Always on the hunt for a wifi-equipped and caffeine-powered spot, I stumbled upon the new Coffee Commissary in LA’s mid-city wasteland.  Paying for my second coffee in two hours (yes, I’m addicted), I watched the guy behind the counter swipe my credit card on an old-fashioned credit card machine, while swiftly typing in my order on his connected iPad.  An odd mix of archaic and modern.  In my innocence, I asked him if he had heard of the Square.  Luckily, there was a afternoon lull (and that I tend to be fascinated by random new stuff), because thus began a merry long chat of POS and inventory and bottlenecks and the battle for the small storefront.

Apparently, as they opened their store, they started off with the Square.  A simple device, no clunky credit card machine.  The perfect solution, right?  Not quite.  The Square hardware attachment worked perfectly, but it was the software that fell short.  (No mention was made of the higher 2.75% processing fee or the lack of customer service support, which are the more common gripes found on blogs.) The counter guy explained that the Square software only allowed a few buttons per screen of menu inputs.  A drastic problem for anyone who knows restaurants or small retail operations.  The staff was wasting tons of time hand swiping to scroll through all the screens and find the right menu item.  For a business dolling out an addictive substance to consumers who come in a rush at one time of the day, every second counts.  (And if you have ever served hard time in a restaurant – as I did during one painful college summer – with the tens and maybe hundreds of orders you handle per day, the last thing you want to be doing is scrolling and searching through screens every single time you input an order.  The process is already tedious; no need to make it worse on the staff.)

Given the annoying scrolling, the owners made a mad switch to ShopKeep.  From my vantage point, it looked clean and has a very simple interface (and allows for more menu items per screen, a big plus).  It includes both back-end inventory as well as front-end order processing, and the guys talked about the simple data analytics it offers to provide them insights on their operations.  Overall, though, ShopKeep + card reader + merchant account was described as the lesser of two evils against the Square.  We did end though on a hopeful upbeat note.  He imagines, he said, in the fast-paced development world we now live in, that both products will have the kinks worked out and look entirely different a year from now.  Then, who knows?

The bottom-line: he does not appear to be wedded to any one solution or brand.  It’s still anyone’s game to win.

And what a game to win.  Small business is big business in the US.  More than 95 percent of all retailers have only one store outlet according to the National Retail Federation.  It is an absolute necessity for them to have a way to manage their payments, orders, finances, and inventory – all of which are typically painful and time-consuming aspects to the business.  With my coffee, I am toasting you both: may the best company win.

For anyone else in mid-city West area, swing by the Coffee Commissary.  Strong focus on the coffee, clean space, and lots of friendly dogs out on the patio.  Please note the above story is purely my representation of our chat, and should not be attributed as the viewpoint of the Coffee Commissary staff.

Coffee Commissary

all written words are thoughts & musings of dominique gagnon