Experiencing difficulties with Shopify POS in a cafe setting - Any advice?

[JFingal]

We recently made the switch from Squarespace to Shopify for our website, and Square to Shopify for our POS. We use our POS in our coffee truck, and we are finding the transition very difficult due to a few things:

Inability to print order tickets with big print & customer names

Inability to simply "check" modifiers for drinks instead of creating many screens of variants

Inability to change the checkout flow + a very small tip screen customers struggle to see 

I know other coffee roasters with cafes, and other restaurants must be making the switch to Shopify as the call for direct to consumer sales grow - has anyone else had this problem? Are there app developers looking to solve this problem? Any advice? 

[JoanCoffee]

I need all of these things as well! Shopify, help please. 

[smallakin]

I have this same issue as a recent switch from Square as well.  I am used to having modifier sets that I can apply to items in a specific category as we do custom orders.  I tried to put all the options I normally have on a custom item as variants and it tells me I have too many variants.

[Roostcollection]

I feel for you guys. We are looking to switch out of shopify. Developers do nothing here!

[eatsprout]

Have you found any solutions?

[Davide_Angelett]

I have been with Shopify for 7 years and it has been excellent for our online coffee business. Don't listen to any shopify moderators. Shopify POS isn't good for coffee shops/bars. We used it for a while for our coffee shop and it has been terrible all along. Missing important features, then becoming slow which means losing customers.  So it's a no no for us. Whilst we will use Shopify for our online shop which is solid and robust for our physical cafe we decide to go with Square  POS which is far more advanced than Shopify.  I hope this helps 

[smallakin]

I appreciate your honesty although it's frustrating to hear as I switched to Shopify simply for the instant sync of inventory between my website and store as we share the same stock.  However, considering I haven't been able to figure out how to do the same features (even with paid apps) I get for free thru Square POS, it looks like I might be heading back that way.  Do you sync your inventory between your Shopify website and your Square POS?  If so, can I ask you what you use for that?

[Davide_Angelett]

we use SKUIQ app for that. It’s free for your first 200 orders then they charge $45/m 

[smallakin]

We are still using Shopify on both the register and website for now.  We built out a lot of custom product items with variants to solve our problem on the POS.  The inventory isn't trackable on those items, but those are our made to order products, so we decided to pick our battles.  

We also decided to switch to Shopify due to inventory issues, however when I was looking into options before the switch, I believe Shopventory has the capability to sync between Square and Shopify inventory.

[readysetcoffee]

Thank you!

[readysetcoffee]

Hello @Davide_Angelett does your Square integrate with QB or Shopify? We will keep our Shopify for the roasting side and dread having to integrate another POS system into the mix especially since we bout all the hardware.

[Davide_Angelett]

@readysetcoffee Shopify is our solid system for the online shop. We use Square for the physical outlet. We love it for the simplicity and responsiveness. Don't be afraid to adopt two systems. Shopify POS is too clunky , slow and missing important features. When you are busy with massive cues you need a system which is fast with a quick checkout. If you have staff the system needs to be snappy. It's a business decision. If you grow you may need to switch to a faster pos. Do it sooner rather than later . Concentrate on the business not on how to deal every time with a checkout hiccup. I hope this helps. PS Square is even cheaper than Shopify. Why not. 

[readysetcoffee]

Thank you for the response.  Looking at Square and Clover.  What you are saying makes sense.  

[Davide_Angelett]

They are both great. Reliable systems. Clover didn’t have the integration with my accounting software so we went with square. 

[yandos]

@readysetcoffee @Roostcollection @JFingal  would be great to get some more detailed feedback into the pain points you're having, we're looking to develop an app to help with cafe/food businesses as this does feel like a neglected area - happy to provide free access to the app in return

[Roostcollection]

@yandos

Here's one of the issues with Shopify. The POS charge us $89 on top of the monthly service ($79) just so we can have basic functions like returns /Exchanges, Curbside pickup.

To add another paid for app is more salt in the wound. If Shopify was a low cost platform based on apps it would be a different story, but their not.

Squarespace Advanced Commerce is $40 per month. Then add apps. Compared to Shopify $168 and add apps.

In the case of our business neither have manual returns. I'm no exploring going back to Clover, They had this function.

[eatsprout]

I would be interested, I have lots of 'needs' in the cafe/coffeshop area

[readysetcoffee]

Hello,

We use Shopify for our online and wholesale.

It works great for online and love the reporting for the most part.

