ReUp

Tina and Calvin Su are the sibling duo behind the scrumptious, Instagram-perfect treats that Toronto has been loving for over five years since the opening of their first storefront, Butter Avenue. Throughout the years at Queen and Spadina, their Butter Avenue location has gained city-wide renown. A quick scroll through their Instagram might show you why-- the vibrancy of their delicate macarons and perfect piping on their tarts make their treats look too good to eat. The attention put into high quality fresh ingredients is a key element that has come out of Tina’s training in France and at Ottawa’s Cordon Bleu… and will make you certainly glad you took a bite out of your perfectly crafted pastry.

This sibling duo is the ideal partnership. Head pastry chef Tina handles all things to do with their delicious treats, while Calvin deals with the business side of things. I had the pleasure of talking with Calvin about the success of Butter Avenue, some of his business analysis and strategy planning techniques, and finally their decision to open up a sister location, Butter Baker, at Bay and Dundas.

While Butter Baker has already opened it doors over the past few weeks after a soft-opening, it will be officially open as of Friday November 24th! That means some exciting promotions and social media competitions for you, their customers!

With a background in corporate business, and years of experience running Butter Avenue alongside Tina, Calvin has extensive knowledge of the Toronto cafe and pastry market. He shed some light on the key difference between the two locations. Butter Avenue is not the type of place customers go to everyday. The storefront thrives off of a diverse and widespread customer base, rather than a localised and loyal one. For this reason, they decided to focus attention towards Butter Baker for their loyalty platform and custom app. Butter Baker is the everyday coffee/ pastry/ croissant spot. They have already been promoting the app to customers in-store, tracking purchases and customer loyalty, and offering that extra special treatment through promotions and rewards. They have even been able to generate some furthered hype surrounding their official Friday opening involving social media competitions and prizes!

Calvin and Tina decided to diversify with a sister location for a number of reasons. Somewhat to my surprise, a large aspect of their decision came down to the desire to simply do something creatively different. They’ve mastered the art of luxury patisserie, and wanted to try their hand at something a little more ‘everyday’. Calvin’s strategy involves future growth through the years and into various markets, and Butter Baker was the perfect way to give it a shot in a different direction. They are confident that the success of Butter Avenue can be replicated and relocated, but Butter Baker is new and exciting territory.

With years of experience in the Restaurant Tech Industry, Frank Caron joined us for a chat this week to shed some light on the future of things, from an insider perspective. Frank’s decorated past includes work in app and web development centred around the quick service food and restaurant industries. However, he also has a firm handle on the realities of the restaurant and bar industry and holds the belief that customers come to these locations for the primary reasons of having human conversation and experiencing hospitable service. So just how far will technology take this industry? These 3 principles will guide the way in shaping the future of quick service food, bars, and restaurants, and the ways in which technology impacts this industry.

1. Clear and Immediate Value Added

Getting customers to interface with an iPad in your store, download your coffee app, or input their email and subscribe to your newsletter has a lot to do with ‘what’s in it for them’. This starts by providing that initial reward--> 20% your first order with our app, 5 coffees and the 6th is free, half price drink app promo code, etc. From there, the customer is in.. and this is the easy part. How do you keep them engaging with the platform? How do you keep them from deleting that app? Unsubscribing from your newsletter? Avoiding your platform? This is where gamification can be very powerful.

2. Gamification

Your goal as a restaurant owner should be to encourage your customers to engage with your brand even while they’re not physical in your shop. This might include encouraging beautiful Instagram posts by hosting weekly competitions for prizes or the opportunity to be featured/ re-posted (take Sweet Jesus as a textbook example of this). This might include encouraging customers to book a table through your app to receive 15% off their meal of 4 people or more. This might include a ‘2-for-1 Mate Date’ promotion advertised strictly through your app. I could go on. The important thing to remember is that there is no ‘one size fits all’. Executing a gamified and engaging technology platform to drive traffic and increase sales starts by first understanding your goals as an owner.

Will you benefit from increased social media presence? Will you benefit from digitizing the process of table bookings? Do you want more feet through the door? Do you want to drive higher ticketed purchases from an existing customer base.

