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Tips revolution at Fenster Cafe!

Fenster Cafe | 26 May 2023 | 17:29

We have been preparing this project for a long time, more than 2 years. We have invested several tens of thousands EUR in it. We will not even be too lazy to tell you exactly how much that cots, later on. And finally, it is on. It’s not perfect. Not 100% as we see it. But it is working. It is already solving the tasks we set. Ladies and gentlemen, meet digital tipping in Fenster.

But to explain you in step by step. To begin with – what is it. We have built a system that allows us to accept tips from coffee shop visitors in the form of a cashless payment. As you already know, we only accept non-cash payments for our services: either by card on the spot or through an online application. That’s it. There are no other options.

With tips, the situation was as follows: either cash in the “piggy bank” or the client himself must say before paying: “Add a tip there”. But even both the “bank” and the “add more tip” were not that much enough. And this is extremely offensive. Because we are very. Very much. Very much. We do very hard to build extraordinary services. And it’s a shame that in some restaurants, baristas who are less qualified as coffee experts get 10, 100 times more in tips.

That’s why it was such a problem. The quality of the staff. You won’t find many people willing to work for the minimum wage. Paying more means making products even more expensive. Yes, we paid bonuses, but this slowed down the development of the coffee shop, because bonuses disburse resources for development.

And tips are reasonable contribution from visitors to the quality of the staff. At the same time, coffee prices remain the same. Another important thing is that tips are voluntary. Those who don’t want to pay them just don’t have to. This is a good compromise.

At the end of 2019, I had the opportunity to visit the United States for the first time in my life. Of course, I immediately ran checking the coffee shops and the first thing that struck me was that a customer can add a tip when paying for coffee. Well, they can. They have to. Why they have to – this is a separate issue.

I was very impressed by this experience and decided that we should do the same. The problem is that in Austria, and I don’t know about the rest of the EU, but in Austria there is no software that would allow the customer to decide on the tip when paying with a card. Let me repeat that. In order to add a tip to the cost of the check, the customer must say in a voice before paying: please add this amount as tip. There are no other options. There were none.

So I contacted all the companies that make POS and cash register software in Austria about implementation of such a function. The answer was No. I offered to pay for such development in the amount of up to 5000 EUR. The answer was No. Well. That’s how I met our developer, with whom we together did it all. And along the way, an online store, a pre-order application, a cash desk, a very cool cash desk. And so on. DIGITAL TIPS that you can already pay for in the Fenster.

Along the way, we spent a lot of money on integrating various payment platforms, which turned out being extremely crude and unsuitable for earning money in a comfortable way. It was very disappointing. But we have found solutions that work. Not perfect yet. And we keep working. And it works.

Every time we solve a problem and move on to another, we realize that the quality of solutions on the market is so low that we need to do everything ourselves. Who knows, maybe we will eventually set up our own bank for payment transfers. It’s not expensive, by the way.

Still, we are happy that our team now has such a powerful resource for financial motivation. We are happy that you can now thank our baristas properly for their professionalism and hospitality.

I am extremely grateful to all our guests, coffee lovers who come to us every day for a cup of coffee. A huge thank to all of you that we are growing and developing. I am grateful to our entire team for their patience and hard work. Special thanks to Vilem, who is patiently working on exactly what is needed step by step. I am happy that we are all doing something really good!

Let’s meet for coffee!

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