The last bag, sold twice
At 10am a regular buys the last bag of the Ethiopian at the counter. At 11am an online order comes through your Shopify store for the same coffee, because the website still shows it in stock. You email the customer to apologise and offer a swap. They ask for a refund. Later that week it happens again with a brewing kit.
At the end of the month, the stock numbers on the till and the website are both wrong, in different directions, and the spare bags in the back room are not on either. You spend Sunday evening counting bags and correcting both systems, knowing they will drift apart again by Wednesday. The online shop was meant to be easy extra income. It has become another job.
Why shelf and website disagree
- The till and the online shop each hold their own stock count.
- Updating the website after in-store sales is a manual job that gets forgotten.
- Ground coffee is made to order from whole bean stock, which neither system handles well.
- Roast dates matter, but neither system shows which bags are freshest.
- Deliveries from the roaster are added to one system and not the other.
What overselling costs you
Every oversold online order is a refund, an apology and often a lost customer who will not order again. Staff time goes into manual stock updates and fixing mistakes. You may also undersell, hiding products online because you are not sure they are in stock. And the online shop, which should be a steady extra income, becomes a source of stress.
How we share stock between till and shop
- We connect your till, such as Square or Lightspeed, with your online shop, such as Shopify or WooCommerce, so both use one stock count per product.
- In-store sales reduce online stock straight away, and online orders reduce the till's count.
- Whole bean stock is the base: ground options are sold as variants that draw on the same bags, so grind is chosen online without separate stock.
- Deliveries from the roaster are booked in once, with roast date, and both systems update.
- Online orders appear on a pick list in the cafe, with grind instructions, and are marked as packed and dispatched.
- A low stock alert tells you when to reorder retail bags from your roaster.
| Stock event | What updates |
|---|---|
| Bag sold at the counter | Till and online stock |
| Bag sold online | Online and till stock, pick list |
| Roaster delivery | Both systems, with roast date |
| Bag ground to order | Whole bean stock reduced |
Many tills and shops have ready-made connectors. We use those first and only build something if they cannot handle grind options or roast dates the way you need.
Selling beans without the apologies
Sunday evenings are yours again. When the regular buys the last Ethiopian at 10am, the website shows it as sold out by 10:01. Online orders come with the grind already chosen and appear on the pick list behind the counter. Deliveries from the roaster are booked in once. At the end of the month, the counts match the shelf, and you can see which coffees sell better online than over the counter, which is useful when choosing the next guest roast.
Is this happening to your online shop?
- Online orders come in for bags already sold.
- You update website stock by hand.
- Ground and whole bean stock are tracked separately or not at all.
- Roaster deliveries are only added to one system.
- You hide products online because you are not sure of stock.