The Coffee Tech Stack series is presented by our partner, Square.
Most scrappy business owners can accomplish a lot using free tools, from spreadsheets to documentation in Notion. But once a business grows—either by opening more locations or pursuing new sales channels—free tools might no longer cut it.
Rebel Dog Coffee Company understands the pains of growing out of free tools firsthand. Established in 2017 as a small coffee shop housed in a former restaurant space in Plainville, Connecticut, the business has since grown significantly. Now, nine years later, Rebel Dog operates four locations, plus a roastery with a wholesale and ecommerce program.
Kaitlin Higgins, head of marketing and communications at Rebel Dog Coffee, has been with the company since the beginning. Throughout her tenure, she has helped the business adopt various technological tools and software programs to keep it growing and operating efficiently.
With future retail and roasting growth in mind, Higgins says that the Rebel Dog team has learned to be careful with their software choices. “We choose software that will be able to scale with us,” she says.
The Center of Operations: The POS System
Rebel Dog Coffee currently operates shops in Plainville, Farmington, East Hartford, and Berlin, Connecticut. Each location serves espresso, coffee, and tea; offers an expansive food menu; and provides both online ordering and delivery.
Given the scope of its operations, Rebel Dog needed a point of sale system capable of providing employees with full-service dining and menu functionality across all four locations. Ultimately, it chose Toast. “Toast is the lifeblood of our brick-and-mortar establishments,” Higgins says. “Beyond transactions and daily service, it’s where everyone clocks in. We’re even able to use it for a good chunk of our marketing.”
Rebel Dog’s loyalty and rewards program are all integrated within its Toast POS, as Higgins explains. That allows it to send text promotions directly to customers who enroll via the system. It also uses Toast for email marketing campaigns. “We capture emails when they sign up for the loyalty rewards program,” she says. “From there it’s easy to create discounts or specials straight from Toast … that’s nice, keeping it all in one place.”
While Higgins acknowledges that Toast is a comprehensive system, there are certain tasks she still prefers using spreadsheets for. Updating the seasonal menu options for each location is one such task. “I create a Google spreadsheet where I have the prices, the title, the description, everything,” says Higgins. “And then I can go in and copy and paste that data into Toast when we’re switching things up seasonally or making price changes.”
Investing in a Roastery to Grow Into
Rebel Dog initially served coffee from Irving Farm Coffee Roasters—a roastery in Millerton, New York—but began roasting its own coffee in 2021. Before they bought a roaster and set up a dedicated space for it, members of the team commuted to Brooklyn to rent time on a Loring at Shared Roasting.
Higgins says the Rebel Dog team thought about buying a roaster that would allow them to scale as they built the new facility. “The roaster we chose was a lot bigger than what most roasteries start out with,” says Higgins. “But at that time, we already had three locations and knew that we were going to need that size capacity of a machine soon anyway. So we kind of go into decision-making knowing we need to choose equipment and technology that will be able to grow and scale with us.”
Rebel Dog went with the Loring S35 Kestrel roaster—partly because the team was already used to roasting on a Loring, but also for its Smart Roast feature. Smart Roast is a built-in software program that saves profiles and can autopilot a roast if desired. According to Loring’s website, this featuerr uses “advanced automation and real-time data control to manage airflow, heat, and roast profiles automatically.”
“On our biggest production days, we’re roasting 500–600 pounds a day,” Higgins says. “Being able to have the Loring run on an automated profile while the next batch is being weighed out is really helpful.”
Rebel Dog also has an Ikawa sample roaster to roast small batches of green coffee. The team additionally relies on Cropster, a roasting profile and green coffee inventory management software, to record and compare roast profiles.
Beyond the immediate needs of its roasting operations, Rebel Dog chose Shopify to manage its website and ecommerce store. Higgins highlights that Shopify’s ability to connect with Cropster was a key factor in choosing the software. “We don’t use it right now, but down the line, if it helps us simplify our inventory and production schedule, then we can integrate that,” she says.
While Cropster helps the team keep track of green coffee inside the roastery, Higgins uses Google Sheets to manage the status of the green coffee that’s been contracted with various importers, or which is located at warehouses across the country. Doing so allows her total control over the data within the organization. “We have a lot of options for information storage and analyzing data that are built into these apps,” she says. “But also, I know how our company needs the data.”
As Rebel Dog looks to the future, Higgins says the team will continue to adopt tools that allow them to grow into new locations and strengthen existing ones, as well as improve their green buying and roasting programs. “We’ve been really lucky to land on tools that give us room to expand instead of outgrowing them every couple of years,” she says.
Sponsored by SQUARE
The Coffee Tech Stack series is presented by Square. Square is a point of sale technology provider and longtime innovator that now offers a comprehensive suite of tools built specifically to help coffee shops and roasters operate smoothly and profitably.
