Oat milk, an extra shot, a double: where the margin leaks at the counter

Ask a cafe owner what sells and they will tell you flat whites. Ask what makes the money and the honest answer is the forty pence on oat milk, the sixty pence on an extra shot, the pound on the bigger cup. Small numbers, hundreds of times a week.

Those small numbers are the easiest thing to lose. A regular asks for oat and the barista does not ring it in because the queue is five deep. A new member of staff did not know it was chargeable. The till has a button for it, but it is on a second screen.

Two kinds of choice

There are two different things a till can ask when you pick a coffee, and a lot of software muddles them.

The first is a choice that replaces the price. Small or large. Chicken or lamb. The item costs one amount or another, and the choice decides which. The second is an extra that adds to the price. Oat milk. An extra shot. A double. The base price stays and the extra stacks on top.

If a till treats an extra as a replacement, a six pound coffee with a thirty pence oat option rings in at thirty pence. We know because we saw it happen, and it is the reason Tradeinit now has a separate idea of an extras group, with a rule that the price adds, and a single pricing rule shared by the guest's phone and the waiter's tablet so the two can never disagree.

Make the extra the default path

An extra should be one tap on the same screen as the drink, not a hunt. On Tradeinit a milk group can be marked required, so the barista or the guest has to choose one before the line goes on the order. Required does not mean charged, it means decided. Dairy at no charge, oat at forty pence, and nobody has to remember.

Then count them

Once extras are a real thing on the order rather than a note, you can count them. The nightly email lists the extras that were chosen and what they added up to. Which is how you find out that oat milk is a line on the P&L, not a favour.