Ask a Square Champion: Pesso's Ices & Ice Cream

[Tom]

On August 5th, at 11am PT / 2pm ET, @pessosices hosted a Q&A in the Seller Community. He's been in the food & beverage business for 17+ years and has extensive experience with Square Loyalty, Square Register Hardware, Square Payroll, and Sales Reports. Learn more about his story below:

Hey friends!

My name is Pesso, your Q&A host! I opened up Pesso's Ices & Ice Cream (www.pessosices.com) in Queens, New York, in 2004 with my dad, and we've been running it together ever since. 

I'm excited to answer your questions about me, my business, and how I've used Square to expand and improve my business. I've learned a lot from other sellers, so I'm thrilled to be here to give you another business owner’s perspective, and help out where I can.

Here's more about me and my Ice Cream shop:

•     My dad and I make every single flavor of our homemade Italian Ices, Ice Cream, and Gelato ourselves, right in the back of our shop. We've come a long way in the last 17 years, and using Square products since 2012 has helped us tremendously.

•     My favorite thing about using Square is how I’ve used the Data and Sales Reports to do everything from finding & cutting low performing products, to figuring out our optimal store hours and staffing, and more. We also use Square Loyalty to reward our frequent customers and as an incentive to keep them coming back. This also works great with the Square Register Hardware that has sped up our service tremendously. On the back end of our business, Square Payroll has been an absolute lifesaver to save time on administrative work, so I can focus on ice cream making. 

•.    I've also been a Square Champion since 2016, which means I've been here in the Seller Community every week since then, answering questions, writing articles, and helping small business owners like yourself.

I'm excited to answer your questions, so feel free to ask me about my experiences in business and with Square. I’ll be replying to your answers within this post, but I’ll be posting a video of myself as a conclusion and roundup.

Thanks for joining, and I’m looking forward to seeing and answering your questions!

-Pesso

P.S. I am just a small business owner like you, so I can't help with any account based questions, but I am great at helping with business strategy ideas and for making Square products work for you!

Example Questions:

1. How has Square Payroll helped you? Is it worth making the switch?
2. Square Register looks really cool. How has it been working for you?
3. Staying in business for 17 years is a huge accomplishment! How did you make it work for that long?

[Coffeebae]

What is your take on square capital? Have you used it to grow your business regularly? And have you found it frustrating if you have completed multiple loans in great condition no offer after that? 

also what tools you recommend form square to give back to clients 

[pessosices]

Hey @Coffeebae 

Great questions all around!

We have used Square Capital to fund some projects and to have a little bit more breathing room when business was tough. It’s a fantastic tool and absolutely amazing for square to offer such flexible loans for small businesses that wouldn’t have access to that kind of funds.

I’ve never really had an issue with not receiving a Capital offer when I needed one, and even if I did, I know it’s purely a bonus so I never count on or expect them to come. If they come, awesome, if not, that’s ok too. Relying too much on loans can mean that the business might not be as efficient and effective as possible, and it might be time to drive down into the causes of the funds shortage to see if there’s anything else that can be done to revamp and fix some potentially deeper issues.

In terms of giving back to clients, we absolutely love Square Loyalty. It’s a quick and easy and effective rewards program that you can control to make rewarding your loyal customers a pleasure for everyone involved. Check out some of my articles on Square Loyalty to get some ideas of how I use them:
https://www.sellercommunity.com/t5/Business-Resources/Customer-Loyalty-Part-1-Why-Rewards-Programs-a...
And
https://www.sellercommunity.com/t5/Business-Resources/Customer-Loyalty-Part-2-My-Experiences-with-Re...

Thanks again,
Pesso

[littles]

Fellow ice cream and water ice shop here! Have you ever done or considered doing mobile or off-site events?  We have received a lot of requests for this but there are a lot of logistics to figuring this out.

[pessosices]

Hey @littles 

Awesome to have another ices & ice cream shop here! Thanks for joining.

Great question! There are definitely a lot of logistics involved, and I totally get the hesitation to do so, even when there are offers.

We used to do more off-site events and things in the first few years of our business, but lately it’s just been hard enough making enough product and having enough staffing just to manage our shop. Then there’s the higher risk & liability issue, so we let other businesses handle that.

What we have done lately is encourage them to order individual scoops or pints that they can pick up and distribute, this way it’s basically the same workflow as usual, and we get the extra sales, which works out really well.

I hope this helps, and let me know what y’all decide to do!

Thanks again,
Pesso

[allwhowander]

@pessosices Thank you so much for taking the time to provide your insight to the seller community! You hit on a key point in your video relating to sales reporting and the usefullness for determining your product selection and sales velocity -- our business uses this every day and sometimes I don't even consider it a feature because it's just second nature for our business. We would be lost without it. 

I'd love to know more about your workflow from customer walk-in to the physical hand-off of ice cream. Do you use a kitchen printer / KDS? Do you run your products to your customers, or call out orders at the counter as they are ready? How do you identify the customer in your system? Do you / have you ever used a numbering system that the customer takes with them when the order is placed? I would love your perspective from a shop that I'm sure has a lot of volume during your peak hours!

Cheers and best of luck with your business-

Dan

A.W. Wander

[pessosices]

Hey @allwhowander 

Thanks so much for the questions and for your awesome insight into how you use Sales Data & Reporting too! I’m so glad that it’s helping you and is so instrumental into the way you run your business.

