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Clockwise from top le : James Kilker, who manages Rook Coff ee Roasters' Long Branch cafe in New Jersey, likes the ease the Square system provides him when he's interacting with customers. Ashley Harpham, who works at BARISTA in Portland, Ore., says the ShopKeep interface makes the register easy to use when the café gets busy. In the tech-heavy San Francisco Bay Area, Tinkering Monkey cofounder Paula Chang saw so many Square systems at cafés, yet no good solutions for stands to house the iPad and Square, that she and her business partner, Mike Cheung, invented one: the Stand for Square, available for custom orders at tinkeringmonkey.com. larger purchases are cheaper with GoPayment, but smaller transactions are cheaper with Square. The system lists items available on the left of the screen and items in the current transaction on the right of the screen. It allows for tax, tips, voiding sales, and memos, and is capable of sync- ing with QuickBooks. The major drawback to the system is its inventory. While it is easy to create a new inventory item, it is not easy to delete items. GoPayment also offers all necessary information on one screen during a transaction, while Square is limited to one function on a screen such as a display of inventory or a custom sale amount, not both. Credit Card Machine by PayNet offers even lower swipe rates (1.59 percent plus 25 cents) that are advantageous for larger amounts, but charges a monthly service fee of $10. The card reading mechanism is free for new accounts. It has an optional dock for a mobile printer on the card swiping mechanism, allowing physical receipts versus Square's email or text-only receipts. Improvising Café Myriade in Montreal spent seven months developing its own POS system called Platforme that works between two iPads: One processes the orders while another displays the orders for the barista. The Square is not yet available in Canada for processing, but Myriade will be using some- thing similar in January. "I worked with a software development company here in Montreal to program the app, but the concept was in my head after working on all kinds of inefficient and ineffective POS systems and cash registers over the past 10 years in different cafés," says Anthony Benda of Café Myriade. "The second iPad—we refer to it as the 'Barista iPad'—displays orders that are processed from the 'Master iPad'. Once completed, the barista swipes the order and it's archived for an hour in case it needs to be recalled (missed drink, wrong order, etc.). After an hour, the archive is erased to make sure the iPads communicate as quickly as possible." The system is very simple but allows for enough customization to com- municate the necessary information from the transaction iPad to the barista. Benda plans to make the Platforme app available to the public in the future. With so many options for POS systems, both standard and iPad-based, it may be surprising that one system does not receive resounding reviews on all fronts. Taking strengths from the Square Card Reader and com- bining it with other POS systems can be optimal for some. The Library Coffeehouse in Tampa, Fla., uses an "old-school" Royal cash register, paper and pen, for cash transactions; but they've got the Square for credit card processing. "This system works for us now, at our current volume. My goal is to get the Square POS on my iPad, but that will be a little bit down the road," says Marie Cullinan of The Library. Benda hopes to change all that with Platforme and marry the hipness of iPad systems with the functionality necessary for optimal coffee shop manage- ment and sales. And with Square's constant increase of interactive iPhone and POS communication, the days of telepathic ordering may be yet to come. www.baristamagazine.com 59