Your cafés will keep texting, and that is fine

Short answer. Do not try to move every café onto a portal. The goal is that every order ends up in one place, whatever channel it arrived on, so nothing is lost, the roast plan is right and each account has a history you can read. Most cafés will order online if it starts from their usual order and asks for no password. The ones who will not keep texting, and you paste the message into the order yourself. They never know anything changed.

What scattered orders actually cost you

A roastery that takes orders by text, email, voicemail, at the door and in a notebook is not disorganised. It is doing what its cafés asked for. The cost is not in the channels themselves, it is in what nobody can see when the orders never meet.

• The order that was never placed. A café texts on Sunday evening, you read it on the school run, and it is under nine other messages by Monday. The café assumes the coffee is coming. Worked example: a café taking 12 kg a week at €18.20 a kilo ex VAT is €218.40 an order, and about €87 of gross profit at €7.29 a kilo. Twice a year across twenty accounts of that size is €8,736 of revenue and €3,499 of gross profit. The worse cost is what the café does on Wednesday, which is buy a bag somewhere else and find out that the somewhere else answers the phone.
• The order you cannot prove. The message said four decaf and you delivered four house espresso, or it said Thursday and you both remember Friday. Without a record with a time on it, you credit it, because arguing with a café about a text is worth less than the credit. Four kilos at €18.20 is €72.80 and a second trip.
• The roast plan built from memory. When the orders are not in one list at the cutoff, you roast what you expect rather than what was ordered. Roasting 5 kg spare on each of four coffees is 20 kg a week of stock ageing towards the end of its window, about €218 a week at a €10.91 production cost, and it is still the wrong 20 kg when a café orders something else.
• No history, so no warning. Spotting an account that is slowing needs dated orders you can sort. A notebook has dates; it does not have a median gap. Cafés almost never announce that they are leaving, they just order later and smaller, and the only way to see it is to measure each account against its own rhythm. Orders that live in four inboxes cannot be measured at all.
• It all sits with one person. The orders are on their phone, in their head, and in their handwriting. That roastery cannot hire, cannot take a week off, and cannot sell.

What goes wrong on each channel

Every channel has a specific failure, and most have a cheap fix that does not involve changing how the café orders:

Note the last row. The portal is a channel too, and it fails in the same way the others do: it depends on one person being available. A café owner writing on r/Coffee_Shop in 2026 described buying from several roasters at once, where "some take emails, some force you to use their websites, some still want texts". From the café's side of the counter, your portal is the thing making their week harder.

Roasters online describe orders arriving by text, by email and by phone. WhatsApp is common across Europe and is the same thing as a text for this purpose: a message on somebody's phone. Treat it as one more channel, not as a different problem.

The three kinds of account

Sort your book once, on paper, into three groups. The work is different for each, and trying to do the same thing to all three is what turns a small improvement into a fight.

The reason to be careful with the third group is that they tend to be the accounts you would least like to lose. A roaster on r/roasting in 2025 put it plainly: "trying to force all our accounts to some online portal would turn some of our oldest, most 'legacy' style clients sour". The same thread describes what a working split looks like from the other side: "We still have older customers that call or text, and we must put these orders in on their behalf. But 95% is very happy to use their account, as it has a 1 click re-order button."

That is the shape to aim for. Not one channel, but one record. The 95% is one roastery's number, not a target, and how close you get depends far more on what you ask of the café than on the café.

Moving the willing ones without a fight

Almost every failed rollout fails in the same way: the roastery announces a system, and the café is asked to sign up for something in order to keep doing what it was already doing. Do the opposite. Give them the finished order and let them press one thing.

1. Tell them in the channel they already use. Reply to their own text. A café that orders by WhatsApp should hear about it in WhatsApp, not in an email about a new system.
2. Have their usual order already in it. The first thing they see is what they ordered last time, at their prices, with the total. There is nothing to build and nothing to search for.
3. No password, no app. If the first screen asks them to create anything, the barista closes it and texts you. This is the whole game.
4. Do not announce a migration. "Here's this week's order, tap confirm if it's right" is a favour. "From October, orders must be placed online" is a demand.
5. Leave the old channel open, visibly. Keep answering texts in the same tone as before. A café that thinks the phone is being taken away will resist the new way on principle.
6. Count to three. After three orders placed online it is the habit, and you can stop thinking about that account.

