Woops! Macarons & Gifts is the French macaron brand run by ByWoops, LLC. Four friends started it in New York in 2012 with a pop-up at the Holiday Shops at Bryant Park, and the company began franchising in 2015. On bywoops.com, Woops! describes itself as bringing French macarons to communities across the country, through flavor, design, and the in-store experience.
Previously, Woops was struggling with a fragmented tech stack. Orders ran through three systems that did not stay in sync. Revel was the point of sale, and Engles had spent years trying to leave Shift4 as well. MOBI handled ecommerce. Spoonity handled rewards and loyalty.
Woops! chose unPLUG for branded web and mobile ordering and loyalty on a new Square point of sale. This Q&A is with Matthew Engles, VP of Franchise Operations, edited lightly for clarity.
At a glance:
- Previous stack: Revel and Shift4 at the point of sale, in place for more than a decade; MOBI for ecommerce; Spoonity for rewards and loyalty
- Current stack: Square at the point of sale, with unPLUG for web ordering, the mobile app, the dashboard, and loyalty
- System size at the interview: About 15 locations
- The goal: 4 or 5 online orders a week per location, an average order of $80 or more, guests actually using loyalty, and gift cards that work in the store, online, in the app, and at the register
Why first-party ordering matters when the shop is a kiosk
Q: What were you trying to fix before unPLUG?
Matthew Engles, VP of Franchise Operations: We needed online ordering that actually worked. Orders were landing on the point of sale, and they were wrong. The setup was split across three systems. Revel was the point of sale, MOBI was ecommerce, and Spoonity was the rewards and loyalty tie-in. Naming broke all the time. If a product was new, or had just been added in Revel, the order would show up at the shop with the flavors the guest had picked. Maybe three out of 18 were labeled correctly. The other 15 were marked not applicable, or they were missing.
We were told it was fixed, more than once. Then the edits rolled back. It kept failing.
Loyalty had the same problem. A guest should be able to see where they stand, how many points they have, and how to use them. The three systems kept breaking that. It got frustrating enough that we mostly stopped engaging with it. We were still paying for it, and guests still used it now and then, but it caused more trouble than it added to the experience.
My early conversations with Zach were about getting to one platform. Two, if you count Square and unPLUG. Those two already knew how to work together. unPLUG could give us a clean connection to the new point of sale, and a loyalty program that looked good and was actually usable. That was the draw. So was getting out of the house of cards, and out of paying three vendors separately.
What better looks like when the old channel barely ordered
Q: Which numbers did you expect this partnership to move?
Engles: The old stack was barely producing. Orders were few and far between. A handful in a month. The average was $80 or more, which was good, but the cost of running all of that did not make sense. There was very little we could track, and very little to show for it. From here, the numbers can only go up.
If you want specifics, orders come first. I want more than four or five orders in a month. I want four or five orders a week at each location.
Next is average spend. An online guest tends to spend more. Part of that is the minimums and the rules we set before we will take an online order. I want to keep that average at $80 or more.
The other two things I want are more people using rewards, and good feedback on the new app, plus the ability to sell gift cards again in the store and online, and to redeem them in the app or at the register.
Those are the four.
Who decided, and why unPLUG won
Q: Who had to be comfortable with this decision?
Engles: I cover operations, and I stay close to the individual franchisees and owner-run locations. I had been trying to get us off Shift4 and Revel for a while. For years, Square did not have real multi-unit or enterprise management built in. That piece ran through another company, GoParrot. When Square changed it, this conversation started. I was talking it through with someone at Square, Jamie I think, and that is what brought Zach in.
I took it to the owners, Benjamin Woodruff, Gal Danay, and Raj Bhatt. The agreement and the processing rates are Gal's side of it.
He described that group as the CEO, the CFO, and the president of operations. He did not match each of those titles to a name. He was clear that the agreement and the rates sat with Danay. The franchise site lists Woodruff and Danay as co-CEOs, and Bhatt as President of Franchise and a co-founder. Those are the titles used here.
Q: You talked to other ecommerce vendors. Why unPLUG?
Engles: At first it was proximity, and the working relationship between Zach and our account person at Square.
We had the wrong picture early on. We thought unPLUG was the vendor you used for online ordering and rewards if you were on Square. Once we got further in, we realized other options were still out there. My sense is that Square has pulled back on ecommerce since the Block acquisition, and has not been putting the same money or effort into it.
