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Success Stories

Humblemaker's Coffee Shop
Goes Cashless

Multi-location | Coffeeshop

About

Humblemaker Coffee Co. of California produces premium organic craft whole bean coffees & coffee beverages.

Location

California

Restaurant type

Coffeeshop/cafe

Service type

Dine-in/QSR

“Kickfin solved our cash problems.”

Chris Smith

Co-founder, Humblemaker Coffee

Meet Chris.

Chris is the co-founder Humblemaker Coffee Co. of California, as well as its #tenforautism initiative.

Humblemaker was already available through Postmates and Grubhub and had plans to sign up with Joe, a mobile coffee app, when the impact of COVID-19 swept through the food and beverage industry.

As Humblemaker pivoted to provide curbside and order-ahead service, it became clear that moving to digital payments, wherever possible, was another smart pivot to make.

Chris wanted to reduce the amount of cash exchanged between customers and employees because of the potential for germs. Plus: as delivery and curbside orders began to pick up, so too did credit card transactions.

As a result — in a matter of days — the Seal Beach storefront began operating entirely through touchless non-cash transactions.

But that created a new problem: with little cash on hand, Humblemaker needed a different way to distribute daily tip outs to their employees.

Why Kickfin?

Chris had to quickly rework his approach to paying employees. Using a bank account was “working okay,” but it still involved bank runs, bank drops and inevitable human error.

Chris says Kickfin has proven to be a lifesaver for restaurant operators like him.

“Ultimately, I don’t want to have any cash. It just creates an accounting nightmare,” he says. “I don’t want to worry about cash missing from the time it comes in to when I’m making a bank drop. I want to log in and just see that it all lines up.”

Humblemaker’s flagship store will likely start accepting cash again at some point in the future, given the preferences of the demographic they serve. But they’ll hold on to Kickfin.

“Even if we start accepting cash again, we’ll run into situations where our ‘tips pay out’ is more than our cash on hand. And Kickfin will always solve that problem for us.”

“With Kickfin, you just don’t have to think about tipping out anymore. It’s a no brainer.”

Chris Smith

Co-founder, Humblemaker Coffee

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