3. Reducing Barrier to Entry: Placing Tech on the Back Burner

When you think of a loyalty platform, what comes to mind? Is it a custom-branded app? Is it a stamp card? Maybe somewhere in between?...

Each loyalty program caters to a different customer group, and therefore best fits a different type of business. When considering what platform might be the best fit for your business, the main criteria to consider is the following...

Who is your customer demographic

Are they students? Young working professionals? Parents with kids?

How often do they like to interface with their screens?

What do they value about your business... The price? The quality? The atmosphere?

What is your location

Are you located in an urban core? Are you outside of the city? Are you rural?

Do you have direct competition in your neighbours?

What is the ticket price on your product/ service?

Do you cater upmarket or to the average consumer?

Do you match competitor pricing?

Asking yourself the above questions will help you map your business and customer base. With that in mind, let’s talk about the various loyalty platform options!

1. Marketplace App

A marketplace app such as FiveStars, Belly, or Vicinity is like sticking your business in a digital ‘mall’, rather than being a street-front boutique. While it definitely increases eyes on your business, it also increases competition. More customers can discover your business, promotions you might have running, etc.! Customers are able to leverage marketplace apps to then hunt for the best rewards and deals, and make purchase decisions based on this. While this may not be driving loyalty, it is definitely a viable way to drive new traffic for a relatively low cost.

2. Your Own Custom-Branded App

This is your business’ very own personalized loyalty app, and is one of the various solutions offered by ReUp! With a custom-branded app, your business and your customer loyalty comes first. A custom-branded app is popularized by your existing customer base. Maybe someone in line sees the person in front of them interfacing with the Bob’s Coffee App and decides to also download it. Maybe in-store signage, offers, and rewards prompts customers to download the app. While this solution doesn’t focus on driving new traffic, it works to solidify an existing customer base. A custom app encourages customers to stay longer, spend more, and maintain their loyalty to your awesome business!

3. Non-App Loyalty

This solution is ideal for businesses in more rural areas that might be serving a customer-base of a less tech-savy demographic. The semi-tech solution offers rewards for customers opting to input their phone number or email into a database. The customer can receive a confirmation message, and subsequent messages reminding them when there might be an in-store offer, or when they may qualify for a reward. The customer’s spending habits can be tracked and linked to their profile. A loyalty stamp cards can be easily lost, thrown away, or turned down based on low wallet real-estate. This solution is basically a digital stamp card!

4. Self-Serve Loyalty

Self-serve loyalty allows customers to opt-in to a loyalty platform on their own terms. This might be through a phone or tablet located in-store. The solution operates on similar terms as above-- with exclusive rewards and promotions offered to customers who input their email or phone number. It doesn’t require the downloading of an app, and is therefore catered to a less tech-savy customer demographic. Businesses can leverage the inputting of (specifically) email addresses by sending out a weekly or monthly blog or newsletter!

5. Physical Card (hybrid gift and loyalty card)

This solution is great for full-service restaurants. The customer base in this situation is not likely to be coming in daily. Instead, loyal customers may be coming in once a week or a few times per month. Offering a ‘smart’ gift/loyalty card allows customers to receive exclusive offers once loading money onto their card. It is able to track spending habits and retrieve data associated with each individual customer profile, and offer rewards and promotions based on this data.

Yesterday’s enlightening conversation with ReUp Co-Founder Asim Shahjahan, left me questioning everything I ever learned about customer service from my teenage years of working at the mall.

Asim and Co-Founder/ CTO Kelsey Regan started ReUp three and a half years ago. The idea spun out of an identified market need coupled with a joint passion for emerging tech. Big companies like Starbucks and Freshii had already rolled out their mobile apps, and the shocking numbers indicating high customer opt-in and increased revenue were beginning to surface. But, what about the little guys? Back in 2014, the little coffee shop at the end of your road was still encouraging customers to stuff a “buy 9, get the 10th free” loyalty card into their wallets. “We started thinking to ourselves how we could get a digital customer loyalty and engagement platform into the hands of small and medium-sized business owners…”

ReUp facilitates business owners to further understand and engage with their clients. Long gone are the days of marketing gurus sitting at a round table asking the question “Alright, who is our customer?” Digital platforms now make it possible to aggregate and analyze data, further developing accurate customer profiles. Where previously it may have only been possible to have solid customer relationships between the shop owner and the regulars, the ReUp platforms offers an ability to give the much desired VIP treatment to all customers.

