Before we opened Palace in Canyon, I kept hearing two pieces of advice: get close to the college, because you’ll live and die by college students, & make sure you have a drive-thru.
People commuting to Amarillo would need coffee on their way to work. How could a coffee shop in Canyon possibly work without one?
I understood the reasoning. But I wanted to build a place around community, connection, & people. Somewhere guests could learn each other’s names & our staff could get to know more than their drink orders.
Then I fell in love with an old red brick building. There was nowhere to put a drive-thru.
And that was just fine with me.
A little room for connection
You can give excellent service through a drive-thru window. Fast, accurate, friendly. But that environment needs to keep moving, & longer conversations are harder when there’s another car waiting behind you.
At Palace, people came inside & stood in line together. They got to know each other & our team. Those everyday interactions were part of what I’d hoped for when we opened.
Over the years, though, I came to appreciate the other side of that drive-thru advice.
Getting out of the car isn’t a small thing for everyone. There are parents with kids buckled into the back seat, guests for whom walking into a shop is difficult, & people with only a few minutes before work.
If we were going to build a business around caring for people, we needed to pay attention to those needs, too.
An app with remarkably good timing
In 2019, we started working with a company to develop our first Palace app. The idea was simple: let guests order ahead, give our staff time to prepare their drinks, & make pickup easier.
We had no idea what was around the corner.
COVID hit in March 2020. Our app launched in April.
Suddenly, guests couldn’t come into our shops, & the tool we’d begun developing for convenience gave us a way to keep serving them. We even did delivery back then. Believe it or not, Palace had a delivery chapter.
We couldn’t have planned that timing, but we were thankful for it. The app helped us find our way through a period none of us expected.
Since then, your comments & critiques have helped us improve it. That feedback shaped the new Palace app we released a couple of years ago, & we’re still working to make it better.
Our purpose is straightforward: make ordering easier & help our team have your order ready for you. We don’t sell your data, & we never want the app to become something that just spams you. It should earn its place on your phone by being useful.
Make the app work for your day
Heading somewhere? Place your order & choose your pickup time. When our staff marks your order complete, the app sends you a notification. Walk inside, collect it at the pickup station, & head out with your coffee & a smile.
Pickup is currently inside only. We previously offered pickup at your car, but our shop layouts made it difficult to know when guests arrived. We may revisit that someday. For now, the app helps you skip the ordering line, though it doesn’t solve every challenge a drive-thru solves.
Staying awhile? Here’s a little guest trick: grab a seat & order through the app. Leave a note describing where you’re sitting & what you look like so we can find you. Our team is happy to bring your drink over while you settle in.
You can also save favorite orders & payments, store gift cards, & send a gift card to someone else who has the app. Your usual gets easier to order, & treating a friend does, too.
A little royalty for your routine
The app also connects you with our Royalty Program:
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Noble: $7.50 a month. Get 15% off eligible orders in the app or in the shop. An annual membership saves roughly 10% on the membership cost.
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Regal: $25 a month. Get the same 15% discount, plus one free drink each week, in your choice of size & with your customizations.
Catering, bulk coffee orders, & bulk pastry orders are excluded from the discount.
The app also keeps you up to date on what’s happening at Palace. Over the next six months to a year, we want to make it an even better way to share the fun things we have going on.
Fifteen years in, we’re still here for people. Some days you have time to hang out. Some days you need your coffee & a quick hello. We want to serve you well on both.
And yes, we like drive-thrus. Plenty of our wholesale partners have them. If opening a coffee shop with a drive-thru is your dream, we can help with that, too.
Our story started in an old red brick building with room to get to know each other. The app gives you one more way to make Palace part of your day.
Give ordering ahead a try. We’ll see you inside.
