Although a lot of us now consider coffee shops to be superior to the old-fashioned cafe, they’re actually still alive and thriving. These little shops are more than just coffee and cake because, unlike coffee shops, cafes are more homely.
It’s very common to sell hot food for breakfast and lunch in a cafe and it must have a very home-cooked taste and feel to it. Cafes still sell coffee and tea to customers, as well as freshly baked items. Cafes are therefore typically known as ‘small restaurants’.
One of the key differences between the two business types is one that keeps people coming back to cafes. In cafes, people can be waited on, and their orders are taken from one of the seating arrangements rather than standing up in a queue. It already sounds a little bit busier than the average coffee shop. So what processes could your cafe business make smoother to give customers a better experience?
Ready-made food
Before you open your shop, it would be prudent to have ready-made food, ready for customers to buy. One of the negatives of coffee shops in the modern day is, that you can’t zip in and out of the shop quickly.
What if a customer is late for work or a meeting, but they forgot to pack a lunch? They would need to quickly see what you have on offer, buy it and get out as soon as they can. Therefore you need to split up your hot food and cold food counters.
Ready-made food and snacks such as homemade pasta, sandwiches, fruit bowls, salad boxes, soup pots and any other specific eat-out food must be given their own space. It allows people who don’t want to buy something freshly made and sit down to eat and drink, a way to quickly buy what they want and leave. It also splits up the customers and helps to keep the waiting line as small as possible.
Pay at the table
As many customers wish to be served at the table, it makes no sense is asking them to get up and go to a separate cashier to pay for their items. Taking technology to their table that can process their card payments so they can pay where they sit is much more efficient.
Thanks to the credit card processing machines customers can make a payment within seconds. Portable card machines can now work from 100 meters away, so even if you have seating outside your cafe, that won’t be an issue.
The battery lives have been greatly improved so you need not stop to charge them halfway through your working day. And since they’re light, a waiter or waitress can easily clip them to their belt or trouser waist. After the customer puts their credit card in, they just need to put in their 4-number pin and the machine will print out a receipt of their transaction.
Even though lines of customers waiting to buy something from your cafe are uplifting, you should work to minimize traffic as much as possible. Have some cold food ready and waiting in a different part of the cafe. Allow people to pay for their meal or drink where they are seated instead of getting up to go to a cashier. A smoothly run cafe increases the money intake by improved efficiency.
