Downlow Chicken Shack co-owners started serving the now signature Nashville-style hot chicken in Vancouver, Canada back in 2018. The restaurant started while Stephen and his business partner Lindsey Mann were still working at Merchant’s Oyster Bar. The results were so good they started selling out, prompting customers to tell him to “keep it on the down-low.” Thankfully he didn’t and Downlow Chicken Shack was born. Today the duo have expanded to two Downlow Chicken Shack locations, one in East Vancouver and one at the UBC campus. Though the restaurant’s footprint has expanded, the demand for its staple fried chicken sandwiches remains the same.
But that’s not the only reason customers keep coming back. “There’s two to three thousand places that put food on a plate or in a box. That put a drink in a glass or in your hand.” said Stephen adding that he reminds his staff of this and that with variable pricing and quality levels, customers decide where they want to go. “The thing that we can do to separate ourselves from everybody else is how we treat each person who comes through the door and how we respect their decision to come and spend money with us.”
As operators, Stephen and Mann try to treat their staff with the care they treat their customers. By prioritizing these two things, Stephen says despite seeing economic impacts of inflation first hand and offering a premium priced product for the market, they still see successful sales volumes.
As a restaurant operator, switching to the Square ecosystem allowed him to maximize workflow efficiency and increase sales volume through tools like the Square KDS and Square Online. Focusing on creating successful systems has given the business a competitive edge. Not only has it translated into growth, but it has also increased employee retention. “We now have eight or 10 staff members who’ve crossed the five-year threshold, said Stephen.
A ‘forward-thinking’ POS system
When it first opened, Downlow Chicken Shack used a POS system that didn’t give staff members visibility into both front and back-of-house operations. It also didn’t include any eCommerce features.
The impact of the pandemic spurred the need for a better solution. “We saw that the world was changing right before our eyes and the way that people interacted with the world was changing. And so we took a look at not just the platforms that were more stable and could allow for eCommerce, but were also forward-thinking,” said Stephen.
Stephen liked the fact that Square had a core focus – facilitating transactions while offering easy-to-use, integrated solutions to meet various business needs. Downlow Chicken Shack needed a platform that would match its long-term ambitions.
“We pride ourselves on hospitality. When somebody said, ‘The internet exists. It’s not 1999 anymore, and when you have the ability to take an order over the internet and you are choosing not to, and that’s inhospitable,’ it [opened my eyes],” he added.
Transitioning to the Square Point of Sale allowed the business to upgrade its tech and fulfill orders more effectively. For example, the team was able to take advantage of Square KDS, a kitchen display system that includes two separate tablets to help sync food orders with kitchen operations. This keeps a direct link between the front and back of the house, allowing staff members to fulfill orders more efficiently while customers get their orders faster.
Maximizing efficiencies through the Square KDS
“As soon as we transitioned to Square KDS, we had the ability to isolate what was being bumped on one side without it clearing from the other side,” said Stephen. “Our cashier is right next to our Expeditor tablet, so if they punch in a soda pop, they can just hand it to the customer. Then, they reach over and bump it so that the person using the Prep tablet doesn’t have to worry about it. It just clears it automatically.”
Switching platforms was worth it for that reason alone. “When you factor in accuracy, trackability, accountability because you can go back and look at things, it’s so much better for us,” added Stephen.
The change paid off: The business was able to up its sales volume by 10 to 15% – with less overhead and more ease.
Another big benefit of the Square KDS was the ability to access and leverage useful data. For example, looking at the sales mix at different times of the day allowed Stephen to identify insights.
During the day, the restaurant sells more sandwiches. At night, it sells more chicken pieces and large-format orders. He also looked at cook times and pulled those numbers together to develop a system. Team members can now rely on concrete metrics to estimate how much chicken they are going to need while improving order timing.
The Square KDS also lets Downlow Chicken Shack manage third-party delivery app orders in one place. These orders are timed to enter the queue when it lines up with the arrival of delivery drivers. “This allows us to hit a better satisfaction rate with our peer-to-peer delivery systems,” said Stephen.
Square Online
Efficiently manage in-store, online, social and mobile sales with Square Online.
Selling online with ease
In other words, better systems have translated into happier customers – and happier team members, which has a ripple effect on service. And thanks to Square Online, Downlow Chicken Shack was able to expand its capabilities even further and grow its brand presence without sacrificing customer experience or spending hours setting up a website.
Customers can now place their orders on the restaurant’s website and choose a pick-up time. Stephen and his team can control how many online order slots to open and which products to make available for sale with a few clicks. As a result, they manage the flow of in-person and online orders without getting overwhelmed or increasing wait times on either front.
Setting up Square Online was a breeze. “For the pickup function, it was as simple as toggling it on and off and then going through the checklist of all the metrics that Square needed to define ahead of time,” said Stephen. “We can set volumes and stock levels on everything and it was relatively easy. We have different variables for different stores around how far in advance we’re comfortable with people placing an order.”
When a customer selects the next available pickup time, the platform gives them an accurate time estimate based on how many orders the kitchen can handle per 15 minutes and how many are currently in the queue.
The ability to set stock levels also comes in handy when Downlow Chicken Shack promotes limited-time collaborations, such as partnering with a big ketchup brand to offer an exclusive sauce.
If Stephen only has 50 units available for one location and 25 units for the other, he can set that benchmark at the beginning of the day and the number will be updated based on both in-person and online transactions. When it zeroes out, customers stop being able to place orders.
Cooking up future plans
With an integrated POS system that can grow with his company, Stephen is dreaming of national expansion. He would like to provide equity opportunities to existing staff members and those promoted into upper management.
“We kind of want to see if we can shift the conversation around employment and labour dollars and how people are looked after. Because almost any business in our industry looks towards a franchise model at some point. And if we’re going to do that, we want to do it with the people who have helped get us to the point where we are at now,” he said.