Before COVID, we used what I call Man-to-Man Defense where each customer is taken care of from start to finish by one employee. This cut down on mistakes and the need for a KDS or printer. With COVID however, we switched to the traditional Quick-Serve model of Zone Defense where a customer orders & pays with one employee, it prints a ticket to the main work area, and another employee fills the order and hands it to the customer, which cuts down on wait times tremendously. We went with the Custom Text option by asking for the customer’s First Name and Last Initial. This avoids giving the bag to the wrong person if we were to just ask for the first name, and not using numbers lets us avoid having to print out tickets and hand them to customers, since they just have to tell us their name. We use a ticket system instead of a KDS because we end up just stapling the same 1 ticket to the bag, since we would need to have the name on the bag one way or another.

Different systems work for different businesses, so I always recommend to play around with things and experiment to find a model that works best for you. Use a stopwatch to time things out, think of the easiest and the hardest scenario, all of the mistakes that could be made, and always see if there’s a better way!

Thanks again,
Pesso

[junkie]

I visited your ice cream site and your checkout page.  I haven't seen another Square checkout page with all the data, etc that is on your page.  How did you get all of that info, etc on the checkout page?  Can the checkout page be edited?

[pessosices]

Hey @junkie ,

Thanks so much for checking out my site, I really appreciate that!

Hmm, what data and things on the checkout page do you mean?

I did put in Order Instructions and all of that, which everyone is able to edit. 

Or did you mean something else?

Let me know and I'll jump back in and answer.

Thanks again,

Pesso

[junkie]

I just noticed that the page has info about pick up options and I don't have that option available.

I did notice that the link to the items "Ice Cream & Gelato" & "Italian Ice" isn't working. It gives an error message that says "try again". I tried several times on each item. Thought you would want to know.

[pessosices]

Ok cool. 

If you're using the standard Square/Weebly Online Store, once you enable Pickup, the pickup options are definitely editable in your Square Online Store,

If you need more help with this, I'd definitely recommend reaching out to Customer Success, and I've also tagged @AdamB who could help you dive in a little deeper than I could.

--Interesting, the links seem to be working for me. Could you send me a screenshot of that so I could troubleshoot? Thanks!

I hope this helps!

[junkie]

The message that says "try again" doesn't show long enough to take a screenshot.

[pessosices]

Ah ok - well thanks so much for bringing it up and trying!
I'll do some work to see if I can replicate it.

Thanks again!

[AdamB]

@junkie Where are you looking within your Square Online overview page to edit that text for pickup? You'll want to go to Fulfillment > Pickup & Delivery, click Edit on the right for the location, then scroll to the bottom of the side bar and edit your pickup settings. There's a field there to add pickup instructions.

[vladramsey18]

What do you do if people come to you but don't like what you've got to offer?

[pessosices]

Hey @vladramsey18 

Thanks for hopping in here with a great question.

Customer feedback definitely does matter, and I do care what they have to say. If it’s valid feedback and can help improve my business, I’d definitely look into implementing their feedback with either tweaking what I have or adding products.

But at the end of the day, I have shaped my business according to a lot of different factors, and came up to my product line over many years, so at this point if one customer doesn’t like what we have, unless it’s a feasible thing for me to tweak, it’s a little hard to fit the needs of every customer, and there might be better business for them to go to.

Thanks again,
Pesso

[pessosices · Accepted solution]

Hey friends!

Thanks so much everyone for joining me here for this Q&A.

It was a ton of fun hearing all of your fantastic questions, and being able to share my experiences and Square knowledge.

Some key takeaways that kept coming up are:

• Using Square Loyalty to keep your customers coming back, and how Square Register is a great tool to easily use Loyalty
  
  
• Sending out targeted & strategic emails to your customers using Square Marketing to keep customers engaged, keeping them updated with key information about your business, and even as a great tool for hiring
  
  
• Reaching out to local news organizations as a huge way to promote your business and get new customers
  
  
• Taking advantage of social media by posting often and using video to your advantage to really showcase your business
  
  
• Using Reports & Sales Data from Square to cut down on your highest effort and lowest selling items, and to cut down on your hours to save on labor and other expenses
  
  
• Figuring out what the best customer experience and product flow is to make things as smooth and easy as possible for your staff and your customers

And a whole lot more! 

Thanks again to the whole Square Team ( @Tom & @isabelle & @aarontw & @Helen ) for putting this together and having me, and for all of you for joining me here. 

Feel free to ask more questions here or in the rest of the Seller Community, and myself, the Square Team, and more of our awesome Super Sellers will be more than happy to help out and share our experiences. 

If you want to follow along with my business, check us out at www.pessosices.com, and on Instagram at www.instagram.com/pessosices 

I hope you have a great rest of your day, and I’ll see you in the Seller Community! 
Pesso

[Helen]

Thank you so much for participating in this Q&A @pessosices and sharing so many great tips and tricks! Love the video recap too! 

[pessosices]

Thanks so much @Helen ! It's absolutley my pleasure and I hope I was able to help some folks!

Also I love how the Screengrab for the Video looks like I'm singing a very soulful song, hahaha.
Whooops!

[Tom]

@pessosices! We're so fortunate to have you share your experience with us here, and thank you to everyone for the thoughtful questions — I really enjoyed this discussion.

One more for you, @pessosices: Out of curiosity, what's the most popular ice cream flavor at your shop this summer?😎🍧

[pessosices]

Thank you for all the hard work on putting it all together an for having me, @Tom !

Great question!

For Italian Ices, it's Rainbow, Lemon, Cherry, and Mango.

And believe it or not, Pistachio and Cookies N Cream have been outselling Chocolate & Vanilla the last couple of years! Followed closely by Fudge Brownie and Roasted Marshmallow.

[Tom]

Wowowow.🤩 I must try them all someday!