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.

Multi-location operators juggle two POS dashboards. Frisco on Toast, downtown on Square. Sales reports never aggregate.

Built around how coffee shops actually run

The features that matter for indies and small chains running on Toast or Square.

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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

Pulls hourly order velocity from Toast or Square (12-month rolling average). Pre-publish warning when your scheduled coverage doesn't match the historical spike.

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Tip pool by hours worked

Weekly pool from Toast/Square 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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Barista certifications tracked

Food handler, allergen training, espresso lead, manager-on-duty. Per-employee fields with expiration dates. Email reminders at 90/30/7 days.

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Multi-POS sales aggregation

Run Toast at one location and Square at another? Sales reports aggregate across both POS systems. 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 — both are native integrations. If you run different locations on different POS systems (which is common for operators who acquired stores), PeopleBridge aggregates the sales reports and tip pools across both. Most other tools force you to standardize on one POS.

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. Eligible baristas (right cert tier, available) 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?

Your first month is free for 1 location and up to 10 employees, no card required. After that it's one plan with everything included: $1 per active employee/mo + $10 per location/mo. A single 8-person shop runs about $18/mo.

Related industries

Same plan, same features — PeopleBridge works the same way across adjacent industries.

Restaurants Retail & Boutique Franchises Studios & Wellness

Run your café without the 5 AM crisis text

Free first month, then $1 per active employee/mo + $10 per location/mo — everything included. Most coffee shops are scheduling next week's opens within an hour.

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