Café ordering system guide
Breakfast menus, drink modifiers and grab-and-go ordering for café operations.
What makes café ordering different
Café menus are modifier-heavy and time-of-day sensitive. A drink is rarely just a drink: size, milk, syrup and extras all change the order. Breakfast and lunch menus may run on different schedules.
Key workflows
- Drink modifiers: size, milk, syrup, extras.
- Separate breakfast, lunch and pastry menus by time.
- Grab-and-go collection slots.
- Queue reduction through pre-order and collection.
Example: configuring a coffee order
Give a latte a required size choice and a required milk choice, then offer optional syrup and extra shots. Show any supplement before checkout. Make the final ticket readable as one drink with its selected modifiers so the barista can prepare it without referring to a second screen. Keep allergen information up to date for each milk and flavour option.
Schedule breakfast and lunch menus
Set the breakfast and lunch availability windows around the actual kitchen changeover. Before service, check what customers see just before and after the cut-off, including future collection slots. Remove items that cannot be prepared at the selected time and keep the drinks menu available for the hours your barista station operates.
Run a collection service alongside the queue
- Choose collection slots with enough preparation time for the busiest drink combinations.
- Route drinks and food to the appropriate preparation stations.
- Label completed orders with the customer name or order reference.
- Use a clear collection point and pause new orders if the preparation queue exceeds capacity.