One August night, at two
The cash drawers close themselves. It’s an August night, the last electronic till reconciles itself with the last banknote we took in, and once the system gives the green light we go home. No surprises in the morning, no shortfall to chase, no phone call from a clerk asking how the closing went. It has always gone the way it was supposed to.
It wasn’t always like this. For most of our forty years we ran the till ourselves, or it was run by people in flesh and bone who changed from one season to the next. Seven years ago we started a path that today we consider the most productive management investment we have ever made. It’s worth telling as a retrospective, because colleagues in the trade — pastry shops, bars, gelaterias — often ask us what we have really gained from it. Here is our answer, without diplomacy.
Where we started
In early 2019 we installed our first automated cash machine: a cash-accepting and change-dispensing device, sitting on the bar counter. Our winter customers’ surprise was clear to see: they fed in coins and banknotes and the change came back out by itself, with none of our staff ever touching the money.
The problem we wanted to solve first wasn’t the queue: it was cash in hand. Taking it out of the staff’s hands removes three things at once: a hygiene risk, a chance of error (whoever gives change makes mistakes, that’s only human), and a grey area of trust that, in a business with dozens of people on payroll in season, becomes heavy to manage — not because of anyone’s bad faith, but simply because of the statistical weight of the volumes involved.
That first machine was our test. We wanted to find out whether customers would accept it and whether it would hold up through the summer. After one full season, the answer to both questions was yes.
The timeline: one brick a year
From there on, every year we added a piece.
- Autumn 2020: a switch to a sturdier, larger-capacity till model, better suited to the summer pace.
- 2021: electronic scales integrated with the tills via QR code, and our first touch-screen kiosk at the entrance. The double keying of the price per kilogram (first the clerk, then the cashier) disappeared, and with it the typical margin of error in by-weight sales.
- 2022: an in-house web app for managing takeaway orders, developed at our own urging. After forty years, the paper slips lost in the August rush have officially been retired.
- 2023: a second automated till at the entrance for takeaway customers, and — more importantly — a till dedicated to the waiters on the terrace.
Today, seven years on, the setup looks like this: two automated tills at the entrance for takeaway customers, handling roughly thirty per cent of the flow, and one till dedicated to the waiters serving the dining room and the terrace. In winter, when the outdoor tables hibernate, the waiters’ till migrates to the bar counter and stays available to all of the staff.
The seven benefits we now consider non-negotiable
None of these was on our list back in 2019. They emerged along the way, and any single one of them would justify the price of admission.
1. No more cash in our staff’s hands. This is the original benefit, but with seven years’ experience behind us it weighs more than we expected. It is a relief for us, and even more so for those who work here: nobody ever has to explain away a shortfall they cannot account for.
2. Anyone can “do the till”. You don’t need to be quick at giving change, you don’t even need to be at ease with numbers. The machine counts, dispenses, registers. The employee accompanies the customer, doesn’t administer them. This changes who we can hire and for which roles: a great communicator who is shaky on the math can stand at the till without trouble.
3. Automatic end-of-shift reconciliation. Cash payments and electronic payments reconcile themselves, and the totals add up. The closing, which used to be half an hour of tension, is now a formality.
4. Peace of mind when we’re away. As owners, knowing that the day’s accounts do not depend on the physical presence of any one of us is a freedom that few entrepreneurs in our sector experience. You can leave, even for an entire day, without the weight of the daily total on your mind.
5. No more two cashiers in summer afternoons and evenings. For years we had to deploy two cashiers during the busiest evening and morning hours. Today, only the central hours of breakfast at the very height of summer still demand it. The two automated tills now cover that third of the flow that used to require a dedicated person. This is a structural saving, not an accounting trick.
6. Thirty per cent of takeaway traffic handled autonomously. The two tills at the entrance are not a marketing experiment: they concretely handle about thirty per cent of our takeaway transactions. For the customer they are an option (anyone who prefers the counter will always find a clerk); for us they are a release valve at peak moments.
7. Separating dining-room and takeaway accounting. Perhaps the least eye-catching benefit, but the most revolutionary from a management point of view. The waiters’ till keeps the dining-room accounts completely separate from the takeaway accounts. Table bills no longer mix with counter sales, and tracking the performance of each area has become trivial. For us, who make eighty per cent of our turnover in four months, telling apart where things work and where they don’t is the difference between a decision and a hunch.
Technology and tenderness
As we tell all this, we know it will sound cold to some readers. It happens to us regularly: every time a colleague visits our shop for the first time and sees the kiosk at the entrance, someone asks “but then what becomes of the relationship with the customer?”.
The answer is: exactly where it was before, only with more time to give it. Our conviction, after seven years, is that technology can handle the logistics, but emotion must remain handmade. A machine that counts coins frees a clerk’s time to explain the difference between two recipes of pasticciotto. A kiosk that handles a takeaway order in thirty seconds frees a waiter’s time to tell, at the table, the story of our Easter colombe.
We are a business with a double soul — seasonal in volume, artisanal in the lab — and these two souls would not coexist without automation. Without a till that takes care of the accounts, August would make us pay the price in the laboratory’s quality. The tills have not replaced anyone: they have allowed everyone to do their own job better.
What comes next
The next piece we are working on is an automated till dedicated solely to electronic payments. The logic is simple: cashless payments are by now the majority, and separating them from the cash flow will further speed up both those who pay by card and those who still favour the banknote. Call it brick number eight, if you like, and it is perfectly consistent with the way we have built the whole path: one new thing a year, no revolutions.
For those weighing the leap
If you are colleagues in the trade reading us and you are considering your first automated till, the only honest piece of advice we can give you is: don’t wait. The automated till replaces nobody, and it has replaced nobody at our place. It will free up your time for the part of the job for which you opened the pastry shop, the bar or the gelateria — the part where a customer walks in, looks you in the eye, and you have twenty seconds to make them feel they have come home.
Mirko and Franz
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