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Coffee shops & independent cafés

Coffee shop scheduling built for open, peak rush, and close.

Open at 6am with two baristas. Hit your peak between 7:30 and 9 with five. Close at 7pm with one. Coffee scheduling has its own rhythm — generic SMB tools force you to fight it. Built for indies and small chains.

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What every café owner is tired of

The opener never wants to open. 5:45 AM call-outs leave you running the bar yourself.
Peak-hour coverage is a guess. You only realize you're short when the line backs out the door.
Tip splits across the team are eternally disputed. The math has never reconciled.
New baristas take three weeks to ramp. Most of it is paperwork and "where's the dial-in spec?"
Mobile-order rushes don't match scheduled coverage. Toast or Square sees the spike; your schedule doesn't.
Sales and labor live in different places. Toast shows the rush; labor cost is a separate spreadsheet.

Built around how coffee shops actually run

The features that matter for indies and small chains — with a native Toast integration on Pro.

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Open / peak / close shift templates

Save shift templates per day-part so building next week's schedule is one click per day. Templates can vary by day-of-week (Saturday opens at 7, weekdays at 6).

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Peak-hour demand forecasting (Pro)

Uses the last 4 weeks of hourly POS sales for the same weekday to recommend staff per hour, and flags hours where scheduled coverage falls short before you publish.

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Tip pool by hours worked (Pro)

Weekly pool from Toast tips, redistributed pro-rata by hours clocked. Owner phantom hours configurable. Lock & Pay snapshot exports as a payroll-friendly CSV.

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GPS clock-in with auto-routing

Multi-location baristas auto-route to the closest store at clock-in. Manager override always available. No more "I punched in at the wrong shop" payroll fixups.

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Food-handler card reminders (Pro)

Record each barista's certification (one per person, e.g. a food-handler card) with its expiry date. On Pro, email reminders go out before it lapses.

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Sales reports across locations (Pro)

Toast sales reports by day, location, month and hour, with labor % and sales per labor hour. CPA-ready monthly tax export covers all locations.

Coffee shop operator FAQ

The questions we get from indie roasters and small café chains.

Do you integrate with both Toast and Square?
Yes. Toast, Square and Clover are all included free with Pro: sales, tips, tax and labor % flow in automatically, and tip pools and sales reports run from that data. Don't see your POS? Our engineering team will build a custom integration for your store with dedicated 1-on-1 onboarding for a flat $199.
How does the tip pool work across multiple shifts in a week?
Each location's tips for the pay period are pooled, then distributed pro-rata by hours worked at that location. If a barista worked at two stores, they get a share from each pool based on the hours they clocked at each. The math reconciles to the penny weekly.
My peak is 7:30–9am. How does the forecast handle that?
The demand forecast looks at the last ~12 months of orders by day-of-week × hour. Your 7:30–9am peak is identified from the data, not from a generic SMB assumption. The forecast is shown as a soft warning during scheduling — you can override at any time.
Can baristas request shifts they want to pick up?
Yes. Open shifts are posted from any device. Your baristas get a push notification. First responder claims it (or manager approves if you require it). No more "I can pick up Saturday" texts to your phone at 9pm.
Do you handle 1099 contractor baristas?
Yes. Worker classification is a first-class field. 1099 contractors get a W-9 flow instead of W-4/I-9. Reports split W-2 and 1099 hours and totals separately for year-end filing.
What if I'm a single shop and don't need multi-location?
A single shop with up to 10 employees can use the Free plan at $0 — no card, no end date — for scheduling, phone time clock, shift trades and timesheets. Team messages, the tablet kiosk and breaks are on Team ($29/mo for your first location and 30 employees); tip pool, Toast, Square, Clover and payroll exports are Pro: an 8-person shop on Pro is $26/mo ($2 × 8 employees + $10 × 1 location).

Related industries

Same Free, Team and Pro plans — PeopleBridge works the same way across adjacent industries.

RestaurantsRetail & BoutiqueFranchisesStudios & Wellness

Run your café without the 5 AM crisis text

Free for 1 location and up to 10 employees; Team is $29/mo for your first location and 30 employees; Pro is $2 per employee/mo + $10 per location/mo. Most coffee shops are scheduling next week's opens within an hour.

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