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CoverStory

In the Mercator Mobile Order and Pay Ahead: A New Sales App empowerment
Channel for Restaurants and Merchants report, Pucci men-
tioned QSRs; casual dining establishments; aggregators; While mobile wallets like Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and
and traditional merchants, such as department, electron- Android Pay have yet to generate scale in self-service and
ics and home improvement stores, as primary markets. elsewhere, industry observers believe the arrival of IBM
CardFree and LevelUp were cited as potential solutions Pay's branded mobile payment, offers and loyalty app for
for large merchants and Olo's white-label program was merchants could alter the dynamics, as more consumers
suggested for smaller merchants. ChowNow and others may soon come to realize tangible incentives for using
offer white-label programs. them.

Crone noted that with 30 percent of its U.S. transactions One development that has eased growing pains in the
now mobile, Starbucks Corp. positioned itself for mobile self-service economy is the rapid evolution of apps. For ex-
order and pay, which accounted for 9 percent of transac- ample, soon after First Data Corp.'s 2012 acquisition of Clo-
tions in early July 2017 and is growing by half a percent ver Network Inc., collaboration began on a series of Clover
per month. And spending by Starbucks Rewards' 13.3 mil- POS solutions that could easily integrate third-party apps
lion active users now represents 36 percent of its U.S. sales. after the apps were vetted.
Crone believes that within six to eight years, a majority of
Starbucks' sales will be through order ahead. "We opened the Clover App Market in 2014 and now have
about 300 apps in the app market," said Mark Schulze,
Another franchise that has witnessed similar adoption co-founder of Clover and Vice President of Business De-
rates is Panera Bread Co. Panera revealed in June that digi- velopment for Integrated Systems for the ISV Group at
tal sales – those completed via mobile, web or kiosk chan- First Data. The Clover App Market offers both free and
nels – accounted for 26 percent of total company sales, sur- subscription-based apps designed for business, including
passing $1 billion on an annualized basis and on track to order ahead.
double in 2019.
Originally, apps were designed to provide concise fea-
Since the Panera 2.0 digital order, pay and operations ini- tures, such as age verification for age-restricted busi-
tiative launched in 2014, digital orders at the 2,000-plus nesses. "The next stage is you started to see more complex
location chain have increased to 1.2 million per week. In things, like Homebase, a full-featured employee manage-
that time Panera has managed to shave wait-to-order time ment app," Schulze said. "The third stage that we're seeing
from eight minutes to one minute, and about 25 million now is companies that are building their entire POS on top
people have joined its MyPanera loyalty program to date, of Clover as an app," which has benefitted ISO partners
according to Panera. who wish to lead in with bundled systems.

Despite progress being made by Starbucks, Panera and "We have some apps that have tens of thousands of installs
other leading self-service adepts, in-store logistics remain and sales reps have told us that these apps really help them
a challenge, especially for stores with smaller footprints. close deals," Schulze added. "I think the way merchants
"The impact of mobile order and pay affects the process of interact with customers is going to be fundamentally dif-
the stores, the customer flow and so on," Pucci said. "They ferent in three to five years than they do today."
find that when people use mobile apps, they come in more
frequently, and there's a higher average check." First Data has also developed custom enterprise-level so-
lutions not available in the app market. "We worked with
Chick-fil-A on the company's ecommerce channel and
helped them build their app," Schulze noted. "One of the
benefits of having an app on Clover is it's integrated at the
2017 Events point of sale so you can pop into another screen."

He added that with order ahead and other apps in the app
market, restaurants and businesses can use the application
programming interface to download and update menus or
August 23 -23 September 27 - 28
http://www.prepaidpressexpo.com/ www.westernstatesacquirers.com even stocked items, bearing in mind that naming normal-
ization is important as abbreviations can be problematic
for end users.
Screen time

October 22 - 25
October 10 - 12 https://www.money2020.com/ Touchscreen pioneer Elo Touch Solutions Inc., which
www.natmc.org register boasts over 20 million retail and hospitality installations
in 80-plus countries, has seen increased interest in self-
service applications and has partnered with software and

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