Problem
By 2022, Square was servicing a few verticals. Among them were retail, food and beverage, appointments and services, e-commerce, and invoices. Each had its own app, its own relationship to orders, and its own patchwork of post-order tools. There was no unified way to manage fulfillment and sellers were leaving for Toast and Clover because those tools handled the back half better. Underneath it all: a legacy feature called "Dining Options," was quietly doing the work of fulfillment types. It was load-bearing, undocumented, and impossible to build on.
My role
Senior product design lead on the fulfillment team consisting of two engineering squads, a shared PM, and me as the sole designer. I was also part of the core products design team. On year one (2022), I shipped Shipping Manager, pulling shipping out of the e-commerce silo so it worked across the platform. On year two (2023 and beyond), I proposed and led design for a single fulfillment platform any vertical could plug into. It shipped in February 2026.
Three decisions that shaped the work
Unify fulfillment under orders, not per vertical
The original approach was multiple parallel tracks. I pushed for one shared foundation — same workflow shape, one seller experience, one codepath. I grounded it in one major pain-point: post-it notes stuck to terminals to fake pickup orders the system couldn't handle.
Composable templates and modular components
Instead of a fixed list, we built a settings architecture where fulfillment methods are composed from configurable elements. Simple sellers get a preset; complex sellers extend it; new types don't require rebuilding the foundation.
Opt-in migration from Dining Options
Forcing the switch would have broken real workflows — kitchen shorthand, section names, invisible conventions sellers relied on. We built an auto-mapping flow that proposed a translation; sellers confirmed rather than reconfigured.
Map your custom dining options
Please confirm that your custom dining options are mapped correctly.
Outcome: Shipping Manager
Shipping Manager was the first fulfillment feature brought into the platform. Within 30 days, ~80% of shipment actions were being performed in Shipment Manager, with no seller loss during the transition from Square Online Order Manager. Sellers were creating an average of 14.6 shipping labels per month across Retail and Online, with over 50% of Retail label creators on the free plan, meaning the feature was reaching the long tail, not just power users. Click volume climbed steadily from near-zero at launch to 70k+ monthly unique actions by the end of the year.
Adoption
80%
of shipment actions performed in Shipping Manager within 30 days.
Average sales
14.6
labels per seller, per month across Retail and Online
Reach
50%+
of new users were Retail sellers on the free plan
Monthly unique actions
Near-zero to 70k+
Click volume across year one
Outcome: Fulfillment Platform
The Fulfillment Platform is the first unified fulfillment system across Square's verticals, impacting an estimated 35 - 48% of all active Food & Beverage sellers. It unlocked end-to-end order tracking, cashier prompting, unified reporting, and support for phone orders from POS — workflows previously managed on sticky notes.
GA rollout
5%
declared generally available at 5% rollout threshold
F&B seller impact
35 - 48%
of all active Food & Beverage sellers on Square