The corner where we cook
beta · $20/moEvery experiment, the day it's ready.
The Playground is where new Butter features live while they earn their place on the menu. One add-on unlocks all of it — the four residents below, plus whatever we ship next. When a feature graduates into the regular plans, Playground cafés were simply using it first.
Attaches to any plan · month to month · see the menu →
Current residents · four
01 · snap your case
Showcase
Take one photo of your pastry case. Butter's vision model finds every item and every shelf, matches them to your menu, and lays out a sharper, sales-first arrangement.
- Four goals that reshape the whole layout: balanced, margin, spotlight-new, or revive the slipping stuff.
- Fixture-aware — eye level is the middle of a grab-and-go but the top of a glass case, and jarred cookies can't teleport to a glass shelf.
- Best-sellers anchor, not hog: placed to pull the eye past your new and high-margin picks.
- Every move comes with its reason, a sales-heat overlay — and a lift estimate cheerfully labeled “for fun.”
02 · the rival's menu, read
Price check
Butter reads a starred rival's published menu — web page, PDF, even a photo — and lines their prices up against yours, by perceived size, for items you actually sell.
- A “large” matches your large whether or not they print the ounces.
- Verdicts in plain terms: value, premium, or priced in line — item by item and across the whole board.
- Suggestions lean on your own margins, and they're “there to consider, never rules.”
- Anti-bot menu page? Paste the text or drop a screenshot and Butter reads that instead.
03 · the weekly studio
Social
Every Monday, a content brief in your voice: what to post, when, and why — aimed at the only number that matters for a café, which is feet through the door.
- Brand voice drafted from your website, reviews, menu, and captions — tuned with five dials and shown as a fingerprint.
- Slow-day targeting: posts primed to lift your two or three quietest days, not your follower count.
- The inbox surfaces Instagram comments that need a reply; Pulse tracks reach and who your audience actually is.
- Specific beats generic, by mandate: “the perfect stop before Canoe Day at the park,” never “great coffee for great mornings.” And Butter reads insights only — it never posts for you.
04 · the reputation ledger
Your menu
Every public review you've ever gotten, read per item: what's loved, what's mixed, what gets complaints — with the actual quotes.
- “People love the morning bun” is data: mention counts, thumbs up and down, and the sentences behind them.
- Watch a new item's reputation form in its first month instead of guessing from the register alone.
- Complaints cluster early — the oat-milk grumble shows up here before it shows up in your rating.
The deal, plainly.
One price, all of it
$20 a month unlocks every Playground feature at once — current and future. No per-beta nickel-and-diming.
Betas act like betas
They're real, they're useful, and they're still learning. Expect rough edges, honest labels, and fast improvements.
Graduation is the goal
Features that prove themselves move into the regular plans. You're not renting novelty — you're funding the pipeline and skipping the line.
The rest of the menu
Counter freeKitchen $49/moMarket $99/moPlayground +$20/mo
Playground attaches to any of the three plans — and there are à-la-carte add-ons for single modules too. The whole menu, limits and all, is one page over.
Early access · rolling out batch by batch
Play with the new stuff. Keep what works.
Playground is an add-on on any plan · month to month · betas graduate