How POS system Square helps London’s Buns from Home thrive

As the world went into lockdown, a business was born. Notting Hill fell in love with homemade laminated croissants. Every day, a little army of riders would drop off sweet buns from home to doorsteps around West London neighbourhood. Two years later, Buns From Home has expanded, catering to customers in seven locations around the UK. 

On the heels of opening its first Buns From Home location, the team was missing one final ingredient: a point-of-sale system. “We needed something fast. We had seen Square around London. It felt like a trusted brand,” says the bakery’s operations manager Anna Mansfield. 

“The main benefit for us was the super-easy user experience for the front-of-house team. Learning how to use the Square products was really seamless”.

By using Square, the team was able to double its sales during peak times and increase transactions by 733% by optimising opening times.

As Buns from Home is a new player in the bakery industry, opening its first doors in 2020 in one of the most competitive cities in the world at an economically tough time during the Covid-19 pandemic, they required a payments provider that would not only empower them to reach their goals and take payments but go above and beyond.

To support this, Buns From Home needs to: 

• Operationally and logistically manage multiple locations with ease
• Acquire data to help make informed business decisions
• Invest in a payments provider whose hardware can keep up with the speed of the business
• Find a payments provider with a dynamic and omnichannel offering which can scale as they do, eradicate the need of switching providers down the line
• Offer an unforgettable customer experience

Beyond the brand’s credibility, Mansfield also appreciated the design of the Square Reader. “I know this sounds a little bit vain, but it was just good-looking. We thought it was best. It was a slick little card reader.”

By partnering with Square, Buns From Home says it has benefited from an easy user experience for its front-of-house teams. The devices required no training time, which meant getting up and running with staff and customers immediately. Square terminals show itemised orders, save paper with eReceipts, have an offline mode (meaning no downtime should the WiFi go out) and it’s easy to track inventory. 

Square Analytics also helps staff run their back-end planning without complicated onboarding or training.

“Square has helped the business grow probably mostly through the back-end data,” Mansfield continues. “It’s been really critical for insights. It helps identify sales trends, whether it be the time of day that people are coming in or the type of product they are buying. Then similarly, the profile of the store. We know where would be a good place to open.

“I’ve never had to do any kind of training with the operations team. It’s not as if I have to compare anything and extract any data and analyse data myself’, Anna said. ‘Square automatically shows you your information from last Monday and compares it to previous weeks. It’s just done right there.”

Square’s terminal allows Buns from Home to categorise menus which has made services faster; this is especially beneficial on weekends when staff need to be able to move fast. Mansfield revealed that over the past six months, the features and speed of the Square terminals have led to being able to double the number of customers being served on busier days with 58 transactions being put through one of their busiest half-hour periods at Covent Garden.

Buns From Home Notting Hill often has a queue out of the door, so for locations like these, fast-working hardware is a necessity Square meets. The team better manage table turnover and maintain superb customer service.

“We’ve had people come into the shop and try to sell us their POS, but we’ve never considered anyone else now, which is great.”

Does your business generate over £200,000 in annual sales? Talk to the Square team today about custom pricing for transaction fees and hardware.