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Square Pickup

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Re: Square Pickup

#21

Post by _zen »

abalone wrote: post #15

Overall I can't help shake the impression that this is kind of a "Yelp move": your core business model isn't that hot, so break the glass of the nearest hot business model and copy it. Yelp's done that with daily deals, checkins, etc.. This is Square doing a "GrubHub". But, finally a product from Square with a fat profit margin (an extra 5.25%). I wonder if this is a sign of their future monetization strategy. Their…

> your core business model isn't that hot

You can't just make a statement like that and play it off. Citations? I see Square devices used everywhere in retail, and no, I don't live in San Francisco or the Bay Area.

Re: Square Pickup

#22

Post by tomkarlo »

rpedela wrote: post #2

Is this kinda like GrubHub but more general? Or is it more about making it easy for businesses to take pickup orders on their websites?

I think this is closer to OrderAhead, which is an app that (at least in SF) a lot of restaurants use to allow you to place an order and pay for it, then just pick it up without having to wait on a register/checkout process.

(My one complaint about OrderAhead - they split any tip you give with the business, rather than just giving it all over to the business for the employees. That seems unfair to the employees.)

Re: Square Pickup

#23

Post by guptaneil »

dljsjr wrote: post #3
rpedela wrote: post #2

Is this kinda like GrubHub but more general? Or is it more about making it easy for businesses to take pickup orders on their websites?

GrubHub is a service that bolts on delivery to restaurants that may not normally deliver. This is just a feature where Square-powered stores can offer customers the ability to place an order for a product remotely, and then be notified of when it's ready. At which point the customer can go to the physical storefront and pick up the item. There's no addition of delivery and it's not limited to food. EDIT: Looks like G…

Actually GrubHub is an aggregator of restaurants that offer delivery. You browse GrubHub to find all nearby restaurants that will deliver (or offer take-out), you place your order through GrubHub, and then GrubHub relays that order to the restaurant.

In Square Pickup's case, this is an easy storefront for restaurants to offer their own online take-out interface. It looks like each restaurant gets their own white-labeled website, rather than just being a behind-the-scenes supplier to Square. You go to the website of the restaurant you want to order from and place the order directly with them.

Re: Square Pickup

#24

Post by abalone »

_zen wrote: post #21
abalone wrote: post #15

Overall I can't help shake the impression that this is kind of a "Yelp move": your core business model isn't that hot, so break the glass of the nearest hot business model and copy it. Yelp's done that with daily deals, checkins, etc.. This is Square doing a "GrubHub". But, finally a product from Square with a fat profit margin (an extra 5.25%). I wonder if this is a sign of their future monetization strategy. Their…

> your core business model isn't that hot You can't just make a statement like that and play it off. Citations? I see Square devices used everywhere in retail, and no, I don't live in San Francisco or the Bay Area.

That's not their problem. There was some scrutiny of their business model around their recent IPO postponement & acquisition rumors. Here's a citation:

But Square's business yields razor-thin profit margins, if any... About four-fifths of that money is spent on fees to payment networks... other financial intermediaries and fraud costs...

Square's gross margin, the portion of revenue remaining after paying processors and covering other costs like fraud, fell to 21% in 2013, from 27% in 2012, according to a copy of Square's results viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Square has been adding services that could eventually be more profitable than its main payments business.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230382560...

But in recent weeks, people close to Square have indicated to Wall Street executives that a 2014 offering is unlikely because the company has run into problems with its "revenue run rate," a key projection of future performance. It has been reported that Square is unprofitable, but that 2013 revenues exceeded $100 million.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/02/28/square-ipo-pos...

Re: Square Pickup

#25

Post by thrownaway2424 »

_zen wrote: post #21
abalone wrote: post #15

Overall I can't help shake the impression that this is kind of a "Yelp move": your core business model isn't that hot, so break the glass of the nearest hot business model and copy it. Yelp's done that with daily deals, checkins, etc.. This is Square doing a "GrubHub". But, finally a product from Square with a fat profit margin (an extra 5.25%). I wonder if this is a sign of their future monetization strategy. Their…

> your core business model isn't that hot You can't just make a statement like that and play it off. Citations? I see Square devices used everywhere in retail, and no, I don't live in San Francisco or the Bay Area.

