A café’s regular knows the order before reaching the counter. The software should probably know it, too. Per Diem is built around that small expectation: let a local business make ordering, paying, and coming back feel familiar, without asking its owner to become a software company.
- Your brand’s app, connected to Square.
- Ordering, rewards, and customer marketing in one channel.
- From $99 per location monthly, plus usage on entry plans.
01The vegetable box came first
Before there was a branded coffee app, there was a vegetable box. Norman’s Farm Market, an early Per Diem customer, was already selling produce subscriptions. The awkward part was administering them. Programs like these lived in spreadsheets and Rolodexes, even as customers expected ordering and payment to work online. Per Diem’s opening was remarkably ordinary: take a relationship that already existed and remove the paperwork.
In April 2021, the company announced $2.3 million in seed funding led by Two Sigma Ventures. Its founders, Tomer Molovinsky and Doron Segal, had begun working on the idea during the pandemic. Norman’s sold more than 500 subscriptions in its first month using the software, according to contemporary reporting. At another early customer, IVX Coffee, the average subscriber visited five days a week.
Those examples contained two possible businesses. One was software for selling subscriptions. The other was software for making the next visit easier. By its 2023 public app launch, Per Diem had pivoted toward ordering. The ambition survived the change: give local merchants a direct connection to their customers. The product expanded from the recurring payment to the recurring customer.
02A shortcut to the second coffee
Molovinsky, the CEO, previously built products at OpenTable and Resy. Segal, the CTO, brought experience from OpenTable, Apple, Beats Music, and Saildrone. Their shared restaurant background matters. An ordering app has to do more than look attractive on a phone. It must put the right modifiers, prices, and pickup details into the systems staff already use.
Per Diem builds branded iOS and Android apps around Square. Menus, modifiers, and images import from the point of sale; customers order ahead, pay, and collect rewards. Web and QR ordering cover guests who would rather skip the download. Delivery, catering, gift cards, referrals, and notifications widen the same direct channel. Coffee shops, bakeries, fast-casual restaurants, and franchise groups are the natural audience.
The company advertises app preparation in 24 hours, with App Store review typically taking another one or two days. That distinction deserves its own breath. Ready to submit and available to download are separate milestones. The appeal is a shorter route to a working product without assembling an internal mobile development team.
03The free cookie has a job
Chip City supplies a useful demonstration. In a Per Diem case study, the cookie chain ran a one-day, app-only buy-one-get-one offer on April 29. A late-morning push notification announced it; Instagram posts helped people find it. The second cookie was applied automatically. Nobody needed to remember a code while staring at a checkout screen.
The company’s account reports app downloads rising 344.44%. Its reporting switches labels for another large increase between sessions and checkouts, so the cleaner lesson is the campaign’s construction: one offer, one deadline, one obvious action. A promotion gives someone a reason to install; a convenient reorder gives them a reason to keep the app.
Coffee Dose shows a different part of the same mechanism. The Southern California café brought its playful identity into the ordering experience. In another company-published case study, a National Coffee Day campaign coordinated email, Instagram, push messages, and an app banner, producing nearly 1,000 app orders. These are vendor-reported examples, not controlled experiments. Still, the execution is concrete enough to borrow.
“We’re trying to level the playing field.”Tomer Molovinsky · 2023
04The $99 app has a meter
Per Diem sells software subscriptions per location, with usage charges on two of its three published monthly plans. Starter costs $99, plus 50 cents per pickup order and $1 per delivery order. Pro Plus costs $199, with pickup usage reduced to 25 cents and delivery still $1. Premium costs $499 with no usage fees. The lower plans pass usage fees to customers by default.
Consider 1,000 pickup orders in a month. Subscription plus platform usage comes to $599 on Starter, $449 on Pro Plus, and $499 on Premium. That arithmetic compares the fees generated by the plans, regardless of who pays them. It excludes payment processing, taxes, delivery fulfillment, and marketing extras. A merchant deciding whether to absorb the fees should run the numbers against its own tickets.
The broader competitive set includes Craver, ChowNow, Thanx, Lunchbox, and Incentivio, alongside Square’s own ordering tools. Per Diem’s specific proposition is its Square connection combined with a merchant’s own app and customer marketing. An operator who needs marketplace discovery still has a different problem to solve. A direct ordering channel needs an audience willing to use it.
1,000 orders. Three different bills.
05Square opens a bigger door
In January 2026, Square announced Per Diem as a preferred partner for franchise online and mobile ordering, ahead of retiring GoParrot’s service before March 31. Square offered onboarding and training for the transition. For Per Diem, this was a distribution opportunity embedded inside the platform it had already chosen to serve.
The product has kept widening. Per Diem launched its own customizable loyalty engine in August 2026 and announced PITA Mediterranean Street Food’s app and rewards rollout in September. That month’s release notes introduced Customer Journeys in beta: welcomes, abandoned-cart reminders, and win-back offers, with delivery dependent on customers updating their apps. October’s release added automatic discounts to web ordering.
There is also Olivia, an AI marketing copilot designed to answer questions about sales and suggest campaigns. The company now describes itself as an AI operating system for restaurants. The practical test remains smaller and more useful: can an owner identify a quiet period, reach an appropriate customer, and make the next order easier?
A café can copy the underlying discipline before buying anything: make the offer understandable, put the same message across channels, and measure whether customers return after the discount. Protect the margin and the pickup counter, too. A flood of discounted orders can overwhelm a small kitchen. Per Diem’s bet is that neighborhood loyalty deserves good software. Its customers still have to earn the neighborhood.