This is a long, serious, and very expensive topic. By September 2022, our own POS system had already cost us about €30,000, and I have no idea how much more it will cost. But we will keep building it—and maybe never stop. In fact, it is no longer just a POS system.
The issue of POS never came up until a certain point. We used—and still use—one of those cloud-based POS systems. You simply buy an account, set it up on an iPad, connect the card terminal and printer, and you are ready to go. It costs a few hundred euros a year. Not that expensive. Convenient, simple. And good enough—if you are an average business.
But we are far from average. Here is why.
For a long time, I dreamed of integrating our online business—we were just starting to sell coffee online with delivery—into our POS system, so that the cash flow would go through one channel, and the inventory would also be unified. Over time, the idea expanded to include an app for ordering and paying for coffee drinks online. That app has now existed for quite a while and deserves its own episode. I promise to write about it 🙂
In reality, one company handled our card payments, another handled our online payments. Later, I found providers that offered everything under one roof. But there were a lot of complications—and one of the main ones was the POS. Payment terminals have to “talk” to the POS. So, our tools were very limited.
But entrepreneurial dreams do not always need to become reality. So, I made peace with the systems we had and kept working with them.
Until fall 2019, when I went to the United States. That is where I realized we had a huge problem—one I had not taken seriously, but that clearly existed and needed to be solved. The problem: tips.
Europe is way behind when it comes to tipping. People are not eager to tip, especially in “to-go” establishments. I will make a separate episode just about tips, but for now let me explain briefly.
Even though we only accept cashless tips, we do allow customers to tell the barista they want to add a tip, and we add it to the total payment. We also have a small tip jar for cash. But very few people use either option. Very few.
And that is despite the fact that our baristas are highly skilled professionals who not only prepare coffee that is far superior to most places but also provide excellent service. Yet, waiters get tipped, while baristas generally do not.
But in the U.S., it is completely different. You MUST pay a 20% tip—everywhere, every time. Always! And when I saw that, and calculated based on our turnover, I realized how unfair it was that other hospitality workers earned huge bonuses from tips, while our baristas did not.
In the U.S., there are excellent tools for cashless tipping. The customer sees a screen where they finalize their payment, and at that stage, they can choose the tip amount. Simple and effective. I became obsessed with this idea and decided we had to implement it too.
But there was one problem. As far as I could tell, at least in Austria—and I suspect across Europe—no such software solutions existed. There was no way for the customer to finalize the payment themselves and add a tip.
Yes, there are systems where the barista manually adds the tip. But for the customer to do it themselves? No. And you understand—the barista will not ask every single time if someone wants to add a tip. That is not how it works in European culture.
So, I started writing, calling, meeting with every halfway-serious POS provider I could find to ask about creating such a module for their system. Either they ignored me or said no. Even though I offered significant money to pay their programmers to build it. Still, no. Their argument: “Why bother, when people already use what we have?”
It took me months to fully realize that POS and payment software providers do not understand what people like me—business owners—actually need. Worse, they do not even want to understand. I kept hoping some quick and simple solution would appear. But no!
So, I made the decision: if no one will help us, we will build our own POS system. With our own modules, including one for tipping. I knew it would not be easy, and it could get expensive. But I saw no other option.
At the same time, our online shop was growing. We had registered it on a marketplace platform, which works fine for basic things, but not for specifics. Promotions, sales, targeted offers, personalized customer management—none of that is possible on standard platforms. Those require custom-built solutions.
And then, one day, I was talking with a programmer who often drank coffee at Fenster. Through our conversations, we found mutual interest and agreed to try building what we needed.
His services were not cheap. But I decided it was better to spend a lot now than to never spend it at all. So, we started.
A quick note. If you know a bit about this, you might think: “What is the big deal? Just make a POS, connect a payment terminal, add the features, done.” And yes, in principle, that is true. But not if you are in Austria, Germany, or elsewhere in the EU, where there are strict laws requiring digital signatures for all POS systems. Every single receipt must be signed digitally.
The challenge is even greater because we also operate an “online POS.” And to make it worse, the implementation manuals for all the required systems are far from ideal. Which means endless hours. Expensive hours. That is the reality 🙂
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