Birch Coffee combines subscriptions, café service and outside scheduling tools

Square's April 10 case study describes Birch Coffee using its tools for café transactions and subscriptions. Its account also identifies an outside workforce scheduling platform and a custom-built application programming interface.

According to Square's account, Birch uses Square Register and Square for Restaurants, plus email marketing and gift cards. Square also powers its online coffee subscriptions. The company identifies a custom-built API alongside an integration with 7shifts for scheduling, without explaining the API's function.

The combination is useful. One commerce provider covers several ways customers spend with Birch, while the business retains a specialist scheduling tool. Consolidating the register and recurring coffee purchases therefore does not require every operating function to come from the same supplier.

Co-founder Jeremy Lyman, quoted by Square, emphasizes ease of training and the ability to integrate outside partners. The vendor reports 16% year-over-year growth in 2025 but leaves the measure undefined. It cannot establish a revenue increase, same-store result or return attributable to the software.

A neighborhood business has more than one customer channel#

An earlier opening offers a concrete example of Birch's local marketing. In March 2025, Patch's Miranda Levingston reported that Birch had opened at 1501 First Avenue, between 78th and 79th streets in Yorkville. Lyman told Patch his first apartment had been nearby, at 78th and York, in 2000. He described a neighborhood opportunity that the company wanted to pursue.

The café offered a 25% discount through March 28 to customers who told a knock-knock joke to the barista. That promotion required an interaction at the counter. It illustrates a different kind of customer relationship from buying an online coffee subscription.

Lyman linked the neighborhood choice to an opportunity for better coffee, according to Patch. His personal history gave that market assessment a local connection. Patch also identified Birch cafés at 62nd and Lexington and at 88th Street and Third Avenue, placing the new shop within an existing Upper East Side presence.

The scheduling connection still needs a shared definition#

The 7shifts integration is particularly relevant because staffing decisions use sales information, yet software products can define those sales differently. In its February 2025 release notes, 7shifts documented a setting allowing Square-connected locations to include service charges in net sales. The default excludes them.

That is a platform capability, rather than evidence of Birch's chosen setting. It nevertheless identifies a specific issue behind the promise of connected software. Two reports can use the same transactions and show different sales totals because their treatment of service charges differs.

For a labor percentage calculated against sales, changing that denominator changes the reported percentage even when wages and hours stay constant. Consistent settings matter when comparing locations or periods; the connection alone does not establish comparable numbers.

The same release notes introduced a weekly overtime report that estimates costs using remaining scheduled hours and identifies employees approaching overtime thresholds. This is forward-looking scheduling information, distinct from a completed week's payroll expense. Square's Birch account does not establish that the chain uses this report or 7shifts payroll.