Roc's Cafe

About Roc's Cafe

An idea that popped up at a dinner table between two siblings, Lily and Kenny, and their father one special evening, became a reality. That idea is known today as Roc’s Cafe, an in-house bakery established in 2018 and located in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Serving up some of Portugal's most well-known pastries along with an array of one-of-a-kind sandwiches, chopped salads, and power bowls, Kenny and his father built Roc’s from a vision that gives anyone passing by a nostalgic feeling of vacationing through Portugal.

The solution to having delivery and online ordering in-house

Pre-pandemic, Roc’s Cafe didn’t have an online ordering system. A few months before the pandemic, the restaurant brand considered using DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub to fulfill their delivery needs as they continued building out their vision. However, their ultimate goal was to have delivery and online ordering in-house to be more cost-effective and convenient. 

“The fees that we saw– 30%, 20%– that they charge, that’s our profit margin on most of our items. I was thinking ‘What’s the point?’ because essentially you’re just adding more work to the employees and wasting materials to not really make a profit. But with the pandemic, we had no choice since everything shut down. We had to make cuts just to make it work for us. In the end, we actually shut down the delivery services and a year later we re-vamped our delivery strategy,” said Kenny Rocha, co-founder of Roc’s Cafe.

Lily, co-founder of Roc’s Cafe found Incentivio through Salad House, an Incentivio customer, and discussed the restaurant software for their own brand.

“I went on their ordering site and thought it was amazing. The way that they had their online ordering set up was very easy, and modern, and didn’t have nearly the same fees as third-party delivery,” said Rocha. “For us, it was more cost-effective, allowed us to keep our brand in-house, and provided a more user-friendly experience, which our customers consistently mention.”

Roc’s Cafe uses Incentivio for a fully branded web and mobile app experience and in-house delivery while providing a strong integration with their in-store Square POS. Within their first month, they saw around 100 signups without any promotion.

Building their digital presence to provide the ultimate customer experience

“We’re continuing to revamp our menu and bring in more variety in our food. We take customer feedback seriously and listen to what they want. I know that Incentivio will help us elevate our growth in online ordering and delivery and be a big portion of our profit so I look forward to seeing our revenue increase exponentially within the next year,” said Rocha.

“More and more orders continue to come in and I’ve noticed new customers. As we continue to update our menu, we’re excited to use the many marketing tools like SMS, push notifications, and email to update our loyal customers on the many new food items they can enjoy.”

If you happen to be in the Elizabeth, New Jersey area, be sure to check out Roc’s Cafe!