Coffee Shop & Cafe EPoS Systems
Step 1: Learn
Understand what EPoS can do for your business
Step 2: Quote
We’ll find appropriate systems for your needs
Step 3: Choose
Choose a system for your business
Integrations
Connect With Other Platforms
Payments
Process payments Quickly & Accurately
Data
Use your data with other platforms for accounting, delivery partners and marketing
Speed & Accuracy
Provide your customer with options and ensure order accuracy and provide speedy customer service.
Loyalty
If you want to track and reward your best customers this is easy to do with your POS system
Inventory
Understand what your business is using to make sure you don’t run out of stock while optimising against waste
How does a Cafe POS System Help?
Accuracy
With so many different drink types and modifiers (milk type, syrups) ensuring order accuracy from taking the order to delivery is vital to create a positive customer experience.
Data
If data is the new gold, then the information your system collects allows you to understand your sales and profitability so you can make informed business decisions. This data can then flow into other parts of your business like your accounting, marketing and strategy. Being able to understand your sales means you can identify opportunities for growth such as optimising pricing, the products you offer and your customers choices.
Loyalty
If you want to use a loyalty scheme to reward your best customers it can make sense to run this through your POS system. Some platforms like Square have this built-in. The key advantage over a paper based card system is that it helps you track your best customers so you can offer tailored rewards to meet your business objectives while reminding your customers how much you value their business.
Integrations
Depending on your requirements you can integrate your system into other platforms. Working out whether you need to be able to integrate with 3rd party software accounting software like Xero or connecting with delivery partners like Uber Eats, Deliveroo & Just Eat. By integrating your EPoS system you can open up new sales channels and move your business data where you need it.
Inventory
This allows you to ensure you have the right products based on sales. It can also help you optimise your ordering to minimise wastage and maximise sales.
Payments
Whether you choose to have a standalone payments system or payments integrated directly into your EPoS terminal, you can quickly take payments to streamline customer service, while ensuring accurate pricing.
Speed
Speed of service is paramount – quick order entry and fast payment processing is good for customers and good for reducing customer wait times. If your business experiences periods of exceptionally high traffic it’s important to understand how a system will perform.
How To Choose The Best Cafe EPoS System?
Why It Matters
As you consider the options provided by different POS systems, it’s important to start building up a list of must have features. This will help narrow down the options and help you make an informed decision. If you need to make compromises based on costs or features you can do so having explored the options carefully.
Key Considerations
Budget & Costs
Integration
Ease of Use
Reliability & Service
Budget & Costs
There are a range of different options at different price points. It’s important to consider both the upfront costs of different options (often the hardware costs) and the ongoing costs (software subscriptions, payment processing fees). On the other hand, a good idea of what functionality you need will help you identify the right system – so while cost is an important factor what it can do for you in enhancing your business can often exceed a small difference in costs.
Business Priorities
Cafes and coffee shops may have specific needs depending on the mixture of drink & food sales. So you’ll need to use this to guide the most important ‘must have’ features for your business. You may have short periods during the day where you are very busy, prioritising speed of order entry into your decision making. It’s natural to make compromises based on factors such as cost or functionality, finding the right balance to meet your own business priorities is something you’re best placed to do.
But my business is unique?
Some platforms will already have a number of integrated modules in areas like sales reporting, loyalty and stock control. You should check these meet your needs. If you need to integrate with other software for example accouting software like Xero or 3rd party delivery platforms like Uber Eats you should check the platform can support this. f you’re using the same platform for both payments and POS these should work together – but if you’re planning to use a different payments supplier then you need to check that the systems will be compatible to benefit from the time savings with an integrated POS and payment system.
Cloud Based vs Local
Many of the most popular EPoS platforms are now based in the cloud, connecting via the internet to your data. This has advantages in areas like software updates, backups. However, it’s also important to understand what happens if you lose internet access – can you still use the cloud based epos system when it’s offline?
