Work Croma MNL
Croma MNL
In productionSpecialty coffee retail
Everything a growing coffee company runs on — the till at the counter, the stockroom, the payroll, and an app that keeps regulars coming back.
One cafe, growing quickly, run out of a spreadsheet and a cash drawer. Sales were written down twice. Nobody knew what stock was left until it ran out halfway through a shift. Payroll took an evening with a calculator every fortnight. Even the receipt printer needed a paid app to work at all.
Staff ring up a sale in seconds and the receipt prints itself. Stock counts down as drinks are made, so shortages turn up on a screen instead of at the counter. Payroll is something you check rather than something you do. The members' app — ordering ahead and rewards — is built and waiting on its launch.
What it does
The parts that matter to the owner
Ring up a sale, print a proper receipt
Every sale prints a BIR-style invoice on the thermal printer, with the VAT worked out to the centavo. No separate printing app, and no monthly fee for one.
Know what is low before a customer does
Stock comes down by ingredient as drinks are made. You find out you are nearly out of oat milk from the system in the morning, not from a customer at two in the afternoon.
Payroll that is already done
Shifts, hours and end-of-day readings feed straight into pay. What used to be an evening with a calculator is now a screen somebody checks and approves.
A members' app, ready to launch
Order ahead to skip the queue, points on every peso, and prepaid store credit — so the people who already like you have a reason to come back more often.
Croma MNL started as one cafe in Manila and grew into four connected pieces that share the same information: the point of sale on the counter, a members’ app, the public website, and an Android app that drives the receipt printer directly.
That last one saved a running cost. The printer previously needed a paid third-party print service on every device. Building the printing into the app itself removed the subscription entirely.
The system is currently being moved onto a faster database in Singapore. The original setup was built on spreadsheets, which was fine for one shop and became the limiting factor as the business grew — on a busy afternoon it was dropping roughly one request in three.