What I could check myself mattered more. There are already unPLUG and Square customers here in New York. You see Bluestone coffee everywhere. I stopped into a couple of shops to look at the store and at the app. The other ecommerce vendors I spoke with were lighter on rewards. They had nice extras for building an app and for reaching people who already knew the brand. I did not see the same room for marketing and for a real CRM.
What I liked at unPLUG was the engineering team. From everyone I talked to, it felt like a small group, and they were open when we asked for something that did not exist yet. Most vendors tell you it is not in the current build. Abdullah and Zach said that if we had a real use case and we wanted it, they would build it, see how it behaved, and make it work. I did not get that from the other vendors.
When he says Bluestone coffee, he means Bluestone Lane, an unPLUG customer on Square with shops across New York. "The Block acquisition" is how he refers to Square's parent company, Block.
A decade on one register, fewer shops than planned, and a go-live that held
Q: What worried you about making the switch?
Engles: It was a lot at once. We were leaving a point of sale we had used for more than a decade, building the new one, and pulling what we needed out of the rewards and ecommerce vendors we were ending. Getting that data over to unPLUG took real coordination.
The bigger worry was how much was changing together. New hardware, a new technology build, and the location count on top of that. Over the past year, a lot of older locations ended their agreements. We had been thinking in terms of 25 or so shops. We are closer to 15. That smaller number worried me.
The new register, the new rewards program, and ecommerce are what give us a base to grow from. That is the work in front of us. I feel good about it.
Q: How did onboarding go?
Engles: It was decent. We had a shared Notion page where you could see progress, the timeline, and projects as they were finished. That helped, and the team was quick to respond.
There was some back and forth with our marketing lead, who is very particular about color and how things look. That had to sit alongside the ADA requirements for fonts, tones, and colors. The finished product is very pretty, and it is easy to use. When we asked for changes, the team answered.
Q: You had just launched. How did that feel?
Engles: Generally good. Three locations are still not onboarded. I am going to ask Zach to pull two of them until I can get those owners ready. On Friday I found out those two were live anyway. I do not want that. They do not have a physical shop. A guest could place an order we cannot fill. They are mobile, and we are still figuring out how to serve them with this setup.
Everything else has been great. Zach has made himself very available, and Abdullah has too. They respond quickly, and they kept us on the timeline. I was the one slowing it down. The locations need to buy in, and they watch every dollar. We still hit the go-live date. That surprised me. I did not think we would make it.
Those two locations need to stay off until they are officially set up, with accounts created and a way to sign in. Then we can turn them on.
This week we open the download to everyone. Existing guests are already finding us on the homepage, and when they talk to the shops in person. We are about to send emails and notifications so new guests and current guests download the app. By the end of this week, heading into the weekend, I hope the signups are real.
Mobile stops, and the problem with flavors in a box
Q: For those two mobile locations, do you want pickup and delivery?
Engles: Yes. I just do not know what that looks like yet.
One of them is really only out in public at corporate events, or at corporate sites where a regular guest cannot walk in. A delivery driver cannot swing by for a pickup there either. These locations will also sit in one place for the holidays, for a month or for three months. That is where I plan to use pickup and delivery.
I still do not have an answer for the weeks when they are not parked anywhere. Maybe they have set times when they are somewhere, and those windows are when pickup and delivery are on. That is what I expect. I cannot spell it out yet.
Q: If you could change one thing in web ordering, the app, the dashboard, or loyalty, what would it be?
Engles: Nothing that is live today needs a change. There are things I want later, and I have already talked about them with Zach and Abdullah.
Over the next few years we want this to work as a mobile concept. I want a local map that shows where a stop is going to be, where it has been, and the places it goes regularly. We are already working on that with them.
The other need is day to day. Each location should be able to turn a product on or off, and do the same for a specific flavor.
Right now, if a shop is out of an item, they set the quantity to zero on the Square menu, and the app shows it as out of stock. To do that for one flavor, I would have to add every flavor as its own item. I cannot turn a single flavor off at one shop without making it complicated. That means a separate item for each flavor, and the owner keeping a count so the app knows whether to show it.
What I want is a base set of flavors a shop can switch on or off, and products they can mark available or unavailable, without using Square's inventory counts to do it.
