Deric Rosenbaum is a builder. When he took up a career in commercial construction more than 30 years ago, he didn’t know it, but he was paving the way for a purposeful future. “To me, being a builder means so many different things now. I could be building teams, a systems process, or a franchise. I just like to build, and I don’t pigeonhole what that means,” said Rosenbaum.
His ability to build and transform was recognized in 2000 by his longtime friend and third-generation owner of Groucho’s Deli, Bruce Miller, leading to a fated partnership that has morphed Groucho’s 84-year old legacy into what it is today. “You know how to build restaurants. I know how to run restaurants. Let’s get together,” Rosenbaum recalled Miller saying.
Together, the duo shifted the business from a specialty shop for meat and cheeses into a traditional restaurant with over 30 locations in three states. As it prepares for more strategic growth, the business ultimately switched to Square to power its operations.
How it started: Growth stalled due to the lack of reliable integrations
Groucho’s Deli has been technology-forward for at least ten years. The team had already been using a cloud-based point-of-sale solution, Groucho’s had its own native online ordering system, and its own customer data platform. But in the words of Rosenbaum: “A lot of it was just quilted together.” The team needed top-of-the-line integrations that allowed for a seamless experience.
“We had lots of partners, but the integrations were inferior or they only worked in certain channels, because it really wasn’t an API. It was a webhook or a scrape of an email receipt, and then that triggered whatever X, Y, Z was,” said Rosenbaum. Not only did these partners perform on a level lower than what the business needed, but they also didn’t have any plans to improve their tools to help retain the businesses that needed them.
“We knew what we wanted and where we wanted to be, and some of our partners weren’t ready to go there yet. So at that point, you evolve or you die,” he added.
And Groucho’s was more than ready to evolve. With over 30 stores across the southeast area, seamless operations were becoming more and more imperative for franchisees, and having API integrations that created a singular experience across the board would help streamline further expansion.
How it’s going: Growth simplified by foundational APIs and omnichannel operations
Groucho’s ultimately made the switch to Square. “Square is going upstream,” Rosenbaum said. “I’ve seen the roadmap; I’ve talked to Ming Tai Huh [Square Head of Food & Beverage]; and I’m in beta for new products.” This consistent trajectory upward has helped instill confidence in Square’s ability to support Groucho’s growth now and in the future.
Since the deli’s switch to Square less than two months ago, the business has achieved one of its primary goals: an omnichannel menu. “The fact that we now have a singular omnichannel menu provides consistency to the brand experience across all platforms, whether it’s in-store, our native third party, or wherever else. It’s the same thing everywhere,” he said. “We just toggle things on and off based on the UX we’re trying to provide to our guests or our teams. And that universal nomenclature in our reporting, our metrics, and any of our data-driven work allows us to work at a much higher level.”
Being able to work at a higher level with one singular menu gives Rosenbaum the brand control needed at the corporate level so that he can optimize, however needed, in one clean sweep. “We’re able to easily optimize those menu descriptions for SEO. So wherever it touches, we’re providing Google and anything else that’s crawling that data, what we want it to see and read,” he explained. This ultimately creates one less task for franchise operators who, according to Rosenbaum, noted the difference. “In my role, it’s very rare that you get thanks, and we’ve had a lot of franchisees reach out and thank us. It is a much more frictionless experience for them,” he said.
With a seamless, omnichannel approach at the franchisor and franchisee level, Groucho’s is more than ready to take on scaling with confidence. “We have 11 API integrations with Square right now, and it’s next level. The night we decommissioned the old provider and commissioned the new one, it took us four hours—that’s unheard of,” he explained. “Being able to have foundational API’s and connect those things instantly is going to allow us to scale quickly with lightweight drag.”
Impact: Consistency fueled by a holistic operational view
Foundational APIs also enable Groucho’s to maintain consistency as it scales. Before the switch to Square, the deli used its own native online ordering platform for customer feedback that required customers to click a link or scan a QR code. Now, through the Ovation API, Groucho’s is able to gather customer feedback through text.
“Many people have used a Square merchant somewhere in their world, so the customer phone number and data exist within the Square platform already. When they dine at Groucho’s, we’re able to send them a text message to start that two-question feedback driven by emojis. As a result, our direct feedback has been up 70% since we converted,” Rosenbaum said.
Groucho’s is then able to take that direct feedback and layer it into Google, TripAdvisor, and Yelp to showcase customer satisfaction. This feedback also allows the business to establish benchmarks for its stores and easily pinpoint issues. “We can easily see if an issue is a store-level problem or a global-level problem,” Rosenbaum said.
He recalled a time when the business received feedback about the quality of the sweet tea. “I was instantly like, ‘You can’t have weak sweet tea in the South. That’s a hard no,” he remembered. He called the store manager and discussed the issue, and he ultimately realized the tea was brewing weak. “I wouldn’t have had that insight without the feedback,” he said. “It just gives us a much more holistic view of our operations and allows us to be much more methodical in our approach to inspections and guest relations.”
For Rosenbaum and Groucho’s, this type of setup makes all the difference. “Square is far, far, far, far beyond a point of sale. The point-of-sale is the transactional piece…that’s table stakes. If you’re looking for a universal omnichannel engine and the infrastructure to grow and scale, you need a partner that is open and agnostic and has the bidirectional APIs where it makes sense. That’s what I consider Square to be,” he said.
