Looking for the best POS for coffee?

Coffee POS Solutions help coffee brands (Single store or multiple locations) to help processing orders with speed and accuracy, manage your sales, and improve on every element of their customer experience.

With a POS solution for Coffee, stores with or without a Drive Thru can offer the best way to connect with their customers and are able to grow their revenue year over year.

But with so many POS solutions out there, how do you know which one is the best for your brand?

Don’t worry!

In this article, we’ll look at what a POS for coffee is, and what are the top five POS solutions for coffee alongside their key features, pros, cons, and pricing. 

This Article Contains: 

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Let’s get rolling!

What is a Coffee POS? 

Coffee POS Software helps Coffee Shops and Baristas alike to take orders and accurately make drinks without losing time guessing. 

It offers integration with online ordering, physical and digital gift cards and connects your brand with your guests in a happy and friendly way. 

A Coffee POS also allows you to gather information about your customers and gives you great reporting that suits your needs. 

Powerful Coffee POS systems offer features like: 

• Conversational ordering
• Customer Centric ordering 
• Kitchen Displays
• Cloud Hosting or local System 
• Integrated Discounts, Upsells and Offers
• Integrated physical and digital Gift Cards
• Automated Marketing
• Online Ordering 
• Contactless Payments
• Detailed Reporting 

The 5 Best Coffee POS Solutions 2021

To help you build and maintain a fantastic coffee shop, here are the five best Coffee POS solutions: 

1. Touchpoint.io Coffee POS

Touchpoint is the only POS that is specifically designed for Coffee. 

It’s widely used all across the United States and helps selling millions of drinks for local coffee shops and larger powerhouses such as BlackRock Coffee.

From helping you by taking & making orders (via all channels) to having advanced loyalty and marketing features, Touchpoint is the ultimate Coffee POS solution.

Touchpoint key features

Here are just some of the reasons why you should use Touchpoint for your POS solution:

1. Coffee specific Order taking

Taking Coffee orders is intense. So many drinks are unique to your customers and you  have to carefully listen to get each modifier right.

That’s why you need a system designed to enter coffee orders easy and fast. 

Touchpoint worked together with many coffee brands and established what we believe the best solution for every other coffee service out there. 

“Err, I changed my mind. Can I have the Hot Latte as a Blended Latte?”

Take this above example. A customer changed their mind after you added all modifiers. With “Transform items” , Touchpoint.io offers a feature where you can quickly change from a hot to a blended (to iced and back) drink without losing all entered modifiers. Of course the price updates too. 

“No, we have the most modifiers. We have over 100 Flavors” 

- told us  by many Coffee store owners

Great for the customers, a little hard to remember for your Baristas. But because of all the extra flavors you’re offering, you customers love coming back even more. That’s the reason why Tochpoint’s Point of Sale is specified to handle hundreds of variations without you losing control. It’s the fast and most accurate way to take coffee orders that effortlessly includes prep details like temp and finish options. Guaranteed. 

Touchpoint offers many more order taking features such as “+ 1” Reorder a second copy of a drink, and still make edits. “I’ll have the same, but vanilla instead of hazelnut”.

Or a way to search your menu across all names and modifiers. You can even add searchable secret descriptions to each item that only your baristas can see. 

2. Speed of Service and Thruput

“I skipped my Coffee this morning, the line was just tooooo long”

Using Touchpoint your coffee location will eliminate long waiting lines. 

The unique way of taking orders and sending them straight to the correct Kitchen Display will let you take more orders even during peak hours without spending less time with your customers. 

Linebusting is the best way keeping your customers happy because they can order faster. In a car or a regular line. Adding more line busters to the mix during peak hours is not a problem in Touchpoint Coffee POS. 

Here are some more Touchpoint Features for faster Coffee Ordering:

• Line Busting
• Kitchen Display with color coding
• ZeroContact SMS Pay while wait until order ready
• NFC Connected Loyalty
• Sticker Printing
• Know your customers

3. Guest centric ordering / Connected Customers

With Touchpoint you can always connect your customers with you: Before, during and after ordering.  That way you stay in the know about their habits, preferences and last orders. You know them at any touchpoint and they always know about their coupons, offers and rewards.  

4. Scaling and upgrading

With Touchpoint you can start with a basic setup and then decide to upgrade to a more powerful solution without any interruption to your running business. You can easily add Line busters, Kitchen Displays or another Cashier and everything integrates right from the start. 

If you choose to keep taking Credit Card payments even when your internet connection is down, you can add our Touchpoint Local Cloud. It’s a tiny little computer, that connects all your Touchpoint devices and can securely store payments for many days.

And if this is not enough, we’re offering a 4G Fallback plan too. 

Or, add a third party Delivery with ease. 

5. Discounts, Coupons & Upsells

Coffee Brands live and thrive off of special offers and coupons. Like Pizza invented delivery, we think that coffee invented the discount game. 

Touchpoint POS is made to support any specific discount you are offering. Offer 3 Stamps on Friday, or $3 off any large Energy Drink, Birthday Discount, ... we’ve got your back.

The best part, you and your customers can see their discounts while ordering - if it’s online, or via Line buster or at the cashier.

