How The Little Cafe stopped losing Sundays to payroll and paperwork.
A single-location coffee shop with 11 part-time employees and zero admin staff. OneCo handled everything from banking to tip distribution from day one.
8 hrs
Saved per month
on payroll and HR admin
11
Part-time staff
onboarded in a single week
$0
Tip pooling errors
since switching to OneCo
1 day
To open banking
no branch visit required
The Little Cafe
Austin, TX · Est. 2019 · 1 location · 11 employees
Running a café is already a full-time job. Payroll shouldn't be another one.
Sara opened The Little Cafe in Austin's East Side with a straightforward idea: great coffee, a warm space, and a small team who cared. What she didn't plan for was the administrative weight of managing 11 part-time employees — each with different hours, different tip amounts, and different withholding situations.
She was using a personal checking account for the business, calculating tip pools on a whiteboard, and running payroll through a consumer app that wasn't built for variable hours or tip reporting. Every other Sunday she'd spend four hours reconciling hours, splitting tips, and hoping she'd entered everything correctly.
She found OneCo after a Google search for "payroll for coffee shop." Within a week, the entire operation had changed.
From spreadsheets to sorted in a week.
Business banking opened before noon.
The owner applied for a OneCo business checking account from her phone between the morning rush and lunch prep. It was approved and funded by the time the afternoon shift started.
All 11 staff onboarded digitally.
Every barista and cashier — full-time and part-time alike — completed W-4s, direct deposit setup, and I-9 verification through a single OneCo link. No printing. No in-person HR session.
Tip pooling automated for the first time.
OneCo calculated and distributed tip pool amounts across all eligible employees each pay period. What used to be a hand-calculated spreadsheet became a two-minute review and approval.
Full financial picture in one place.
Cash from the POS, payroll liabilities, and the business checking balance all visible in one dashboard. The owner stopped guessing at whether she could afford to hire a weekend barista.
"I spent four hours every other Sunday on payroll. Now I approve it in five minutes while the espresso pulls. I didn't know it could be this easy."
Sara T.
Owner, The Little Cafe · Austin, TX
What running on OneCo actually looks like.
Tip distribution
Before
Manual whiteboard math each shift, then entered into a spreadsheet
After
Calculated automatically each pay period based on hours worked and POS data
Part-time payroll
Before
Variable hours manually tracked across a consumer payroll app not designed for hospitality
After
Hours logged, tips calculated, taxes withheld, and direct deposits sent — automatically
Business banking
Before
Personal checking used for all business expenses, no separation of cash flow
After
Dedicated business account with debit card, no monthly fees, and real-time balance visibility
Ready to run your café like Sara does?
Get started free. No credit card. No commitment. Just a cleaner way to run your business.