Bakery Café

POS setup and configuration for a bakery café. From an empty account to the counter: goods sold by the piece, café seating, and the settings that matter.

What it does

A bakery café is two businesses sharing a counter. Before nine it is a shop: people buy bread and pastries, pay, and leave in under a minute. After ten it is a café: coffee, a table, a second pastry. The till has to be fast enough for the first and patient enough for the second, and the same person is usually working both.

The short version: the morning is retail and the afternoon is hospitality — set the counter up for retail speed and let the café half borrow it.

What you need

Thing	Why you need it	Notes
Till device	your counter — retail sales in the morning, tabs later	A tablet at the counter. Position it so one person can serve, bag and take payment without turning around.
Internet + Wi-Fi router	POSolid is a cloud app and needs a connection during service	Fixed broadband and your own router; keep the till on the staff network if you also offer guest Wi-Fi.
Fiscal printer — depends on your country	required by law in some countries to record sales	In Poland: Posnet, Novitus or Elzab. See Supported Fiscal Printers, or Fiscal Printers in Other Countries if you trade elsewhere.
Card terminal	small baskets, mostly card	From your payment provider, works on its own. You record which method was used so takings reconcile.
Optional: a second till	a dedicated bread queue at peak	Any device with a browser and a staff PIN. Both tills see the same orders.
Optional: a coffee-side printer or screen	if drinks and toasties are made behind the counter	Only worth it when the person making coffee is not the person selling bread.
Optional: a screen for the pickup board	for drinks collected after ordering	Any TV or monitor with a browser — see Customer Display Board.

"Optional" means your choice — not an upsell. Every optional line above is hardware you may or may not want; none of it unlocks anything in POSolid. Every feature named in this guide is included in your subscription from day one, with no per-device or per-feature charge. The only thing you would ever spend money on is the physical equipment itself — and only if you decide you want it.

How everything connects

One router; the till is the only thing that must be on the staff network:

Router (broadband + Wi-Fi) --( internet )------> POSolid
Tills, screens             --( staff Wi-Fi )---> Router
Till with the Print Agent  --( USB or staff Wi-Fi )--> Printers

Every device reaches POSolid over the internet. Tills and screens run POSolid in a browser; nothing is installed on them.
The Print Agent runs on one device only — the main till. Outgoing connections only, so the router needs no configuration.
Keep printers off any guest Wi-Fi, which isolates devices and stops the Print Agent reaching them.

Getting started

Create your organization — see Create Your Account. Set your country, currency and, in Poland, your tax settings.
Build the menu like your shelves in Menu → Catalog — Bread, Pastries, Cakes, Drinks — with variants only where a product has real sizes.
Set the register for retail speed in Settings → Orders configuration: require payment before accepting order on, table assignment off, order type selector off unless you take orders for collection.
Install the Print Agent on the till and add the fiscal printer where required — see Printing.
Add drinks as a separate category with size variants and a milk modifier group with a default marked — see Modifiers.
Add your staff with PINs so the morning shift can swap at the till in a second — see Quick Access with a PIN.
Decide the café half — counter hand-over (recommended) or table service, and set table assignment and payment-first to match.
Do a dry run at the quiet time: four pastries and a coffee, paid by card. Then check Reports to confirm it landed.

A counter that is half retail

The bread half of a bakery behaves like a shop, not a restaurant, and that changes how you build the menu.

Lay the menu out like the shelves. Categories should mirror what the customer is looking at — Bread, Pastries, Cakes, Drinks. A person buying four things should find all four without scrolling, because at 8:15 the queue is the constraint, not the choice.

Sell by the piece, and price the item as it sells. Most bakery lines are simply an item at a price. Use variants where the same product genuinely comes in two sizes (a small and a large loaf) and resist adding modifier groups to bread — every optional question you attach is a tap someone makes two hundred times a morning.

Payment up front, no tables, in the morning. Turn require payment before accepting order on and leave table assignment off: a bread sale is money and goods across the counter, exactly like a market stall.

Then let the café half borrow the same counter. If guests sit with a coffee, the simplest model is still counter hand-over with a pickup board — no table assignment, no open tabs. Only turn table assignment on and payment-first off if you genuinely run food out to tables and let people pay on the way out. Most bakery cafés do not, and are faster for it.

Use the reports to plan the bake. The hour-by-hour and item-level sales reports tell you what actually sold out and when — which is the difference between baking to a habit and baking to demand.

Recommended setup

Minimum — counter only

Till, card terminal, fiscal printer where required. Categories laid out like the shelves, payment up front. That is a complete bakery counter.

Recommended — the morning rush

Add a second till so bread and coffee do not share one queue, staff PINs, and the pickup board if drinks are collected. Turn on Work Shifts — bakery starts are early and worth recording.

Full — café half in its own right

Add a coffee-side screen or printer, loyalty cards for the every-morning regulars, a QR Menu for the seated half, and Payroll on top of recorded shifts. Use item-level reports to plan the bake.

Key things to know

Lay categories out like the shelves. The menu is a map of your counter, not a hierarchy.
Do not attach optional questions to bread. Every modifier group is a tap repeated hundreds of times before nine.
Payment up front in the morning. A bread sale is retail: goods and money cross the counter together.
Counter hand-over beats table service for most bakery cafés. Only open tabs if you really do run food out and settle later.
If tabs are open, payment-first must be off. The two settings have to agree with each other.
Poland: the fiscal printer is not optional, and the daily report has to be printed to close the fiscal day.
Item-level reports tell you what to bake. What sold out at nine is a production decision, not a guess.

FAQ

Q: Should bread have modifier groups?
A: Almost never. Bread is an item at a price. Use variants only where a product genuinely comes in two sizes; anything else slows the morning down.

Q: How should I organise categories?
A: Like your shelves — Bread, Pastries, Cakes, Drinks. Staff should find any item without scrolling.

Q: Do I need table assignment for the seating area?
A: Usually not. Counter hand-over with a pickup board is faster and is what most bakery cafés do. Turn it on only if you run food to tables and let guests pay later.

Q: Can I have one queue for bread and one for coffee?
A: Yes — add a second till. Extra users and devices are included; both tills see the same orders.

Q: How do I know what to bake tomorrow?
A: The item-level and hour-by-hour sales reports show what sold and when, including what ran out early. See Reports Overview.

Q: Do regulars justify a loyalty card?
A: In a bakery café, usually yes — the morning trade is the same people. Cards can be limited to categories, so coffee can be discounted without discounting bread. See Discounts.