We sell a box of nine. In the store I tap the item and it goes in the cart. Online, the guest has to choose the flavors. The Square menu is the source. We do not track which flavors are in each box, because that would slow the line down, and we do not use inventory counts in Square at all. I want a shop to say which flavors they have, without a complicated item map and a count behind every flavor.
unPLUG, on the call: Ali Bolak told Engles that Square and the unPLUG dashboard both have visibility toggles, and that he would make sure the engineering team knew. Engles was describing something he still needed. He was not saying sold-out flavors were already handled at each shop.
Engles: Other than that, it has been a good experience. I am happy with the product, and I am happy with the team. I have enjoyed working with Zach and with Abdullah.
How he would describe unPLUG to another operator
Q: If you were telling a peer about unPLUG, what would you say?
Engles: I would say they are great to work with, the partnership is worth it, and they respond when you need them. The pricing, the flexibility while we were building, and the final product were excellent. It let us do something we did not think we were in a position to do yet.
I would absolutely recommend them. I also want to keep working together and make the relationship deeper.
After the app is in people's hands
Q: Past order count, loyalty, and guest feedback, where do you want Woops! to go digitally?
Engles: I want to get back to a larger nationwide ecommerce business. We had that, and we pulled it in over the past year. The holidays were wildly successful. Between the ecommerce we still run and the new app, there is room to open online ordering back up.
The interesting part will be how we assign the orders that come in, and how we pass them out to locations. I would love a bigger footprint, and ordinary shipping to a guest, outside the corporate gifting we do now. I can see that working.
Right after that, he described the immediate plan, which was email. Woops! would send emails and notifications that week asking new and existing guests to download the app. Ali Bolak said he and Zach were setting those emails up through Square Marketing.
What other franchise operators can take from this
1. Three vendors can still get a guest's order wrong. Revel, MOBI, and Spoonity were all connected, and a macaron order still hit the register with most flavors marked not applicable. Points were hard to see and hard to spend. The fixes did not stick. Woops! kept paying for a channel the team had stopped trusting.
2. Judge the channel by the orders you actually have. The old setup did a handful of orders a month, with an average above $80 that was worth protecting. Engles wants 4 or 5 orders a week at each location, guests using loyalty, good feedback on the app, and gift cards that work in the store, online, in the app, and on Square. He set those goals the week the download opened to everyone. This conversation did not include a sales report.
3. Multi-unit Square has to be current. Engles had waited because multi-location ordering on Square ran through GoParrot, rather than a tool Square had built for enterprise accounts. Square later told sellers it would turn the GoParrot online and mobile app off before March 31, 2026. He also went to Bluestone Lane shops in New York and looked at the store and the app, so he could see unPLUG on Square in person.
4. Franchisee buy-in sets the pace. He slowed the project on purpose, because owners watch every dollar. Zach and Abdullah kept the timeline moving, and Woops! still hit the go-live date.
5. Leave a location off if it cannot fill the order. Two mobile concepts went live before they had a public place to hand someone their box. Holiday stands that stay in one spot for a month or three can take pickup and delivery. A corporate site with no public access cannot. A mall kiosk and a unit that moves are two different launches.
6. A box of macarons is a bad fit for inventory counts. A box of nine is one button at the register. Online, it is a set of flavor choices. Setting the quantity to zero only tells the app the whole item is gone. A shop still needs a way to turn one flavor off. That is the gap Engles described, and the one Ali Bolak said he would take to engineering.
For a phased franchise rollout, see QSR franchise digital ordering rollout. For the owner conversation he described, see franchisee buy-in for a restaurant app and loyalty.
How unPLUG supports franchise brands like Woops!
unPLUG is first-party revenue infrastructure for multi-unit restaurant and specialty retail brands. That means branded web and mobile ordering, guest capture, loyalty, and hands-on rollout support on a point of sale such as Square.
Here is what that looked like for Woops!
One place to order, on Square. Web ordering, the app, the dashboard, and loyalty replaced a separate ecommerce vendor and a separate rewards vendor that had fallen out of step with the register.
Loyalty a guest can follow. Engles wanted people to see where they stand, how many points they have, and how to use them, in an experience that looked like the brand. That was a reason he signed. He had not yet said whether guests were using it.
A launch that waited for the shops. A shared Notion timeline, Zach and Abdullah keeping the date while owners watched every dollar, and a same-week request to turn off two locations that could not fill an order.
A menu that matches how macarons are actually sold. Flavor availability, and a map for stops that move, were already in the working conversation with Zach and Abdullah. On the call, visibility toggles were the practical way to avoid creating an item and a count for every flavor.