Asim has seen some drastic changes in customer and business relationships in the three years since launching ReUp. “The Starbucks mobile app has paved the way, revolutionizing the game of customer loyalty.” As he dives into specifics about customer interfacing and ingestion points, the revolution becomes clear…

We’ve always been bombarded by marketing, ads, and companies trying to sway and entice us. Now, these companies transcend their spots on billboards and monitors, and enter the palms of our hands. Technology has allowed consumerism to go mobile and to get personal. From the moment a customer walks into your store, you as a business owner have the opportunity to gain their loyalty and acquire their long-standing business.

ReUp first hones in on what Asim calls ingestion points. This involves removing barriers by providing several different opportunities for customers to opt-in to your loyalty platform. Maybe they are prompted to receive free WiFi via an SMS code. Maybe they have the opportunity to subscribe to rewards and promotions by inputting their email into an iPad at the front counter. Or maybe, they are encouraged to download the shop’s mobile app. Multiple ingestion points are a key step in allowing customers to become acquainted with your loyalty platform, see how it can directly benefit them, and make the key decision to opt-in.

Beyond the ingestion point is data collection and analytics. Here, ReUp is working to use data such as age, demographic, and spending habits to build information models. This all feeds back into the business owner’s clarity of who their customers are, what their customers want, what their customers don’t want, and how to better serve, grow, and engage with their clientele. In this case, it’s not just the squeaky wheels that get the grease. “The regular that always requests more bacon in their sandwich, or that asks for a hazelnut shot in their espresso.. those are the customers that business owners know well, and tend to serve directly to. Now, every customer has a profile. Even the quiet regular that comes in with their head down for their daily latte. Everyone is important and served as a VIP.” ReUp equips even the smallest mom & pop shop to make important business decisions with evidence, clarity, and mitigated risks.

Phones are a big part of our day-to-day life. When you think about all the things they do for you, you likely wonder what they could do for your business. One of the strongest trends in the mobile world is app ordering for quick service restaurants. Here’s why.

This new service allows businesses to maximize the number of transaction they process, especially during their peak hours. Mobile order ahead also increases foot traffic and customer loyalty by adding a ‘sticky factor’ and competitive edge. Customers love to order remotely and skip the line on a busy day.

Companies like Starbucks and Taco Bell are well aware of these benefits and are already using them to significantly boost sales.

Compared to in-store purchases, Taco Bell’s mobile order ahead transaction sizes average about 30% higher. Customers were so eager for this service, that on the first day of Taco Bell’s app launch, 75% of all locations processed mobile orders.

Starbucks’ app has achieved similar success and is typically viewed as the gold standard. Currently, 10% of transactions at their high-volume locations are processed via the app. Their mobile payment volume has also been growing an impressive 10% per quarter. This shows that customers are not just open to mobile app payments, they are hungry for it!

At the core of this phenomenon, we find customers are looking for convenience AND are willing to pay for it! 

One of the easiest ways to win new customers is through people they trust. 77% of customers are likely to buy a new product when learning about it from friends. 42% of customers are loyal to brands their family and friends buy from. Companies like Uber and Groupon owe their success to these concepts, proving that referral codes can be the lifeblood of your business.

Referrals work by providing an incentive that is attractive to the current customer and the one being referred. An incentive will get a current customer more likely to recommend a product or service. It will also reduce the new customer’s uncertainty of the product or service and make them more likely to choose you over a competitor.

It may seem costly at first, but winning new customers pays for itself above and beyond any referral bonus. Think about how much a customer is worth to you over their lifetime. Now, is it worth giving away a free product or a $10 voucher to capture that value? Chances are the answer is yes!

Everyone knows variety is the spice of life. The same holds true for loyalty programs. The classic ‘stamp card’ approach tends to lose its appeal over time. Why? Because a single option is boring.