The message itself should be three lines and should not contain the word platform:

• "Morning Ana. Here's your usual for Thursday, already in: 8 kg house, 2 kg decaf, 1 kg filter. Tap it if it's right, change it if it isn't. [link]"
• "No password to remember, it's just your page. Text me instead any week you'd rather."

The best moment to set this up is at the start, before there is a habit to change. A new account that is set up this way from the first delivery never has an old way of ordering to defend. See onboarding a new wholesale café.

The agreed usual, for cafés who would rather not think about it

Some cafés do not want a screen or a text. They want the coffee to arrive. For them the answer is not a better ordering screen, it is agreeing the quantity once and having you put the order together each week.

Agree the quantity from what the account actually does, not from what it said it would do. If the first 18 kg lasted ten days, the café is using about 12.6 kg a week, and 13 kg every Thursday is a rhythm both sides can plan around. Three rules make the difference between an arrangement that holds and one that ends in a credit:

• The café can change it or skip a week with one message, and the answer is always yes. An arrangement that needs an argument to stop is a subscription trap, and cafés drop those entirely rather than argue about one week.
• It is confirmed before it is roasted. A day before the cutoff, send what you are about to deliver and wait for a yes, so a quiet week or a closure gets caught before the green is weighed out. See how to set an order cutoff.
• It is reviewed against reality. A usual that has not changed in a year is either a very steady café or an account quietly buying its extra kilos somewhere else.

Do not agree a fixed weekly quantity in a café's first month, before the volume has settled. And never start one without the café saying the quantity out loud: a weekly order the roastery invented is how an account discovers it has been paying for coffee it did not want. Order Book does not repeat an order by itself. Each week you build the café's usual as a draft; it arrives filled, the café looks it over and confirms in one tap, and nothing is placed until it does. Or the café orders from its account, where its usual coffees lead the sheet and it sets the quantities.

The cafés who will always text

This is the group the whole page exists for, and the answer is short. You stop trying to change the channel, and you change what happens at your end of it.

The message arrives. You paste it in, or type in the note the driver brought back, and it is read against that café's own catalog: "8 house, 2 decaf" becomes 8 kg of the house espresso and 2 kg of decaf, at that café's prices, with the total. You check the lines, fix anything that came out wrong, and confirm. Fifteen seconds, and the café has a real order with a date, a price and a place in the roast plan.

Then reply in the same channel, in the same words you always used: "Got that, Marta. 8 house, 2 decaf, Thursday morning." The café sees nothing new. What changed is that the order now exists somewhere other than your phone.

Three things make this work rather than become another job:

• Do it when the message arrives, not at the cutoff. Entering nine texts in a rush on Wednesday afternoon is where the mistakes come from.
• Read it back every time. It is the proof, it costs ten seconds, and it catches the "4 decaf" that you read as "4 house" while the café still has the message on screen.
• Anyone can do it. If entering a text order requires knowing that Café Aurora means the seasonal when it says "the filter", it will always be you doing it. Write those quirks against the account, not in your head.

Once every order is in one place, the accounts that never left the phone get the same benefits as everyone else without lifting a finger: they appear in the roast plan, they have a history, and they show up on the call list when they start slipping.

"Why are you changing this?"

When a café asks this, it is almost never curiosity. It is one of three worries, and answering the wrong one makes it worse:

"Is this more work for me?"

The real fear. Answer it first and concretely: "It's less. Your order's already in it, you tap once. And you can still text me." Never answer with a feature.

"Are prices going up?"

Cafés have learned that new systems arrive with new prices. Say it straight: "Nothing about your prices or your terms changes. If they ever do, you'll hear it from me first, with notice." If a rise is genuinely coming, that is a separate conversation on a separate day.

Doing both at once teaches the account that the system was the price rise.

"Am I losing my person?"

Often the deepest one, especially at accounts that have been with you for years. "You've got my number and it isn't changing. This is so nothing gets lost when I'm at the roaster."

