Author | Jake Poinier
Higher Grounds Coffee House in Crestline, California, offers everything you’d want in a specialty coffee shop—and then some. In addition to high-grade coffees, they have a roster of specialty drinks made with their own syrups, such as lavender latte and chai tea.
If you’re hungry, you can kick off the day with made-to-order breakfast sandwiches or some of their in-house baked goods. During the week, they offer build-your-own sandwiches with a wide range of meats, cheeses, veggies, dressings and breads.
But Higher Grounds is also a bit unusual in the world of java. While it had been in operation for about 15 years under several different owners, the shop was purchased by Crestline First Baptist Church a little over five years ago. In addition to a subtle nod to the adjacent church, the name is apt for a location nearly a mile high up in the San Bernardino Mountains.
Beyond drinks and food, Higher Grounds offers an ever-changing array of items on consignment. “For example, we have a World Missions coffee that supports mission work in Latin America,” says Bill Mellinger, church pastor who also performs coffee shop bookkeeping duties. “That’s our single-origin coffee. We also sell some of their products that help support their mission, including protecting growers and workers against human trafficking. And really, that’s been one of our missions, adding value when anyone buys our coffees.”
Other consignment items include a constant rotation of artwork from a variety of local artists. “It helps them and also blesses us with always having new, fresh artwork in the shop,” Mellinger continues. “This summer, we had a photographer on the mountain, so we featured his prints, which he framed in reused wood from projects he has worked on as a contractor.”
Adding high-tech to Higher Grounds
Given his dual role for the shop and church, Mellinger realized early on that he’d need to employ technology to streamline the processes.
“As a church planter (an entrepreneur who starts new churches), I have some technological savvy. I actually helped create a whole computer system for our church some 40 years ago when computers were first coming out,” he says. “But even though I’ve kept up to date with technology, I don’t have accounting skills or training—that wasn’t covered in seminary! I knew I needed to have electronic tools to make my life easier.”
Clover, a point-of-sale system, was Mellinger’s first addition to the lineup. “We’ll still have a fair number of cash payments and cash tips, but most people use cards at this point,” he says.
The shop’s Clover system is tied to an electronic cash register and printer with a large display for staff members, and a mini-Clover that customers can use to pay and tip with credit or debit by swiping, touching or inserting, and generate a receipt.
“We used to have to turn the Clover around for the customer so they could put in their information, and then turn it back around to us,” Mellinger says. “Having the free-standing device just for the customer makes it easier for them and hands-free for our staff.”
Perfecting product sales
While Clover simplified the food and beverage transactions, it wasn’t suitable for handling their consignment sales. After experimenting with a few different payment apps, Mellinger concluded that Zelle® was the perfect answer.
“Zelle® makes it so much easier when it comes to paying people for their products that they’ve put on consignment,” he says. “It works directly with our bank account, which is really a positive for record keeping since the people we’re paying change from month to month.”
Unlike apps that don’t provide a category for expense logging, Zelle® gives Mellinger the details of how much they paid World Mission for coffee or how much they paid artists for their works. That makes it easier to separate the consignment reimbursements from his other costs and separate consignment income from the shop’s income, while also making it simpler to track and categorize inventory.
Seamless accounting
Mellinger also appreciates how Zelle® ties into California Bank & Trust (CB&T) systems. “I do all my banking online, so I download everything from our CB&T bank account into QuickBooks,” he says. “Every day, I’m downloading our income, checks and expenses, so I’m always up to date and know where we stand with our accounts. CB&T’s online commercial banking tool gives me the detail of every transaction, so it’s right there for me.”
By adding Clover and Zelle®, cashless transactions have also become seamless transactions. “I’m a pastor, not an accountant, but I still need to balance the books,” Mellinger says. “Having all these tools that work together as one just really makes my job easy.”
This content was originally published in our award-winning magazine In Your Corner. See Issue 15 here: In Your Corner Magazine | Fall 2023
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