The excitement and perceived value of a reward weakens each time a customer redeems it. Your most loyal customers will feel this the strongest as they visit the most. Redeeming the same reward quickly becomes repetitive and loses its excitement.

How do you solve this issue? Simple, add more rewards! By offering multiple rewards you allow customers to choose the best reward for them at the time, rather than giving them a single option.

It’s equally important to offer different the types of rewards. Having a diverse reward selection will help to cater to your customers’ many needs. If you only offer one type of reward, consider others like free menu items, swag, buy one get one, or access to special VIP events.

Tiers are another exciting way to add value to your loyalty program. Customers will naturally want to work up towards specialty rewards available at higher tiers.

Your brand is more to you than just a trendy logo and some flashy visuals. It is a direct reflection of who you and your company are. It’s important that the values that you uphold as a company match what your customers perceive. Beautiful design work will help unify your vision, but having a full strategy is what will really highlight your amazing product and dedicated team.

Finding purpose

What problem am I solving? What makes my offering special? How does it make my customers feel? How do I speak to my customers?

These are a just a few of the kinds of questions you should ask yourself. They will help determine things like your mission statement, your brand purpose, and brand position (how you are positioned in relation to your customers). Those things are really important because they are what set you apart from your competitors, and determine whether you are filling a unique niche.

Making it personal

Translating your values into a brand that people can connect with comes down to taking it personally. Your brand needs a unique personality.

Ask yourself what personality traits your customers find agreeable or desirable.Is my brand serious or quick-witted? Does my brand keep everything it its place, or does it thrive in an organized mess? Picking 3-5 human traits in this way can help create a believable brand.

Keeping on track

A hugely important factor in having a strong brand is being consistent. Maintaining the same tone of voice, position, and visual language ensures that people will recognize your brand. People always talk about a recognizable logo, but how can you recognize something if you have no substance to tie it to?

De Mello Palheta and Coffee roasters at Yonge and Eglinton has a pretty simple mission – making the best coffee possible from seed to cup. They’re a little outside of the downtown core, so Won gave us some insight on how to get the momentum going on a trendy business anywhere in the city.

Ask for advice

Leveraging the know-how of someone who runs a business you admire can help you reach your goals faster. If someone has already tried and tested the best tools and strategies, it’s going to eliminate a lot of trial and error for you.  

“People ask us how to start a coffee shop and we help them out with equipment.” De Mello also pride themselves on following up with training and support. Won says they also have partnerships with design groups, and it’s obvious from one look at De Mello, that they know a thing or two about good design. Asking for help can sometimes open some of the most surprising doors. 

Build relationships

Think about which other businesses relate to your offering, or share similar values. It could be anyone from suppliers to wholesalers, or a local business network.  “We have wholesale clients that recognize us and visit us [regularly],” Won says.

Having a strong network will support your business in a variety of ways. Maybe there are other businesses that can sell your product to get your name out. They may do other marketing for you in their locations, or become a repeat customer.

Customers are your best partners

De Mello doesn’t need to do a lot of marketing – they are known for their quality, and their customers spread the word. It never hurts to fill an interesting niche that will get people talking and sharing with their friends.

A friend of the ReUp team shared how she became familiar with the De Mello brand. “At an old job I often had people ask me about what the coffee siphon tasted like. I had no idea because I didn't know anyone who brewed siphon coffees. A customer told me De Mello brews a really good siphon so I went to check it out and have been going back since.”

Expanding to your second location is a different game than opening a standalone restaurant, mostly because a lot is riding on expectations. Otilia Kiss from Thrive Organic Kitchen says opening their first location was easy compared to her recent experience. She shares the lessons she learned in the process of extending the business.

Don’t make assumptions

When opening your first location, there is a lot more flexibility. After that, customers already have an idea of what they’re going to get from you. It’s important to know who your customers are, and what they really see in your brand. This will help you to meet and exceed those expectations the next time around. Something that can get overlooked is where your customers actually are. Figuring that out will dictate where you open the next store to best serve them.

Surprise your customers

Where you choose to locate your new store is going to have its own added nuances, which shape the experience with your brand. Your décor may be different, or you may try new menu items. Think of it as different flavours fo your brand.

