Software that knows a cafe opens at six, not eleven.
Most restaurant software assumes a lunch service and a dinner rush. A cafe has neither. Helm Shift ships with cafe shifts and cafe wording out of the box, so the first schedule you build already looks like your week.
Your day is over when theirs starts.
Open the average scheduling tool and it offers you Lunch, Dinner and Closing. You are pulling shots at 6am and cleaning down by three. Every shift you create is a fight with a dropdown built for somebody else’s trade.
It is a small thing that never stops being annoying, and it is the reason most owner-operators give up on the tool in week two.
Set up as a cafe, not as a restaurant with the labels changed.
Shifts that match the trade
Open, Mid-day, Afternoon and Close, not Lunch and Dinner. The Open shift starts at 6am and the day is done by six in the evening, because that is when a cafe is done.
A menu in your own words
Espresso, Tea, Bakery, or whatever your board says. Your menu keeps your categories and your prices, not a restaurant’s Mains and Sides.
Baristas, not servers
The app calls your team baristas and suggests the roles a cafe actually has, from Baker to Shift Lead, when you add someone.
Schedules, the menu, and labour you can see before payroll.
Run it against your own week.
Helm Shift was built in Halifax and is open to independent cafes and bakeries across Nova Scotia and Ontario. The 30 days are free and there is no card, so build next week’s schedule in it and cost your drinks menu. A morning is enough to tell whether it fits.
Try it on next week’s schedule.
Plans start at $29.99 CAD a month. Works alongside whatever POS you already use, and we never need access to it.