Home›For your venue›Play cafés
Software for play cafés: the café and the play floor on one POS
PlayAreaOS puts a play café's two halves on one POS: the coffee and the cake, and the hour of play the child is buying. One family, one sale, one set of numbers at the end of the day, in a browser tab open on the counter tablet you already own.
The counter a play café actually has
Most play cafés run with two or three people on at once, which means the software has to be quick and it has to be one thing. A flat white, a toddler session and a pair of grip socks go on the same sale. The menu draws its ingredients down as it sells, so the milk and the cups are counted without anyone counting them, and purchase orders follow the same list. When the connection drops the POS carries on and catches up afterwards.
The play corner, without a second system
- Every child on the floor on one board, each clock matched to the colour band on their wrist.
- Waivers signed on a parent's phone from the QR code on the table, so the corner is covered without a clipboard.
- Passes and loyalty that turn a toddler-morning regular into a family who has already paid for the next five visits.
Behind the counter, one login carries the rota, the payroll, the supplier bills and the reports, and everything is copied off-site overnight, over an encrypted connection.
Questions
What would a small café pay?
One subscription, billed monthly or yearly. The smallest of the three bundles is aimed at exactly this: a counter that needs to sign families in, start the clocks and take the money. The pricing page shows what the larger two add.
How do we move the menu and the customer list over?
Both come in from a spreadsheet as CSV, and a check report tells you what the import would create before anything is written. The switching page covers the move end to end.
How long does a new barista take to learn it?
The POS is a screen of tiles, which is what a barista is used to. The play side adds one board of clocks and colours, and that is the whole of it beyond the coffee.
What happens to our records?
They are yours. Each night the café's records are copied off-site, over an encrypted connection to storage that encrypts what it keeps, and reports export to CSV whenever you want the numbers somewhere else.