An example that Otilia recalled when working on the new space is McDonald’s. The international menus are all very different from eachother. “This is such a powerful brand committed to consistency,” she says, but in the end, it was “still McDonald’s, they still had the same core principals”

You can't predict everything

Thrive Organic ran into unexpected some surprises of their own. Otilia, half joking, mentioned that the biggest challenge was fixing the pipes in an older building. You’ve got to be prepared, and have an idea of how things are going to go. Some things just aren’t going to go to plan, but you do the best you can.

If you are a small business owner with a retail storefront you have probably asked the question “does social media provide me a return on investment?” However, the question should not be does social media provide ROI but rather how much. Today, Facebook sees nearly 1.7 billion daily active users, Instagram 500 million, Twitter 300 million, and Snapchat 200 million. That’s a lot of eyeballs. With all that attention, social media channels are able to provide a portal from your store to almost any customer. What about the other, non-social channels?

Consumers are becoming more desensitized to traditional forms of media. We used to watch every commercial that came on the TV read magazines on the train. Now, we all pick up the device that’s in our pocket and browse the most popular social media apps. Social media allows you to story tell and provide high-quality content to your customers completely free.

If you are already producing content on social, good on you! However, it is important to keep in mind a few things to make sure your results are maximized. • Regardless of platform, aim to post on a regular basis. There’s nothing worse than a customer looking at a timeline with 6-month-old pictures • Understand how to post content natively to each channel and avoid posting the same content across streams • Take advantage of hashtag culture on Twitter and Instagram by including relevant hashtags so people browsing the apps can find you organically

For those of you who haven’t begun their social media journey, there’s no better time than today. The longer you wait to join the party, the more noise you’ll have to compete against. To get started, Facebook and Instagram are the easiest platforms to produce content for. Here are a couple tips to get you rolling on both. • Use Instagram to post pictures revolving around new items, seasonal specials, or happy customers • Facebook can be used to deliver content specific to your customer base. For example, if you are a coffee shop you can post about how to make the perfect cappuccino or upload how to videos.

At Jimmy’s Coffee, there are two things that matter: good coffee and good service. Find a trusty roaster and your coffee is taken care of. Delivering consistently strong service is a challenge that cannot be solved so easily. At Jimmy’s however, they’ve found a winning formula. General Manager Elinor Barker shared their secret ingredients.

“When people think of working at a café, they think of a quiet, low-key job,” said Barker. “When they work their first shift at Jimmy’s on Portland, our busiest location, we quickly realize whether they are a good fit or not.”

Good service starts with finding the right people, she said, which goes beyond a simple interview. All new Jimmy’s employees are required to work a trial shift before officially being welcomed to the team. The employees who pass their trial shift end up at one of the six Jimmy’s locations across downtown Toronto. These employees bring their unique charm to the shop and end up being the reason customers love returning often. It’s important to Barker that her team is happy and she accomplishes this a few different ways. “Good service comes from happy staff. We encourage our staff to be themselves, which means wearing what they want and listening to music they enjoy while at work,” she said.

Paying above minimum wage and adding health benefits are additional aspects that many business owners overlook, but it’s another piece in Jimmy’s arsenal to employee satisfaction. “People want to love who they work for,” said Barker.

Starting your own quick service business has its challenges, especially when you’re a group of young entrepreneurs. Salma from Crave Healthy Habits gives her insight on and how her team faced the challenges of starting out.

Offer something new Establishing yourself is always a challenge. Crave Healthy Habits works because it was created to fill a need – a new take on quick service. The idea was to create something that had the fine dining quality of food but in a fast food manner. Crave’s offering targets consumers who are looking for real food that’s made from fresh ingredients but need something that fits their busy schedule. 

Be quick to adapt There are a lot of quick service options positioned with them in the PATH. Salma says, however, that their biggest competition is not from fast food, it’s from the others who have populated their growing segment. It’s important that Crave was able to grow and change to challenge their competition. Always staying true to their initial vision, Crave still has to differentiate itself. Now they focus their efforts on diverse and sophisticated flavour palettes, all packed up the same simple kraft box.

