Paris Baguette, a growing bakery café franchise with 4,000 stores worldwide, has always found innovative ways to help franchisees thrive, whether it be solving labor issues or keeping costs down for real estate. Most recently, the brand has been placing a greater emphasis on technology, including the rollout of a new mobile app as a way to ensure franchise owners can efficiently meet customers where they are. 

The new Paris Baguette mobile app launched in mid-2021 and has been live for about a year. “The customer-facing app provides us with greater flexibility than we had with our previous app,” said Nick Scaccio, Paris Baguette’s vice president of operations. “We initially launched the full complement of our off-premise business in 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.”

Now, with off-premise ordering more popular than ever, Scaccio says the customer reception to the new mobile app has been extremely positive. “The user journey is much more direct, clean and precise,” he said. “Guests can place their order on their app, and the teams in the cafés are able to fill those orders easily and efficiently. The experience has been vastly improved across the board.”

And that includes the experience of the Paris Baguette franchise owner, with the mobile app integrated into each store’s POS system. “The back-of-house system that was implemented along with the new app has been most impactful on franchisee’s operations,” said Scaccio. “It includes fireboard interfaces in each café, which provides greater visibility for all owners when it comes to scheduling orders, displaying products and maintaining organization in the cafés. The mobile app helps owners thrive both from a sales perspective, and from an operations perspective.” 

For example, since Paris Baguette operates with a unique production model in which products are produced in-house every day, the updated mobile app and POS system include additional features that add value for both the guests and café managers, such as the ability to cancel items on demand based on their available inventory.

Another important feature of the mobile app is the Paris Baguette loyalty program. Guests can take part in a rewards system that is built into the app and receive benefits based on their spending, visit frequency and more. 

Now, to ease digital ordering and obtain more loyalty program members, Scaccio says Paris Baguette has been in the process of rolling out two exciting initiatives tied to the mobile app. One is a recently launched smart locker at a legacy Paris Baguette café in Edison, New Jersey.

“It is still in the proof-of-concept stage, but guests are able to place their order on the app and schedule their pickup time, and the cake will be placed in the smart locker,” said Scaccio. “The mobile app will also send alerts to guests with a text message that includes the expected pickup time. This is aligned with the growing popularity of contactless guest experiences. A guest can schedule their order, pick it up and leave, all within minutes. During a busy day at a high-volume bakery, the contactless guest experience is that much more efficient and timely.”

The second new initiative, Scaccio says, is a recently launched order queue system. “It is essentially a designated pickup area for guests at our cafés, which includes several shelves and an order queue monitor that displays the status of an order,” he said. “As a guest enters the café, they will be able to view the current status of their order instead of being left in the dark. It is really all about providing an additional layer of efficiency with guests' time in mind.”

With the introduction of the mobile app update, the operational advancements and the pickup initiatives, Scaccio says the time has never been better to franchise with Paris Baguette. 

“The mobile app has given us the ability to both satisfy guest experience and streamline in-café operations,” said Scaccio. “And the two really compliment each other nicely. Being able to accommodate both those experiences allows for greater efficiencies and paves the way for much higher grossing off-premise business in the future.”

The total investment to franchise with Paris Baguette ranges from $528,270 and $1,638,554, including a $50,000 franchise fee. For more information, please visit: https://parisbaguette.com/franchising/.