For coffee shop owners
Coffee shop employee time tracking
Track every barista's hours without a punch clock or a shared PIN. Clock-ins are bound to the device and the network, so your timesheets match who was actually behind the bar.
The code everyone knows
A 4-digit code ends up on a sticky note by the grinder. Tie each punch to one phone and sharing it buys nothing.
Multiple shifts a day
Openers, mids, closers — each on their own shift, with clean in and out times and a late flag measured against that shift.
Owner not on-site
Look at the day from your phone. The checks run whether or not you're standing at the till.
Verified clock-ins, made for coffee shops
Every clock-in is tied to one phone and your shop's network — the same three checks behind stopping buddy punching. No biometrics, no face scans. Add shifts, leave and notifications when you need them.
What replaces the code on the back-bar wall
A four-digit code has one flaw: it travels. Once it is on a sticky note by the grinder, it clocks in whoever is holding the phone, which is not the same thing as whoever is working. DailyBrew has nothing to share. A punch is tied to the handset it came from — the same phone must do the clock-out, and a second barista cannot use a phone that has already clocked someone in that day — and to the network it came from, and optionally to a radius round the shop. Those three checks are Espresso. The device binding is per day, so a replacement phone or a cleared browser sorts itself out overnight.
Openers, mids and closers
Give each rotation its own shift and every barista sits on one, with grace minutes for arriving and for finishing. On Espresso a shift can hold different hours for each weekday, and this is the part worth reading twice: once a shift has any per-day hours at all, the days you left out become off days for it, rather than days that quietly fall back to the default times. That is usually what you want, since a weekend-only closer should not be marked absent Monday to Friday. Shift changes apply backwards as well, so restructuring one today reshapes how earlier dates are read — the console says so where you make the change.
Running the shop from somewhere you are not
Few owners are behind the bar at half six in the morning. The console runs in a browser and there are iOS and Android apps, so the day's figures — present, late, on leave, absent, leave requests waiting — are readable from wherever you happen to be. On Espresso, DailyBrew tells you things instead of waiting to be asked: a check-in from a device it has not seen that employee use, a leave request as it arrives, a summary of the day once the day is over. Those go out by push notification, by email, or into a Telegram chat if that is where you actually look.
A second shop, then a third
Two sites are where a single QR stops working. On Double Espresso one shop holds several codes, each standing for a site or a station, each with its own network and location rules or simply the shop's, and each with its own list of staff allowed to use it. A manager can be put over one code alone, so the Riverside supervisor handles Riverside's attendance and leave and nothing beyond it. Everything still reports into one account. Where the shops are genuinely separate businesses, set up a separate shop for each and switch between them from the same login instead.
What it does not do
It does not calculate pay. No hourly rates, no overtime, no payslips, no filing — it produces hours and stops, exporting to XLSX, PDF or CSV on Espresso or feeding an API where you want something more automatic. It does not talk to your till, so labour against sales is a sum you do elsewhere using the exported hours. It does not schedule: one shift per person means the weekly rota itself lives somewhere else. And it will not do split shifts, because a shift has one start and one end per day and a barista holds one shift: the person who opens and comes back for a private hire in the evening cannot have both blocks recorded. Take the whole span, gap included, or keep the second block outside DailyBrew.
Frequently asked
Is it really free?+
Yes — free forever for up to 10 active staff, and we don't ask for a card. Paid plans add one phone per person (device verification), shop WiFi only (IP restriction), leave and more.
Do staff need to install an app?+
On the free plan, yes: staff scan the QR code in the free DailyBrew app. On Espresso, no: they point their phone camera at the code and check in from the page that opens, with nothing to download, and an NFC tag works the same way because it holds the same web link. The app keeps them signed in and remembers the phone, which is why we still suggest it.
How does it stop buddy punching?+
Each clock-in is tied to a verified device and your shop's network. A punch from somebody else's phone, or from off your network, won't count — and nothing biometric is collected.
What if someone forgets their phone?+
A manager clocks them in from Today. It's saved with the manager's name, the time and the reason, so the day still adds up and nothing changes quietly.
Can I run two coffee shops from one account?+
Two ways, and they suit different setups. Double Espresso lets one shop carry several QR codes, one per site, each with its own network and location rules, its own assigned staff and optionally its own manager, all reporting together. Alternatively set up a separate shop for each and switch between them from the same login, which keeps the two entirely apart.
Does DailyBrew connect to my POS?+
Not directly. There is no till integration, so labour cost against sales is not something DailyBrew works out for you. What it offers instead is an API and a token you generate yourself on Espresso, so a system that already holds your sales figures can pull attendance for a date range and do the comparison at its end.
A barista has replaced their phone. What happens?+
Nothing needs doing. Device binding is per day, so the new handset becomes their device at the next check-in and the old one stops mattering. If new-device alerts are on you will hear about the first punch from it, which is rather the point — you want to know a phone changed, and it takes a second to recognise a legitimate change.
What does the free plan leave out?+
Free gives you the whole attendance loop for up to ten active people: QR check-in, shifts, closed days, Today and every day's hours. What it leaves out is verification and the things built on it — device binding, network restriction and geofencing — along with leave management, different hours each day, managers, notifications, exports and the API. So a shop that specifically wants punches tied to one phone is looking at Espresso.
Honest hours for coffee shops
Free for up to 10 active staff. No hardware, no biometrics, no contract.
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