Seek out learning opportunities With the big idea in mind, there are few things more frustrating than lacking the background to bring it to fruition. Salma says the key, in the beginning, was finding mentors. There are people who have the experience you lack – it comes down to being able to trust and rely on them. You’ll have to work hard to earn these mentors’ trust and respect as well. 

She advises to take every opportunity to learn and grow, and prove that you’re really willing to put in everything you can. You’ve got to make up for those years with as much knowledge and wisdom as possible. 

I recently had the opportunity to sit with Andrew McKee from Great Dane Coffee. If you don't know about Great Dane Coffee, then let me get you up to speed – Great Dane is a charming cafe located on the University of British Columbia campus in Vancouver, Canada. Its charm is only outdone by the delicious hot beverages it brews for UBC students, staff, and alumni. The fascinating thing about Great Dane is that Andrew lives in Toronto (a 5 hour flight from Vancouver for those keeping track) and manages his business completely remotely. Not only is his remote business profitable, but he's also recently opened up a second location.

"Distance is no longer a barrier." says Andrew, "We live in an era where technology can solve so many of the manual processes we used to manage. On top of that, it can give us a real-time view instead of having to wait until the end of the day to get a glance into the business." 

Andrew happily provided his top three technology tools for running a business remotely:  1. slack (www.slack.com) This collaborative chat tool allows Andrew to keep in touch with his staff and stay on top of any issues they may have. When his staff needs an immediate decision they send a slack message and Andrew can respond in minutes. Whether it's a supply issue or an irate customer, Andrew can direct his team in real time! 

2. TimeStation (www.mytimestation.com) TimeStation allows Andrew to know exactly who is working and available at any given time. Automated email notifications help him track when his staff clock out for the day. Use this in conjunction with slack and it's he's onsite with his team. 

3. Square POS (https://squareup.com/ca/pos) Square POS is one of the many new Tablet POS systems that push data to the cloud in real-time. Besides the sleek, minimal footprint, Andrew can now review his sales reports at any time. If he's behind on his targets, he can use either TimeStation or slack to dig in further. 

You want your brand to gain recognition, so what do you do? You might sink money into marketing avenues, like Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, or local newspaper advertisements in the hopes the right consumers will appreciate the posting enough to visit your business. But these methods are incredibly inefficient and create a negative relationship with your customers (See: No one likes ads.). You want to create a brand following where current and potential customers want to consume and affiliate with your content religiously; you want to be the Pope Francis of your field. But in the digital age, you do not hold mass in an extravagant cathedral. You cultivate an audience with your digital media platform.

Media, not Marketing

It is important to distinguish media from marketing. Marketing is slogans, caricatures, online blurbs, intrusive videos, and money thrown at one off presentations. Media is content cultivated to acquire an audience that wants to read the content. This audience is going to wake up early next Sunday just to read the next edition. Creating your media outlet is creating intellectual property that builds your brand and is there forever. This material now enables your fans to consume teachings that you, an authority in your field, wrote for them to read in their spare time. What advertisements do that? None.

Education for Influence

As the cult leader of your brand, you are the expert in your field. Your audience does not have the time or focus to accumulate the same amount of knowledge. However, they crave your insights; your direction; your blessing. In turn, your following gives you influence. Now you have fans, not casual followers, who want you to tell them what to like, what to not like, and, most importantly, what to buy. Some of the most influential people in our lives are teachers or professors who have enlightened us in a field of our interest and now it is your turn to become the teacher, be your subject coffee, fitness, beauty or sandwiches. People enjoy and talk about opinions of experts.

Presentation is Everything

So, you’ve decided to create your online presence and start up a Facebook page. But Facebook does not have your interests at heart. Every time someone reads something on your Facebook page, they are bombarded with the ads of your competitors. And this does not only apply to Facebook; all shared platforms direct traffic to your competitors. Shared platforms are platforms for your competitors to gain traction. Do yourself a favour and get your own website (or maybe even your own app). There are many cheaper ways to start generating your own content on your own terms without sacrificing quality or promoting competitors. Treat your digital media platform like it is your very own extravagant cathedral.