I do live in the Bay Area and the only place I have seen Square is at coffee shops and farmers market stands. I don't think it has that much traction and their growth is reported to be poor (or negative, I forget which). The mag stripe reader was a cute hack but when you get down to it the service is pretty expensive and you need a huge up-front investment in equipment, compared to ordinary cash registers which are dirt cheap.

Re: Square Pickup

#26

Post by apayan »

tomkarlo wrote: post #20
cpher wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not related to Square, per se, but to give you an example from a completely different domain-- car sales. My wife and I were researching minivans in our metro area. We got calls from the dealership asking if we're still interested in the vehicle. We said 'yes'. One hour before we drove to the 'burbs' to check it out, I called to confirm the availability of said vehicle. They said 'yes, it's still here.' We get to the…

Car dealerships are apparently still pretty primitive in terms of inventory management - which I guess is unsurprising given that they're mostly small businesses. NPR recently did a piece on one of the top Jeep dealerships on Long Island and they had issues like selling the same car twice, or selling a car that was no longer on the lot, because they were literally using a whiteboard to track what had been sold (and e…

I think you're referencing an episode of This American Life. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/513/1...

It was a very informative episode, and did a great job highlighting the financial difficulties faced by car dealerships. It made me sympathetic to their plight, but it's an old business model and I still prefer the direct sales method being championed by Tesla.

Re: Square Pickup

#27

Post by milesskorpen »

ignostic wrote: post #11

I don't think most people realize how hard online-to-local-pickup is for a retailer. "Interested in local pickup? Give us a call." is going to be a better customer experience 9 times out of 10. I hope Square gets it. Retailers - many of them with limited resources and technical skills - face big technical, UI, and logistical issues. I'll give one implementation example that shows all three; this applies to all retail…

It works a lot better for food & drink — Starbucks or your local coffee shop has very few items and they better be in stock!

For local inventory — I work for a team which has been trying to collect this data for years. You're 100% right ... it is extraordinarily hard. What's particularly crazy to me is that consumers are already starting to _expect_ it from businesses, and are shocked/angry when it isn't perfectly accurate. I think it is a carry-over from web shopping — it works there, why shouldn't it work in a store?

Re: Square Pickup

#28

Post by joeframbach »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #16

For food trucks, this seems interesting. Most food trucks I see using square enter the orders directly into square already. If I can avoid the line at a food truck by putting in my order and just wait for them to call my name with my food, that would be pretty amazing.

Busy food truck lines are not great for calling names out. With a line of people yapping, and traffic noise, you have to be nearly under the canopy to hear your name called, and there's only room there for ~8 people (crowded). So they'd have to send you an update to your mobile device, which now creates more questions like, how to communicate to the person in line that's been waiting for 15 minutes that no, you are not cutting in line. Once you navigate the line to the truck, do you show your phone to the person and hope they have good organization of orders pending pickup? Does Square help the business with that aspect?

Re: Square Pickup

#29

Post by awor »

eli wrote: post #17
cpher wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not related to Square, per se, but to give you an example from a completely different domain-- car sales. My wife and I were researching minivans in our metro area. We got calls from the dealership asking if we're still interested in the vehicle. We said 'yes'. One hour before we drove to the 'burbs' to check it out, I called to confirm the availability of said vehicle. They said 'yes, it's still here.' We get to the…

Maybe they wanted to get you on the lot even if the car you wanted was gone.

That is definitely not unheard of. The dealers will do whatever they can do to get you to show up.

Re: Square Pickup

#30

Post by tomkarlo »

apayan wrote: post #26
tomkarlo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car dealerships are apparently still pretty primitive in terms of inventory management - which I guess is unsurprising given that they're mostly small businesses. NPR recently did a piece on one of the top Jeep dealerships on Long Island and they had issues like selling the same car twice, or selling a car that was no longer on the lot, because they were literally using a whiteboard to track what had been sold (and e…

I think you're referencing an episode of This American Life. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/513/1... It was a very informative episode, and did a great job highlighting the financial difficulties faced by car dealerships. It made me sympathetic to their plight, but it's an old business model and I still prefer the direct sales method being championed by Tesla.

Yeah, that piece. It was great, but it also seemed like they're all doing business the same as in the 60's, at least from an operations standpoint.
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