As part of our ongoing road trip series, we, Jef from Sales and Ian, Solutions Architect at apg® (a.k.a. Thelma & Louise), visit retailers across the country to uncover real-world challenges and share practical insights. Along the way, we explore how smarter cash management can transform store operations. Names are changed, stories are real, and the miles keep adding up.
This week, our road trip took us to a well-known coffee shop chain with cafés spread all over the country. You know the type, constant queues, high energy, and coffee flowing from sunrise to sunset. Looking like a well-organized beehive.
But behind the scenes? A very different story.
“About 80% of our payments are still cash.”
That alone sets the stage. Now scale that across dozens (or more) locations… and things get complicated fast.
And then came the real eye-opener:
“Our total cash handling cost? Around six million euros per year.”
Across the entire chain.
When costs multiply
In a single café, cash handling is already a challenge. Across an entire chain, it becomes a serious operational and financial burden.
Together with their central operations team, we broke down where that €6 million annual cost actually comes from:
- Cash counting labor (twice daily, across all locations)
- Multiply opening and closing procedures by every café, every day—this becomes a massive labor cost.
- Cash-in-transit (CIT) fees at scale
- Frequent pickups from multiple locations, each adding to the total bill.
- Back-office workload (store + HQ)
- Local managers and central teams both tied up managing, tracking, and reconciling cash.
- Dead cash across the network
- Significant amounts of money sitting idle in safes across all stores.
- Shrinkage and discrepancies
- Small errors per store quickly add up to big losses chain wide.
- Training and standardization challenges
- Ensuring consistent cash handling procedures across all cafés is easier said than done.
- Operational inefficiencies at peak times
- Coffee rush + cash = pressure, delays, and mistakes.
As Thelma pointed out while reviewing their numbers:
“It’s not one big problem; it’s hundreds of small ones multiplied across the entire network.”
Starting small: A smarttill® test in selected cafés
Instead of rolling out a solution everywhere at once, the chain took a smart approach:
Start with a smarttill® proof of concept (POC) in a few selected cafés.
smarttill® can be installed for a test period, allowing the retailer to measure real impact before scaling.
Before deployment, our team conducted a thorough site survey, both at store level and with central operations. We collected data on:
- Transaction volumes per café
- Cash vs. card ratios (that 80% really stood out)
- Peak hour pressure points
- Staff workflows and POS interaction
- Cash collection schedules and costs
- Back-office reconciliation processes
This gave us a clear baseline, and a way to measure success when comparing these numbers after the test period with smarttill®.
Early results: From chaos to control
After a few weeks of running smarttill® in the test cafés, the feedback has been very consistent:
- Valuable employee time saved thanks to automatic cash counting
- Fewer discrepancies and near-elimination of human error
- Faster service during busy coffee rushes
- Reduced pressure on employees
And when combining smarttill® with currentsee®, apg’s cash management SaaS platform, the chain gained something even more valuable:
- Central visibility across all participating cafés
- Real-time overview of cash positions per store
- Better control of cash movements
- Data-driven optimization of CIT schedules
- Clear, automated reporting for HQ
The result:
- Reduced pressure on store managers
- Standardized processes across locations
- Less cash handling costs overall
For a chain, that visibility is a game changer.
Can they eliminate €6 Million? Not entirely, but…
Let’s be realistic.
No solution will completely remove a €6 million cost base.
But here’s what Thelma & Louise are confident about:
- A significant portion of these costs can be reduced
- Labor savings scale quickly across multiple locations
- Cash becomes predictable and manageable
- ROI accelerates when rolling out chain-wide
Louise put it nicely while we were watching the lunchtime rush:
“Fix this in one café is nice. Fix it across the whole chain is transformational.”
Thelma nodded again. That’s two nods this trip, must be serious.
Final Thoughts from the Road
This visit confirmed something we see more and more:
For chains with high cash usage, the challenge isn’t just handling cash, it’s handling it consistently and efficiently everywhere.
With 80% cash payments, this coffee chain isn’t going cashless anytime soon.
But they are getting smarter about it.
And if the POC results are anything to go by, those smarttills will soon be popping up in cafés all across the country.
We’ll keep you posted.
Until then, back on the road.
– Thelma & Louise 🚗☕
