We had been preparing this project for more than two years. We invested tens of thousands of euros into it—we will not be lazy later and even tell you the exact number. And finally, it works. Not perfectly yet. Not exactly the way we imagine it. But it works. It already solves the problem we set out to solve. Ladies and gentlemen, meet: digital tips at Fenster.
But let me start from the beginning. What is it? We built a system that allows us to accept tips from our café guests as cashless payments. As you already know, we only accept cashless payments for our services: either by card on-site or through our online app. That’s it. No other options.
When it came to tips, the situation was this: either cash in the “piggy bank,” or the customer had to say out loud before paying: “please add this much in tips.” Neither the piggy bank nor the “please add tips” option was enough. And that was incredibly frustrating. Because we really. Really. Really. Put an enormous amount of effort into building an extraordinary service. And it was painful to see that in restaurants, less qualified baristas in the world of coffee were making ten, even a hundred times more in tips.
So we had a big problem. Staff quality. You can’t find many motivated people for minimum wage. Paying more would mean making our coffee even more expensive. Yes, we paid bonuses, but those bonuses slowed down the growth of the café because they took resources away from development.
And tips—tips are a clear contribution from the guest directly to the quality of the staff. Prices for coffee stay the same. And most importantly—tips are voluntary. If you don’t want to pay them, you don’t have to. That’s a good compromise.
At the end of 2019, I visited the United States for the first time in my life. Of course, the first thing I did was run to coffee shops. And the very first thing that struck me—the customer could add tips directly when paying by card. Well, “could” is the wrong word. They had to. Why “had to” is a separate story for another time.
That experience impressed me deeply, and I decided that we would have the same at Fenster. The problem was: in Austria, and I suspect throughout much of the EU, there simply was no software that allowed the customer to add tips themselves when paying by card. Let me repeat: in order to add tips to the bill, the customer had to say it out loud before paying. There was no other way.
So I contacted every possible and impossible company that develops POS and cash register software in Austria, asking them to build such a function. The answer: no. I even offered to pay up to €5000 for the development of this module. The answer was still: no.
And that’s how I met our developer, who made it happen. Along the way, he also built us an online store, a pre-order app, a new POS system—a very cool one. And yes. Digital tips, which you can now pay right at our little window.
It cost us a lot of money to integrate various payment platforms, which turned out to be extremely raw and unfit for comfortable business. That was frustrating. But we found solutions that work. Not perfectly yet. But they work. And we keep improving.
Every time we solve one problem and move to the next, we realize that the quality of existing solutions on the market is so low that we have to build everything ourselves. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll even create our own bank for payment processing. Honestly, it is not that expensive.
And yet, we’re happy that our team now has such a powerful tool for financial motivation. We’re happy that you can now properly thank our baristas for their professionalism and hospitality.
I am deeply grateful to all our guests, all coffee lovers who come to us every day for their cup. It is thanks to you that we grow and develop. I’m grateful to our entire team for their patience and dedication. And a special thanks to Willem, who step by step, patiently builds exactly what we need. I’m happy that together we’re creating something good.
See you at the coffee window!
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