That way you can say “Hey Susan, Congratulations, you can get a large Iced Mocha for just $1 more” .

6. Automated A.I. Marketing

The automated Marketing tool is a truly unique way to engage your coffee customers. 

This new way of marketing is only available from Touchpoint.io. 

By knowing 80% of your customers  behavior -  note, it’s YOUR data - we can predict future visits and bring returning guests more often. We are guaranteeing more sales and a very high return on ad spend. 

The A.I. Marketing is - like the rest from Touchpoint - specifically made for Coffee. Because Touchpoint knows that coffee lovers are individuals ;-) 

7. Freedom of Payment Provider

By choosing Touchpoint, you are not pin pointed to a specific payment provider. We help you find the best provider with the lowest rates for you. Because overpaying is no fun. And we can guarantee that our rates are less than other Coffee POS are offering.

Touchpoint pros

• Powerful Conversational ordering that is easy to learn
• Guest centric system that helps building relationships  “Your customers come first”
• Kitchen Displays with color codes and teamwork functionality
• Line Busting Tools to speed up your Drive Thru or lane. 
• Need more Devices? Just add them to your current setup without interruption of your workflow
• Cloud Hosting or local System. You decide how much fallback you need 
• 4G Fallback when Internet is down
• Multiple payment Providers with the best rates for you
• Integrated Discounts, Upsells and Offers that are visible at any ordering touchpoint
• Integrated physical and Digital Gift Cards
• Your customers can login online to see Gift Card Balance, Points and Rewards
• Offer Online Ordering right from your POS Menu. 
• Reporting Dashboard to stay in the know
• Powerful Timers that measure every step
• iPhone Reporting App
• Automated Marketing to increase sales
• Contactless Payments via SMS Pay link for faster service
• Plenty of 3rd party integrations
• Customer Feedback at the end of each sale.
• Sticker Printing
• Tip Pooling with Wages & Tip Reporting

Touchpoint cons

• Currently only available in English language 

2. Square 

Square is THE popular POS for Small businesses that is widely used across many verticals.

But how suitable is this POS for your coffee business? 

Let’s find out:

Square Key Features

• Beautiful looking Hardware that is “Apple like” to order and unpack.
• Quick to start with just a few items. Accept payments fast.
• Variety of products to choose from. From iPad App to Square-Only Android Device
• Square “broke” the barrier as one of the first Non-Legacy POS 

Square pros

• Easy to learn and to use compared to legacy POS like NCR or Micros 
• Great and good looking reports as App or online
• Plenty of third party integration because of their size

Square cons

• Square Own Hardware limits scalability.  Not easy to replace when broken.
• No customer first focus, because their background is charging for payments
• No Line busters or KDS for coffee 
• Doesn’t work well for multiple locations
• Hardware can get expensive

3. Toast

ToastTab is the fast growing POS “made for restaurants”. This is already the downsides, because a Coffee POS does not need coursing or serving by seat. However, because of their sheer sales power, some coffee places are using Toast. 

Let’s see how they perform: 

Toast Key Features

• Toast comes bundled has hardware and software
• Restaurant-specific features like coursing
• Payroll & Team Management 

Toast pros

• Toast offers multi-location employee management
• They’re offering a takeout & delivery App
• Online Customer Community

Toast cons

• Expensive when adding needed features
• It’s about taking orders like legacy POS, not about the guests
• Integrated Credit Card Processing
• Legacy Marketing (e-mail like it’s 1995)

4. Shopkeep

Shopkeep is a “flexible” POS that allows you to use it in Retail, Pet Salons, Bars, and so on. They are owned and run by lightspeed. 

Shopkeep Key Features

• Shopkeep is a true cloud based POS System
• They’re offering their Software on Android and iOS 
• Shopkeep offers a full suite of commerce solution

Shopkeep pros

• No Need to buy Hardware from Shopkeep
• ShopKeep handles the most complex inventory lists with ease, and lets you know what’s selling and what’s not.
• Mobile App that let’s you track sales and transaction data in real time.

Shopkeep cons

• Shopkeep is not made for fast ordering
• No Backup when internet is down
• No Kitchen Display or Line Busters
• No Coffee Centric Ordering

5. Clover

Clover builds point of sale systems that run in their own hardware. Clover offers different sized hardware and packages.

Clover Key Features

• Clover Mini is a single Hardware piece including a receipt printer  
• Offer table side ordering via own hardware
• Possible to take payments and refunds over the phone

Clover pros

• Clover Station Pro comes with a Customer Facing Display to tip and sign. 
• Expandable with Weight Scale and Barcode scanner
• Physical and Digital Gift Cards

Clover cons

• No dedicated Kitchen Display
• Does not show how to prepare a drink
• No color coding for specific drinks 
• Expensive and confusing pricing strategy

What to look for in a great Coffee POS solution

Technology has improved.  Whether you are one store or hundreds, upgrading your store’s Order Management Solution — which spans from Order taking with Line Busting and Loyalty to Online Ordering and Barista Management (“KDS”) and sticker printers — powerful new technology designed specifically for the coffee vertical can take your business to the next level.  

Hopefully that comparison helps you to understand the key features every coffee solution needs and what POS solution offers that.