[rdl]

This is (to me) the most interesting thing I've seen Square do since they launched. It's a bit pricey, but there are lots of great examples of pickup/takeout working well -- chipotle, for one. If smaller stores could do this easily, I'd be a lot more likely to order from them, especially if it's a larger/group order where spending the time on the phone is a pain (and often incorrect).

I don't think the economics of a lot of the delivery services work, especially for single-person or other small orders; here, it's pure cost savings. The 8% cut is ...ambitious, but it might make sense, and they can always drop it to something more reasonable like 5%.

[nwenzel]

For business with a limited sales window and highly perishable inventory (bagel store in the morning), standing in line may be the bottleneck preventing more customer and order throughput. If the store is able to expand their capacity via an order ahead app allowing them to capture new sales they would not have otherwise gotten, 8% seems much more reasonable.

Of course, some existing customers and sales will also move in that direction, so the answer here may be, as is often the case, it depends.

What I find truly fascinating is that Square is(was) a "payments" company. Or, more specifically, a credit card terminal company. But this offering and their recent acquisition of BookFresh makes them more of a back-end for small business. They may be one of the few companies to have figured out how to sell to small business at scale.

Apparently the answer there is, find something small, complicated, and annoying... fix it. Build that toehold into a platform to take on the larger opportunity.

[maxbrown]

I agree with you on the Chipotle experience, surprisingly well done.

Ambitious is right - I feel like the 8% is too steep a barrier to entry. If they launched it at 5% I could see it getting much higher adoption. Do you think it's as simple as "they can always drop it" or might a competitor outdo them on price and become the standard?