Counter rings up a 4-modifier oat latte in 8 seconds, splits tip-out by hours worked, and prints to your existing Star TSP143 — no proprietary hardware lock-in.
Tap the drink, swipe the modifier shelf. Oat, extra shot, half-decaf, half-caf — average rung-up time across 1,402 shops is 8.1 seconds.
When the Spectrum line goes down at 7:14am, Counter keeps ringing, queues 72 hours of charges, and reconciles cleanly the moment wifi returns.
Pool by hours worked, by role, or by station. Counter calculates tip-outs at close, pushes to Gusto on Sunday — no Excel, no whiteboard math.
Every Counter kit ships pre-paired. Plug them in, sign in once, and the tablet, KDS, printer, and reader find each other on your local Wi-Fi in under 90 seconds.
2.4% card processing on all plans — no platform fee stacked on top. Hardware is yours after 12 months on the kit option.
Bring-your-own-hardware? Knock $20/mo off either plan. We support Star, Epson, Stripe Terminal M2, BBPOS WisePOS E.
"Before Counter we'd lose 11 minutes off the 8 AM rush every Tuesday — that's the Park Slope school crowd, our biggest day-part. The receipt printer would jam, the iPad would reboot, somebody's tip-out wouldn't add up. Six months in, our Tuesday line is 38% shorter and I haven't touched a spreadsheet."
"What I didn't expect: the tip-pool transparency. Every barista sees the math in their app on Sunday morning. We've stopped having those Monday-morning arguments about who got what."
Yes — Counter is offline-first by design. Every charge writes to a local encrypted SQLite ledger on the tablet first, then syncs to our backend. We've measured 72 hours of full operation off-grid in a Brooklyn power test (Aug 2025). Tap-to-pay continues working via cached EMV scripts; we settle automatically once you're back online, with idempotency keys preventing double-charges.
You set weights per role (e.g. counter 1.0, bar 0.8, kitchen 0.4) and split policy per shop. At close, Counter calculates each person's share by hours worked × role weight, shows the math line-by-line, and pushes a payroll file to Gusto/ADP/Justworks on Sunday. Staff sees their own line in the Counter Team app, signed off by managers.
Yes, both — plus ChowNow, DoorDash Drive, and Uber Eats. Orders route straight to KDS with the right channel tag (we mark Toast Online tickets in orange so your bar knows what's a pickup). Menu sync is bi-directional: edit in Counter, see it on Square Online within 12 seconds.
The CR-1 reader is $89 outright, or included in the kit lease ($39/mo, yours after 12 months). Tap, chip, and swipe all included; no per-tap surcharge. Solo plan gets one, Multi includes one per location with extras at $79.
No. Counter runs on any iPad (10th gen+) or Android tablet (Android 12+). We support Star TSP143/mC-Print3, Epson TM-m30, and any EMV reader on Stripe Terminal — BBPOS WisePOS E, M2, S700. Bring-your-own-hardware saves you $20/mo.
We'll ship a Counter Kit, port your menu, and have a real human on your bar for opening day. If you don't love it after 30 days, we'll pay return shipping.