If you close your eyes and picture a local small business, the neighborhood coffee shop will likely be one of the first things you see. As a result, much of the off-hand wisdom about finding the best credit card processing company for small business is especially true for coffee shops. Here are a few ways that the tech associated with these payment systems fits into the daily operations of your favorite café.
Perhaps no institution inspires more loyalty in its customer base than the corner coffee shop. Healthy coffee shops tend to always have a sizeable group of customers that work their favorite brew into their daily schedule. Your store’s success rests on courting and holding onto these people.
The problem with rusty-crusty stamp card loyalty programs is that they have already been left behind by the simple and reliable tech options that currently exist. Physical cards can be lost, creating headaches for you and your customer. Getting your loyalty program into the smartphone of your regulars should be priority one for your loyalty program. Better yet, many solutions will text your customer, if they agree to it, opening up a whole new channel for highly specific promotions with a good likelihood of increasing traffic.
Coffee shops, like any business, need to leverage as much info about their customers as possible. If you run a coffee shop, your decision-making prowess hinges on those decisions being informed. From everyday pricing decisions, to what seasonal drinks and specialties to offer and for how long, you need data to make the right call.
The joke is, there is no perfect POS interface. The best POS will be the one that is flexible enough to change with your needs. You have to know exactly what it is you’re selling, and be able to accurately access these menu items day in, day out, so orders are rung up properly. Everything, from how many extra pumps of flavoring, to whether almond or cashew milk was used, is a data point that you must keep track of. The best way to tackle this is with a solid, customizable point of sale system. In reality, you’ll be changing your menu up frequently, and it’s good to have a technology that can roll with this level of customizability, while also tracking everything in a way you can use. The Poynt Smart Terminal, which we love over at Moolah, is a good solution because it gives you this option. We highly recommend the Moolah POS, as it’s a solid, easy-to-learn solution that can roll with the menu tweaks and changes that your shop may need. Aren’t feeling the Moolah POS, or found something that fits better for you? Poynt works beautifully with a majority of software, so it’s likely that you can switch easily. Go ahead. We won’t be offended.
In the end, finding the best credit card processing company for small business for your small business coffee shop comes down, in large part to the tech solutions it opens you up to. In this way, the open source nature of Poynt feeds in perfectly to your coffee shop needs. So choose well. Your coffee-loving regulars are depending on you.