Contracts & Committments
The advent of the cloud speeded up the separation of the hardware and software costs of an EPoS system. Historically you’d buy or lease the hardware and buy a licence for the software. Some systems are still sold like this but for cloud based systems you’ll increasingly see a monthly charge for the system. Alongside this, some providers will have a minimum contract (and we often see this for payment processing too). While some EPoS solutions don’t have any contract length terms, if you can’t use some or all of the hardware with different epos software for pubs that can also create an additional cost and complication if you change your mind later.
Digital Signage
Would you like to have digital signage for your menus or to use for your in store marketing?
Employee Management
Do you need your POS system to help you track employee worked hours, organise staff schedules?
Ease of Use & Training
As a business owner, you’ll often be responsible for training new staff in how to use your system. When you’re considering different options it’s important to consider how easy it is to use as this will have a direct impact on the time you’ll need to spend training your existing staff and any new staff. You need to distinguish between the owner tasks like adding new menu items and the day to day usage for accurate order processing and taking payments.
Integrations
Some platforms will already have a number of integrated modules in areas like sales reporting, loyalty and stock control. You should check these meet your needs. If you need to integrate with other software for example accouting software like Xero or delivery platforms like Uber Eats you should check the platform can support this. If you’re using the same platform for both payments and POS these should work together – but if you’re planning to use a different payments supplier then you need to check that the systems will be compatible to benefit from the time savings with an integrated system.
Invest your Time
Buying a system that doesn’t meet your needs will end up wasting far more time and money than investing time in the process of picking the right system. It needn’t be complicated but just like hiring the right staff, you need to ask the right questions. It’s always worth drilling down into the specifics.The questions you don’t ask, can’t help you – so think carefully what questions you need to ask to ensure a system can meet your needs. While the perfect system might not exist, the best system for your needs and budget will exist. Take the time to investigate. While the upfront cost of a system might not break the bank – the lifetime additional revenue from picking the right system is likely a big number, not one you should ignore. Providers may allow you to test a system, provide in-use videos of how it works and you can of course explore the web for reviews. If you’re testing out different systems, also consider that what seems overwhelming and complex at first, will quickly become routine.
Payment Processing
Historically EPoS and payment systems were often separate. So orders would be tracked on the EPoS till and then payments would be handled as a seperate task. Integrated payments (where the payment could also be processed directly from the EPoS system) have become increasingly popular as it helped to speed up service and reduce the chances of staff error in entering in the payment amount on a PDQ machine. Nowadays many EPoS systems are being provided by payment providers themselves or EPoS suppliers have a preferred vendor for payments. This means that comparing card processing charges is something you need to consider when buying the system. You may be tied to the provider of the EPoS system and their charges, so you can’t necessarily shop around separately for the cheapest payments deal and need to consider the blended cost of both the EPoS system and the card payment charges at the same time.
Reliability & Support
Can the supplier offer you support when you need it? Are their support hours compatible with your working hours? How do they provide support – telephone, email, chat, web based ticketing system. Your support needs will vary between time critical (when something is not working) and less time sensitive tasks like looking to find a new way to do things – so you need to make sure that you can get the support you need when you need it. It’s certainly not the case that bigger is always better – a small supplier with clued up, on-call support is just as capable as a large supplier with staff all over the world – but to make an informed choice it’s important to know what you can expect.
Tax
If you’re VAT registered, collecting accurate sales information and setting up the correct treatment for different sales is important particularly the complicated treatment and HMRC rules for hot vs cold food. While tax laws can change and you should always take specialist advice to ensure you are accounting for the VAT correctly, being able to track your different types of sales is absolutely vital given the potential for different tax treatment.
Training, Onboarding & Ongoing Assistance
The initial hours spent operating your new EPoS system can be daunting. For a very straight forward operation with very few additional features it’s likely you’ll be upto speed in very little time. More complicated setup will take more time to understand and to optimise over the first few days and weeks. Does the supplier offer training (either on site, remotely or online) or a dedicated onboarding process to help you make the first steps with the minimum of fuss? Overtime you’ll likely want to add features or adjust the way the system operates to better suit your particular business. While there are many changes and updates you can make yourself, you will occasionally have new challenges or business goals which you want to achieve using your POS equipment, is the supplier responsive and interested in helping you achieve your goals?