How businesses are maneuvering multihyphenate growth.

New offerings, new lessons.

Leaning into expansion and adding additional revenue streams can present new opportunities for a business — and new challenges. For businesses interested in incorporating a new vertical altogether (i.e., adding a coffee bar to a retail shop), learning the ins and outs can be the most difficult part.

Forty-four percent of retailers cite dealing with new supply chains as the main factor holding them back from adding or expanding new revenue streams outside of their core retail business. Implementing new marketing efforts came in at 40% and deciding what to offer came in at 39%.

Restaurants are also running into challenges on their road to growth. Only 2% of restaurateurs said they didn't face any challenges when becoming multihyphenate. Most restaurant owners reported their challenges stemmed from marketing (71%) and inventory management (86%). Other areas posing challenges include:

Maintaining consumer interest: 45%
Dealing with new supply chains: 43%
Managing the inventory: 43%
Additional marketing efforts: 42%
Back-end accounting for non-core business: 37%
Overburdening staff: 34%
We don’t face any challenges in continuing to offer non-core products and services: 2%

The good news is that as multihyphenate businesses continue to become more popular, there are tools available to make growing into a multihyphenate business easier.

Square has tools like Square Feedback and Square for Restaurants, Square for Retail that can help provide detailed customer insights and powerful inventory features, respectively.

Learn as you grow.

For businesses interested in learning how to navigate the retail supply chain or find marketing multiple revenue streams to be challenging, here are a few resources to help place you on the path toward success:

Learn more on diversifying revenue streams from these three Square sellers:

[Multihyphenate] strategies are growing because they often work. They can de-risk the business by growing recurring revenue that's less susceptible to volatile consumer trends, and they give businesses a way to make inroads with their highest-spending customers. Non-core items and services can often yield higher margins than the main business.

Ara Kharazian, research lead at Square