We met with Ado Campos, co-founder of Bálsamo Café and the person responsible for the business’s operations and Loyverse. They implemented Loyverse in September of last year, and Ado shares his experience after a year of using the system.

Could you tell us briefly about your business and your role in it?

Bálsamo Café started as a mobile coffee bar for events. That was our first step into the business in May of last year. Since then, we have served corporate and social events where a coffee bar service was required. After that first experience, we decided to look for a small location to begin establishing the brand and its name nationwide. That is what we did in November of the same year. We opened a location in the Antiguo Cuzcatlán district, where we currently operate as a small café. At the same time, it serves as a showroom for our mobile coffee bar, allowing event clients to come and meet us, try our coffee, and decide whether they would like to hire our service for their events.

Was there a particular challenge that led you to start looking for a point-of-sale system for your business?

During our first events, we handled everything manually. When a customer approached the bar, whether at events where we were making sales or during our first contracted events, we initially recorded each order by hand. Obviously, this did not look very professional. It also took some time and affected the flow of the work we were trying to do. As a result, I began looking for options that could work for this operation and for the opening of our location.

How did you come across Loyverse? Did you try using another point-of-sale system first, or did you find Loyverse and go directly with it?

I found it because I think it has good positioning for keywords on Google. I started researching it because it was the first option that appeared to me. I looked at the user reviews and decided to go with it. There was no other option that caught my attention based on what I saw Loyverse offered, so I decided to start using it, explore it, see how it worked, and so on.

How was the implementation process? Was it easy to find the information you needed? How would you describe it?

I have worked in digital environments as a graphic designer and have experience working with digital tools and software, so it was not complicated for me. It was very easy to manage product categories, enter prices, and so on. It did not really require much effort or work in my particular case. Honestly, it was easy to upload the products, photographs, categories, and costs, and to set prices quite efficiently.

Moving on to how you use the program, which Loyverse features do you use most frequently?

The point of sale is essentially part of our daily operations because we implemented it for everyday use at the café. We use it both for our service at the location and when we go to events. So, the two operations run in parallel when we are doing both.

It is very useful for viewing categories, entering customer orders very quickly, and having detailed information about all our sales at the end of the day, reviewing results, and looking at all the metrics that are useful to us.

You mentioned metrics. Are you currently using a paid version?

Yes, I have a subscription to view my sales history without a time limit. That is the subscription I currently have active, but I know there are other features. I have not explored the paid inventory option they offer yet, but it is something we may review and start testing.

You mentioned that understanding your business metrics was quite important. How do you use the reports? Do you use them to make decisions?

They are very useful for knowing what we are selling the most and what we are not selling very much. They are also useful for our events because, after an event, we send the client a detailed report of all the drinks their guests purchased. This is something they appreciate because they see it as useful information for future events. They already know what their guests consumed the most and what they may want to purchase again, allowing them to prepare for the future. So, it is very useful for us to have statistics and measure everything we offer.

Have you noticed improvements in areas such as inventory control, customer service, sales, or decision-making?

Yes, we have better inventory control, especially with the desserts we offer at the café, because having details of incoming and outgoing inventory for each sale is very helpful. That has helped us maintain better control over our desserts and beverages.

We make a complete daily closing, and that is where we take the sales data from Loyverse and use it with our electronic invoicing system from another provider. We then complete our daily closing. Loyverse complements our other invoicing system, and for now, this is how we are operating, and it is working very well for us.

Do you think using software makes a business more efficient or more profitable?

Yes, it definitely makes it more efficient and more profitable, especially when it comes to efficiency. It helps us categorize each product and each service we want to offer, which gives us better control and allows us to know what we are selling, what is moving, and what we are offering our customers. At the same time, it helps us make decisions in the future about where we can invest more and where we should no longer invest.

I definitely believe Loyverse is a platform that helps emerging businesses become stronger and gradually become more professional. It also does not require you to commit to a fixed subscription. Instead, it allows you to explore and use paid resources for 14 days and then decide whether you need to purchase features such as unlimited inventory history or employee management, which are optional. I think that is great. You have the freedom to decide based on your needs.

Among Loyverse’s features, do you have a favorite; something you consider your right-hand tool for making business decisions?

Yes, sales by payment type and by category are the ones I use most frequently, mainly to see the number of daily sales and the items sold when I export the information by category.

Based on your experience as an entrepreneur, having started your business some time ago and expanded it considerably, what advice would you give to people who are just starting out and looking for a point-of-sale system?

What I could tell them is something I personally keep in mind: entrepreneurship is very rewarding, but it requires a lot of discipline, perseverance, and patience. Just as there can be very good days, there will be days when you may not be able to sell anything at all, and that does not define whether the business is good or not.

That is something I remind myself of every day: these are projects that you work on with care and passion over the long term. Usually, you should not expect a revolution in the short term.

I definitely believe that having partners like Loyverse makes a big difference when it comes to gradually professionalizing your business, gaining better control, and avoiding doing everything manually, which can sometimes be more tedious and complicated when it comes time to review the results. I would definitely recommend Loyverse to any type of business.