Order-ahead for indie cafés

Skip the queue.
Not the café.

The Usual is a tiny app for the cafés you already love. Tap your order before you leave the library, walk in, pick it up. No chains, no delivery markup, no defaulting to the place with the loudest sign.

● Live in Bloomsbury14 indie cafés · 2,400+ students
Ready in
4 min
Stamp earned
+1 across cafés
Skip queue
~9 ahead
9:41
Tuesday, 9:41
Morning, Iris.
IM
Oat flat white
FIELDS · 3 MIN WALK
£3.40
Store Street Espresso
160 M · OPEN
Knockbox Coffee
340 M · OPEN
Order your usual
For café owners

A digital channel that doesn't ask for the keys.

No monthly fee. No new POS. No marketplace contract that quietly trains your customers to use someone else's brand. You only pay when an order actually happens — and you keep the customer.

Fields · Pickup queue
Live
Iris M. Now09:41 · 4 MIN
1× Oat flat white · extra hot · no sugar
Sam K.09:48 · 11 MIN
1× Cortado · 1× Almond croissant
Priya R.10:00 · 23 MIN
1× Filter (V60) · 1× Sourdough toast w/ butter
Theo W.10:15 · 38 MIN
2× Espresso · 1× Pain au chocolat
Today · 47 orders · £312.40Next bump in 3:12
i

Pay per order, never per month.

A small flat fee on each pickup. If we don't bring you orders, we don't make money. You'll never see a £79/month invoice for an empty dashboard.

ii

Lives next to your till — not over it.

Pickup tickets land on a tablet or a printer. Set your own prep times, pause the queue when you're slammed, refund a coffee in two taps.

iii

Your customers, by name.

You see who's a regular. We don't rank you against a chain, hide your branding, or rent your customer list back to you.

Cross-café loyalty

One stamp card. Every indie on the street.

Students don't drink the same coffee in the same spot every day. The Usual rewards the habit, not the brand — earn stamps anywhere on the network, redeem them anywhere on the network.

Iris's card

7 of 10
i
i
i
i
i
i
i
8
9
EARNED ACROSS 5 CAFÉS THIS WEEK3 LEFT

Cafés on her card

A stamp at any of these counts toward the same free coffee. The reward is paid out by the network, not the café — so independents aren't subsidising each other's regulars.

FieldsStore Street EspressoKnockboxContinental StoresLondon GrindBloomsbury BeansBrunswick CaféTavi Coffee+ 6 more
How it works

Four taps, then a coffee.

It's not a marketplace, a delivery app, or a loyalty wallet pretending to be cool. It's an order button for the cafés you walk past anyway.

01

Open the app on your way out.

Your usual is one tap. Or browse what's open within a five-minute walk.

02

Pick a café, tweak your order.

Oat, no sugar, extra hot — the café sees the same thing it would scribble on a cup.

03

Pay and watch the timer.

The café accepts and gives you a real prep window. No hopeful guesses.

04

Walk in, say your name, leave.

Earn a stamp. Redeem it later, anywhere on the network.

Student reps program

Run your campus. Get paid in coffee money.

Reps and societies sign cafés they love, pull their friends onto the app, and earn ongoing commission. We'd rather pay students than buy ads.

Average rep · monthly
£428

From a portfolio of 4 signed cafés and ~80 invited students. Top reps clear four figures.

Café-side GMV3% · ongoing
Invited-user GMV2% · 12 months
Café signing bonus£40 · once
Society pool kickback0.5% · GMV
i

Sign the cafés you actually go to.

We give you a one-page deck and a QR-code stand. Bring us anywhere students already queue.

ii

Get your friends on (without being weird).

Personal invite link. They get their first coffee at half price; you get a cut of every order they place for a year.

iii

Run with your society, split the pool.

Society-coded signups feed into a shared kickback. Funds events, books, beer — whatever your treasurer is into.

Demand-led launches

We don't list a café until students ask for it.

Every café starts as a signal page. If enough locals tap "I'd order here," we onboard the café. If not, we don't waste their time — or yours. The map you see is the map that's actually working.

Bloomsbury · this week

Pending signals

UPDATED 12 MIN AGO
Continental Stores · Tavistock Pl142 / 100 ✓
Tavi Coffee · Tavistock Sq81 / 100
Bloomsbury Beans · Marchmont St56 / 100
Russell's · Russell Sq23 / 100
Continental Stores hit 100 — onboarding starts Friday.Verified ✓
Honest answers

Questions, mostly from cafés.

Is The Usual a delivery app?

+
No. Pickup only. We don't want to be the reason your latte arrives lukewarm in a paper bag, and cafés don't want to pay 30% for that either.

How much does it cost a café to join?

+
Nothing up front and no monthly fee. We take a small flat fee per completed order. If we don't bring you orders, you don't pay us anything.

Do I need a new till?

+
No. Pickup tickets land on a tablet or a thermal printer. Most cafés are taking orders within an hour of signup.

What's the catch with the rep program?

+
No catch. We pay reps because they convert better than ads. Anyone with a student email can apply; commission is paid monthly via bank transfer or Wise.

How do you decide which areas to launch in?

+
We launch when a critical mass of students in one area have asked for it. If your campus isn't live yet, drop a signal and we'll come find you.

Where do my loyalty stamps live?

+
In the app, attached to your account — not to any one café. Earn anywhere on the network, redeem anywhere on the network. Stamps don't expire for 90 days.