovate her own shop. With the $1,000 in referral money she got in March 2019, she has continued to refurbish her historic building to make sure she’s set up for success for many years to come.
And that’s the story of how Kelly Kieke helped change Quitman, Texas into the model of a 21st-century small town.
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