Business value

This page summarizes the business value of Layout Mobile for coffee shop owners, technical evaluators, and partners or investors. It stays high-level and avoids implementation detail.

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For multi-location coffee shop owners

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Your brand, your app

You get a native iOS app under your brand — your business name, logo, colors, and menu — published to the App Store as its own listing. Customers download your app, choose a location, order ahead, and pay with card or Apple Pay. You don’t build or host the app; Layout runs the platform and keeps it in sync with your Square account.

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Works with what you already use

Layout is built for merchants who already use Square for POS and payments. We don’t replace Square; we add a mobile ordering, engagement, and kitchen layer on top:

• Catalog and locations — Managed in Square; synced to the app automatically via webhooks and a daily job.
• Payments — Processed by Square. Settlement and reporting stay in your Square account. Zero transaction fees from Layout.
• Loyalty — If you use Square Loyalty, customers can see their balance, enroll, and earn points in the app.
• Kitchen — Use our kitchen panel (Layout KDS), Square KDS, or Square Expeditor; we support all three.

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Customer engagement built in

Every plan includes tools to bring customers back:

• Push notifications — Unlimited. Send targeted messages or let loyalty point notifications fire automatically.
• Announcement cards — Surface in-app messages about promotions, new menu items, or store news.
• Welcome offer — Automatically apply a first-order discount for new customers.
• Promotions & featured items — Run in-app promotions (with optional Square discount codes) and highlight specific menu items.

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Gift cards (Plus)

On the Plus plan, customers can purchase, reload, link, and redeem Square gift cards directly in the app. Designs are configurable per brand.

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One dashboard, all locations

• Dashboard — Configure branding, which locations are active, order and pickup behavior, promotions, and analytics in one place.
• Kitchen panel — See orders by location and move them through status. Optional customer-facing status and push notifications with Layout KDS.
• Analytics — Revenue and order analytics by location, with engagement metrics on Plus.

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Plans at a glance

See Pricing for the full breakdown.

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For technical evaluators

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Clear integration model

• Square as source of truth — Catalog, locations, inventory, and payments flow through Square. We sync and orchestrate; we don’t duplicate payment processing or replace your POS.
• Square OAuth with auto-refresh — Connect once; tokens are refreshed automatically. No manual reconnect needed.
• 14 Square scopes — Catalog, locations, payments, customers, loyalty, gift cards, and inventory — covering the full feature set.
• Webhook-driven — 11 Square webhook event types handled: catalog, inventory, location, loyalty, customer, order, fulfillment, and payment events.
• Secure, tenant-scoped — OAuth tokens and data scoped by company and location. merchantToCompany routing ensures webhooks never cross tenant boundaries.
• Reliability — Idempotent payment creation to avoid double charges; order state checks; daily scheduled sync backstop; auto-refreshing Square tokens.

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Architecture and operations

• Hosted platform — No merchant-hosted servers or databases. Layout runs the backend, dashboard, and panel.
• Stripe billing — Subscription management via Stripe; billing status (active, past_due, canceled) gates features at the plan level.
• Per-brand App Store listing — Each merchant’s app is submitted to the App Store under their brand with per-company Universal Links via dynamically served Apple App Site Association files.

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For investors and partners

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Market and product fit

Layout targets local and multi-location coffee shops (and similar quick-service merchants) on Square who want:

• A branded mobile app without building and maintaining their own.
• Alignment with Square — same catalog, locations, payments, loyalty, and gift cards they already use.
• Engagement tools — push notifications, promotions, welcome offers, and announcements out of the box.
• Multi-location and kitchen — one app, location-aware orders, and flexible KDS support.

The product is scoped to add value on top of Square, not replace it — reducing integration risk and fitting how these merchants already operate.

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Technical credibility

• Integration depth — Square OAuth, 14 API scopes, 11 webhook event types, idempotent payments, catalog/inventory/loyalty/gift card sync.
• Security and reliability — Tenant isolation, no card data in Layout, HMAC-verified webhooks, idempotency, auto-token refresh, daily sync backstop.
• Multi-tenant, multi-location — Company and location model is explicit; data and access are scoped accordingly; additional locations billed transparently.
• Engagement layer — Push notifications, loyalty integration, promotions, and gift cards create retention loops beyond simple ordering.

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Summary

For the rest of the story, start with Overview and Pricing, then Architecture overview, Square integration, Reliability, and Security.