Order-ahead app and stamp card for a three-outlet coffee shop.
The family has served the same neighbourhood regulars since 1987. Their morning rush was turning away office workers who couldn’t wait twenty minutes, and the paper stamp cards kept getting lost in the wash.
Off-the-shelf ordering apps forced them into café menus that didn’t fit: no way to express “siew dai” or “gao”, and fees that ate most of the margin on a S$1.80 kopi. A government productivity grant covered part of a custom build, which made the numbers work.
Our approach
- Menu in kopitiam languageDrinks are built the way they’re ordered: base, milk, sweetness, strength, hot or iced. The app shows the result in kopitiam shorthand, which is exactly what goes on the kitchen ticket.
- A stamp card that works like the old oneTen cups, one free. No points, no tiers. We kept the familiar mechanic and simply moved it onto the phone and the receipt printer.
- Pickup shelf, not deliveryOrders print at the counter with a pickup time. No riders, no extra fees, no change to how the kitchen runs.
- A website that sends people to the appOutlet pages with live opening hours and the menu, plus a single button into ordering.
What we’d do differently
We underestimated the older regulars. Fewer than one in five customers over 60 use the app, and the outlets still keep paper cards for them. In hindsight we would have designed a printed-card option from the start instead of adding it in month three.
“My father was worried an app would make us like the chains. It didn’t. The regulars still get their kopi the way they like it, they just don’t have to wait.”
Services on this project: Mobile app, Website, Branding refresh.