ReUp recently had the opportunity to attend the Restaurants Canada show. For three full days, the Enercare Centre was filled to the brim with vendors showcasing their wares, and restauranteurs fighting the urge to buy everything in sight. All the token players were there: Premium coffee roasters, craft brewers, even cutting-edge toaster oven manufacturers. As ReUp personnel, we were primarily interested in spending time with POS providers and payment processing companies.

We had noteworthy interactions with two specific POS providers who succinctly summarized the two approaches we see in the technology space today. One approach we like, but the other feels a bit dated.

The first company we spoke with, a POS provider headquartered in Montreal called Cluster Systems, reciprocated our values of integration, collaboration, and delivering the most value to our customers. After a brief discussion with their director of sales and marketing, it was clear that they were no strangers to integrations. There was no discussion of who would be funding the project, or if our companies were credible enough to warrant working together in the first place. We believe this openness to collaboration is where the truly disruptive technologies are born.

On the other end of the spectrum, we had a drastically different chat with a couple salesmen from another large nameless POS comapny. When we brought up the idea of integration, we were served a canned answer in the form of rigid directions stipulating that ReUp foot the bill just to access to their API. On top of that, they required us to submit a prepared business case and pay for their development work. Keep in mind a POS integration is a few days of work for a competent developer, but there wasn’t much room for negotiation. This is an old fashioned approach that is still widely used by major players in the space.

Regardless of the outcomes from our time at the Restaurant Show, it was fascinating to see the range of openness to adopting methods of collaboration; from tech-first disruptors to slow-moving dinosaurs. I just hope they remember what happened to the dinosaurs. 

Sometimes you just gotta channel your inner Seinfeld and ask: “What’s the deal with credit card processing?” Having spent the last few months trying to understand the credit card processing industry, I can confidently say it is a wild game of hidden fees, minimum volumes, complicated paperwork, i-plus pricing, and chargebacks. It has also, however, given me a lot of insight into the question that we, at ReUp, get asked the most: “How much does your credit card processing cost?” 

When we began to develop ReUP, we decided to take the simplest route and use Stripe Connect, largely because it is built to facilitate credit card processing in a marketplace environment. That means a tech company like ReUp can facilitate payments for various merchants without ever having to do any manual reconciliation or transfers. The pricing is a flat 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction with no monthly costs, no contracts, and no minimum volume requirements. We have come to realize, however, that pricing is a point of contention with some merchants. They see the 2.9% + 30 cents and begin to worry about how it will affect their bottom line or razor thin margins. 

After some back-of-the-envelope calcuations, it seems that the simplified Stripe pricing isn’t far from what you would pay a standard credit card processor like Elavon, Chase, or Moneris for an account handling monthly volumes of approximately $4000 (or 80 transactions of $50 credit loads). This totals an approximate $50,000 per year, which is a reasonable volume of mobile payments for an independent retail merchant. 

For comparison, here is a sample pricing package for an eCommerce Merchant account with Elavon: 

        - One-time SetUp fee: $150        - Monthly Fee: $27.94 (this is comprised of a $7 statement fee, a $7.95 PCI data security fee, and a $12.99 software maintenance fee.)        - 2.39% + 5 cents per transaction fee.        - Assessment fee for Visa: 0.0904%; Mastercard 0.087%

Here’s a quick calculation as to how this works out. We’ll exclude the additional $150 Elavon One-time SetUp fee for simplicity:

As you can see, the monthly processing totals aren’t far off. The Stripe pricing just sounds more intimidating than Elavon, since Elavon raises the total monthly cost in order to give you a false sense of lower processing fees. The point here is that eCommerce pricing is fairly standard, and shouldn’t be compared to the card-present swipe transaction pricing you may currently pay. (The caveat here, of course, is that your volume or number of transactions may differ, so please run your own calculations!)

With all of that being said, ReUp still supports integration with BeanStream, Payflow Pro, and Authorize.net. If you’re really keen to use your own online credit card processing gateway and merchant account, we can support that as well! Once you are settled with your credit card processor and ReUp, you will never again have to say... “These credit card processing fees are makin’ me thirsty!”