A short script for the call or the visit, which should take under a minute:

• "I've set your orders up so I can see them all in one place, because I dropped one last month and I'm not doing that again."
• "You've got your own page now, with your usual order at the top. No password, no app."
• "If you'd rather just text me like always, do that. I'll put it in at my end. Nothing changes for you."
• "The only thing I'd ask is that the order is with me by [Tuesday 4pm], because that's when I plan the roast."

Then stop. The one thing genuinely worth asking of every café, whatever channel they use, is the cutoff, because that is the constraint the roastery cannot work around.

What not to do

• An ultimatum with a date. "From 1 October we only accept orders through the portal." You will lose accounts over it, and they will be the old ones with the long histories.
• A portal that needs an account. A password, an email verification, an app to install. Each step loses part of the group that was willing, and the ones who fall out are the cafés where the person who orders is not the person who signed up.
• Charging more for phone orders. A surcharge tells your oldest accounts that the way they have always worked with you is now a fault. It is the sort of line an owner repeats to other owners. A discount for ordering online is the same message in politer clothes.
• Hiding something behind the account. A price break, a new coffee, or the order history that is only visible to cafés who use it. Cafés notice, and it is the ultimatum again with a smile on it.
• Going quiet on the old channel. Slow replies to texts after the accounts go out read as punishment, whether or not you meant it that way.
• Rolling it out to everyone in one week. Start with five accounts that will find it easy, fix what confuses them, then widen. The first café to try it should not be your biggest.
• Changing the channel and the cutoff on the same day. Two changes at once, and the café will blame the one it liked less.

Questions roasters ask

Should I make all my wholesale cafés order through an online portal?

No. An ultimatum costs you the oldest accounts and buys you nothing you could not get another way. Offer an account to the cafés who will use one, and keep entering the orders that arrive by text, email or phone yourself. What matters is that every order ends up in the same place, not that every café typed it in.

How do I get WhatsApp and text orders into one system?

By entering them, in seconds rather than minutes. Paste the message, let it be matched against that café's own catalog and prices, check the lines and confirm. The café keeps texting the same number and never sees the difference; you get a dated, priced order with a history behind it.

What do I say to a café that refuses to order online?

"No problem, keep texting me." Then do not raise it again. Cafés that order the same way they have for nine years are usually your steadiest accounts, and the fifteen seconds it takes you to enter their order is cheaper than the conversation you would have to have to change them.

Is it fair to charge more for phone orders than for online orders?

It is legal and it is a bad idea. A surcharge on phone orders tells your oldest accounts that the way they have always worked with you is now a fault, and it is the kind of line an owner repeats to other owners. A discount for ordering online sends the same message in politer clothes.

How many of my cafés will actually order online?

More than you expect and fewer than all of them, and the split depends on how you introduce it. A roaster on r/roasting put his own at 95% on their account and a remainder who call or text, which his team enters for them. Treat that as one roastery's number, not a benchmark, and plan for a group who never will.

What about orders left on voicemail after the cutoff?

Enter the order as soon as you hear it, then call back and say plainly whether it made the roast or goes on the next one. The damage from a late voicemail is not the lateness, it is the café assuming it is coming. See the guide to setting an order cutoff.

Where Order Book fits

Order Book is built for exactly this split. Each café gets its own account, signed in with the address you already hold for it — no password, no app — in its own language, with its own prices and its usual order at the top of the sheet; it sets the quantities, can change or add to an order until the cutoff you set, and can read every past order. For the café that wants it done for it, save its usual as a draft and send it over: the café is told you have prepared an order, looks it over and confirms in one tap, and nothing is placed until it does.

For the cafés that will always text, an order can be created from a pasted message, an email or rows copied from a spreadsheet, matched against that café's catalog and prices, and you check the lines before confirming; a line it cannot place is listed, not guessed. This is not automatic: Order Book does not read your WhatsApp or your inbox, and nobody's messages are monitored. You paste, it matches, you confirm. From there the order is the same as any other, so the roast plan, the picking list and the delivery notes are built from all of them together, and every account has the order history that drift detection needs.

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