I wish it had a portal for our wholesale people to order directly for just their products.  Some customers pay more than others or have custom brands and we don't want customers seeing what everyone orders, pricing etc.  

For retail Shopify doesn't work.  We use Square To do things like modifiers.  A latte with options like decaf or 1/2 caf, whole milk, oat milk etc.  It works great for our online ordering too.  It costs us $60 a month.  The reports however are horrible.  I have no way to do cost of goods unless I track inventory which I don't do and doesn't make sense to do.  I make enough coffee everyday for what I need.  You wouldn't track that.  

[Niraj_Lama]

Any progress on the app @yandos ?

[readysetcoffee]

We are using Square retail for our cafe POS because we need COG reporting.  So frustrating that this version of Square does not offer tiles for viewing the screen.  Not having tiles really slows things down.  Any suggestons?

[readysetcoffee]

Also frustrating that Square told us we could do COG reporting and did all the work and then found out we need to track inventory which doesn't work.  

[bigbolts]

Dumb Question. Is your POS 'Square' or 'Squarespace'? ta

[readysetcoffee]

Ours at Ready Set Coffee is Square retail even though we are a cafe.

[readysetcoffee]

We used the POS lite in a small pop-up cafe we were in and needing to figure out what system to use in our soon-to-be-opening cafe.

I am concerned about the modifiers and things like curbside pickup, and holding an order if someone needs a moment and I can take another order. I am curious @JFingal what you are going to do and use?

[eatsprout]

I could have written this exact post myself, and here I am about to open a 3rd cafe and still can't figure out a better option. One of the main reasons we have stayed with Shopify is the transfer of products between locations. We produce all of our own food (meals, granola, breads etc) at one shop and 'ship' them to our others. I just created a collection called 'extras' which has all my modifiers, but I get it, SO GOOFY that Shopify doesn't offer the square style modifiers. 

[Niraj_Lama]

Same issue here. We have a fairly busy tea shop, where we handle both retail and tea service. Our online store remains active too. We have stayed with Shopify only because we have not found a robust solution. But yes sometimes it takes ages to check out a customer in Shopify POS. If someone can point to a good workaround we are all ears. Importantly, we have a Loyalty program that makes it very hard to have two different systems.

Thanks for all the suggestions that have been made thus far!

[3CraftyMs]

As others have shared in this thread, Shopify desperately needs to prioritize the ability have modifiers like Square does to make this a viable option for businesses that have a food/drink component. In today’s world, more and more businesses operate using a mixed business model and have both retail and food/drink. For instance, we are a craft supply retail store that also has a cafe and bar. 

[carmelwooding]

Hi there! I hear you - Shopify POS out of the box can be tricky to work with when you need a POS for a cafe or need complex product modifiers, but it's such an awesome robust system for online & general retail sales! We have recently developed an app to try and solve this problem for a client, and we released it on the Shopify app store last month. It's called POS Cafe & it allows you to set up modifier sets (like milk types, sweeteners, etc) for your products. It's early days and we're constantly rolling out new features - we haven't quite cracked order tickets automatically printing yet (Shopify has not allowed developers access to the receipt printer in Shopify POS), but have some workarounds we are trying with some of our merchants. We're really passionate to work with merchants to support you guys & get feedback on the features you really need to make it efficient and effective for you. Feel free to check us out on the Shopify app store & let us know if you have any feedback 🙂 https://poscafe.app | https://apps.shopify.com/poscafe

[SebW]

Hi @JFingal,

We're a little late to the party on this, but Shopify have recently made it possible for app developers to build native looking POS extensions.

My cofounder and I (ex-Shopify, ex-Stocky) have built a Shopify POS extension just for Coffee Shops/Cafes (possibly small restaurants) called Simmer.

This should address some of your issues:

* Print order tickets: we have a (KDS/kitchen display) to show orders and we're now working on ticket printing.

* Modifiers: you can add multiple modifiers to products such as flavourings and types of milk etc.

* The tipping still uses Shopify POS tipping. Would love to look into ways we can help with this though.

In addition the Simmer app also has:

* Ticket management: take customer orders, and add to them over time or take pre-payment.

* Customizable menu grid: shortcuts for just your food/drink products

* Improved UI for selecting modifiers and variants (big buttons, very different to how Shopify does it).

* Both products and modifiers pass through checkout as real products and can therefore be accurately reported on.

We're both working full-time to make this the best possible solution for coffee shops running on Shopify. Please reach out of you have any questions or feedback.