The Prototype
Season Schema
at The Second Steam
An interactive prototype built inside Square Dashboard.
Includes a guided tour.
The tentpole calendar
The playbook
Live AI review
AI-powered tentpole planning for every Square seller, built from data Square already has.
The Concept
Season Schema is a planning engine that generates a personalized seasonal calendar for every Square seller, built from their category, location, and transaction history.
Food and beverage is Square's largest vertical, serving hundreds of thousands of sellers. In 2025, Square's Head of F&B called the company the "technology backbone for restaurants across the world" and delivered what Square called its biggest F&B platform expansion to date. I wanted to understand what building for them actually feels like. So I created my dream business on the platform: The Second Steam, an independent specialty café on the Chicago River.
I created a full seller profile and explored Square the way an owner would. Square AI was already in beta, and as a marketer, I saw an opportunity. Every seller knows certain days matter more. Valentine's Day. The first warm Saturday. A city festival three blocks away. But most plan for these moments the same way: last-minute, by gut feel, alone. The data to change that already exists inside Square's transaction network. Nobody is connecting it to what's coming next. That's what Season Schema does.
The Prototype
An interactive prototype built inside Square Dashboard.
Includes a guided tour.
The Product
Season Schema generates a personalized tentpole calendar for every Square seller from three inputs: business category, location, and transaction history. Each moment has three layers. The seller never has to ask.
The data already exists. Square sees transaction patterns, location context, and category trends across its entire network. Season Schema connects that data to weather forecasts, local event calendars, and national holidays to flag what's coming and tell sellers what to do about it.
Square AI already lets sellers ask questions about their business. Season Schema turns that around. Instead of waiting for the right question, it brings the right answer at the right time.
How it works for The Second Steam's next tentpole: St. Patrick's Day, March 14.
01
Here's what happened last time. Last year's revenue, transactions, and top sellers. What went wrong: sold out of pastries by 10:30am, only had two staff on a day that needed four. Your own numbers, not benchmarks.
02
Here's what to expect this time. Your history combined with what's different this year: weather, event timing, day of the week. "Based on your history and conditions, expect $4,800 to $5,400."
03
Here's exactly what to do and when. Four to five specific actions, each tied to a Square product. Not "consider adjusting staffing." Instead: "Schedule 4 staff for 7am to 1pm." Each action maps to Square Shifts, Marketing, or POS.
A barbershop in Miami gets hurricane season prep, Art Basel weekend, and back-to-school haircut surge. A florist in Portland gets Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, and the Portland Rose Festival. A food truck in Austin gets SXSW, the first 100°F day, and UT football home games. None of those are hand-curated. The calendar builds itself from category, location, and transaction history. The Second Steam's calendar isn't a template, but rather the output of a system that works for every Square seller.
The Second Steam is one seller. The system works for millions. Every Square seller gets a calendar they never had to build, powered by a network only Square can see.
The Seller
The Second Steam is a fictional café born from a real dream: a specialty coffee shop on the Chicago Riverwalk. I built it on Square with real industry benchmarks, including revenue per square foot for independent cafés, Chicago Loop retail data, and SBA loan structures. The seller profile has a full menu, staffing model, revenue breakdown, and competitive landscape. I created a real Square account for it. Every number in the prototype traces back to this foundation.
A real Square account, created for this project. Not a mockup.
Why Square, and Only Square
Shopify has transaction data but no local context. Toast has restaurant depth but no view across categories. Neither can tell a seller what's coming next or what to do about it. No other platform combines point-of-sale transaction data, real-time seller location, cross-category network intelligence, and an integrated ecosystem of tools to act on the insight.
Season Schema isn't a feature bolted onto Square. It's a feature that could only exist inside Square. The calendar comes from Square data, the playbook executes in Square products, and the benchmarks come from Square's seller network. Remove any piece and the product breaks.
How I Built This
I used AI as a building partner throughout, for research, drafting, and pressure-testing decisions. But every product decision was mine: the concept of a tentpole marketing engine inside Square, the name Season Schema, what to include, what to cut, where it lives in Square's architecture, and what the experience feels like. My first instinct was to show everything: daily forecasts, weekly views, multiple tentpoles. The better instinct was to show one thing perfectly.
I built a café that doesn't exist to apply for a job I've never held at a company I've admired from the outside. That's either the most delusional thing on your desk today or the most prepared. Either way, I'd love to talk about it.