What he wants once people have the app. Gift cards sold in the store and online, and redeemed in the app or at Square. After that, nationwide shipping beyond corporate gifting, once Woops! decides how orders and money move between locations. Those are goals he named. He did not say they were live.
Model your economics: Hidden Revenue Calculator
FAQ: Woops! + unPLUG
Why did Woops! replace Revel, MOBI, and Spoonity with unPLUG?
Woops! moved to unPLUG so Square ordering and loyalty would live in one guest experience. The old stack kept breaking flavor names on the register, and it made points hard to see or spend.
Matthew Engles said the brand was still paying for that setup while it produced only a handful of orders a month. Dropping the three separate vendor bills was part of the decision.
What did Woops! want unPLUG to improve?
Four things: more online orders, an average of $80 or more, guests using loyalty and liking the new app, and gift cards sold in the store and online and redeemed in the app or at the register.
His volume target is 4 or 5 orders a week at each location. The old channel was too fragmented to give him much of a history to beat.
What has Woops! seen since launch?
By the September 14, 2026 interview, the news was operational. They had met the go-live date, guests could already find ordering on the website and hear about it in the shops, and the public app download was opening that week.
Engles hoped signups would pick up by that weekend. He did not share order totals, revenue, or app-store ratings. Two mobile locations had gone live before they could fill an order, and he planned to turn them off until the model was ready.
What point of sale does Woops! use with unPLUG, and who approved the switch?
Square, with unPLUG for web ordering, the mobile app, the operator dashboard, and loyalty.
Engles brought the project from franchise operations. Benjamin Woodruff, Gal Danay, and Raj Bhatt were in the decision with him. On the franchise site, Woodruff and Danay are co-CEOs, and Bhatt is President of Franchise and a co-founder. Engles said Danay handled the agreement and the processing rates. He had been trying to leave a Shift4 and Revel setup that had been in place for more than a decade.
Why did the other ecommerce vendors lose?
Engles said the others could build an app and talk to people who already knew the brand. They were thinner on rewards, marketing, and CRM.
He also wanted an engineering team that would take a real request and build it. He looked at that unPLUG and Square experience in person at Bluestone Lane in New York. Early on, the Woops! team thought unPLUG was the only online and rewards option attached to Square. They later realized other options existed.
Is this useful if there are no sales results yet?
Yes, if you run multiple locations and you are replacing a first-party stack that looks connected and still gets orders wrong. It is especially useful for specialty concepts, where the flavor inside the box is the product, and for brands whose sites include kiosks, pop-ups, and mobile units.
The lessons are practical. Know the real order baseline, and protect a healthy average. Keep a location off if it cannot hand the guest their order. And treat flavor availability as its own switch, separate from a Square inventory count.
How should a similar franchise start?
Put ordering and loyalty on the point of sale you actually run. Decide what order volume and average spend you are aiming for before you celebrate downloads. Turn on only the locations that can fill the order.
Book an intro call to map the scope for your locations and your Square setup.
One stack. Only the shops that can fill the order. Then the volume.
This Woops! story is a franchise online ordering case study from the week the app became easy to download. The hard part was already done. They left a register they had used for a decade, ended a rewards and ecommerce pair that would not stay in sync, and hit a go-live date while franchisees watched every dollar.
Matthew Engles was clear about what comes next. Four or five orders a week at each location. An average of $80 or more, which online orders were already producing. A loyalty program guests will open. Gift cards that work on both sides of the counter. Later, shipping beyond corporate gifting, once the brand knows how those orders and those dollars move between locations.
Next steps:
- See more proof points: Case studies
- Plan a phased franchise rollout: QSR franchise digital ordering rollout
- Align franchisee economics: Franchisee buy-in for a restaurant app and loyalty
- Benchmark loyalty KPIs: QSR loyalty program benchmarks
- Model recoverable margin: Hidden Revenue Calculator
- Book an intro call: unplugdining.com
About unPLUG: unPLUG helps restaurant brands grow first-party revenue by connecting their tech, integrating loyalty, and improving the guest journey from the first tap to checkout. Trusted by California Fish Grill, Luna Grill, Pure Green, Bluestone Lane, Parakeet Cafe, Taziki's Mediterranean Cafe, Woops! Macarons & Gifts, and other multi-unit operators.