For cafés
The admin side of a café, done on the phone in your apron
A café runs on jobs nobody opens a laptop for: counting the cool room before the order goes in, finding out who can work Saturday, working out whether the new oat milk price still leaves a margin. These are the tools for those jobs — free to use, and most of them without an account at all.
The jobs, and what we do about them
Counting the cool room before you order
Counting on paper, then typing it into a spreadsheet at home, then ordering from a number that was true yesterday.
Count on your phone with the list already in the order you walk the room. Say the numbers out loud if your hands are full, or photograph a written sheet and let it read the figures across.
StocktakeFinding out who can work next week
Eleven text messages, three of which never get answered, and a roster built around the two people who replied fastest.
Send one link. Staff fill in when they can work from their own phone with no account and no app to install, and the week builds from what comes back.
Smart RosterKnowing what a drink actually costs
The menu was priced when beans were cheaper, and nobody has re-run the numbers since the milk supplier put prices up.
Build the recipe once — dose, milk, cup — and the cost per cup stays current as prices move. A supplier increase shows up as a margin rather than a surprise at the end of the quarter.
Cost BuilderOpening and closing without a checklist on the wall
The list is laminated by the till, it is three years old, and the person who wrote it left. Nobody can tell you who closed on the night the fridge was left open.
A checklist your staff tick off on their own phone, with a record of who did what and when — so a question about last Tuesday has an answer.
ChecklistsGetting the supplier order out
Walking the store with a pen, then rewriting the same list into an email at eleven at night.
Walk the shelves once, tap what is short, and the order comes out ready to send — grouped by supplier rather than by where it happened to be on the shelf.
OrderingWhat is actually different
Your staff do not need accounts
Availability, counting and checklists all work from a link. Nobody signs up, nobody installs anything, nobody forgets a password on the morning you need the roster. That is unusual in this category and it is the reason things actually get filled in.
Free is not a trial
The free tools stay free. There is no fourteen-day clock and no card at the start. Paid plans exist for the AI features and the heavier team work, but nothing you use today stops working next month.
Built for a phone in an apron pocket
Counting, availability and checklists are designed for one thumb, standing up, with cold hands in a cool room — not for a desk. The full desktop version is there when you are doing the paperwork properly.
Worth reading
- What a flat white actually costs you to makeCoffee has the best-looking margin in the building until you count the milk you poured down the sink. This is the arithmetic, done properly, with the line items most people leave out.
- How to work out food cost percentageFood cost percentage is one division. The hard part is knowing what to put on each side of it — and most of the arguments about whether a dish is profitable are really arguments about that.
- How to set par levels so you stop running outA par level is the amount of something you want on the shelf when the delivery arrives. Set them properly and ordering stops being a judgement call every week — it becomes subtraction.
- The opening and closing checklist, and how to make it stickEvery venue has a closing routine. Most of them live in one person's head, which is fine until that person is on annual leave. This is what to write down, in what order, and how to keep it from becoming wallpaper.
- The rostering words that decide what a shift costsTwo shifts of the same length can cost very different amounts, and the difference is in words most people running a roster have never had explained. Here is what each one means — and, importantly, where to get the number that applies to you rather than a number off a blog.
- How to build a staff roster template that actually holds upMost roster templates are a grid of names and days, and they work right up until someone swaps a shift. This is what to put in the template so that the second week is easier than the first, not harder — and the honest point where a spreadsheet stops being the right tool.
Common questions
Is there a free café stocktake app?
Yes — counting stock on Regentflow is free, and your staff can help count from a link without making an account. The paid plan adds the AI features, like reading a photographed count sheet or filling the count by voice.
How do I work out the cost of a coffee?
Work from the dose rather than the bag: cups per kilo is 1,000 divided by your dose in grams. Then add milk by the millilitre, the takeaway cup and lid, and a wastage figure from what you actually throw out. Our guide to coffee cost per cup walks through it.
Can my baristas fill in their own availability?
Yes. You send one link and they fill in when they can work from their own phone — no account, no app, no password. The roster is then built from what came back rather than from whoever answered a text first.
Do I need to install anything?
No. Everything runs in a browser on the phone your staff already have, and on a computer when you want a bigger screen for the roster or the costings.
Start with the one that annoys you most
Nothing to install, and most of it works without an account.
Open the tools