Frugal Innovation Meets Smart Ops: How CloudMates Helped Brew & Fold Streamline Cafe, Laundry & Lounge Operations
Location: Manila, Philippines
Industry: Hospitality & Retail
Customer: Brew & Fold
Solutions: Cloud POS | Customer App | Vision-Powered Footfall Analytics
The Challenge
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Brew & Fold is an emerging lifestyle brand in Manila that combines a cafe, laundromat, and cozy lounge spaces into a seamless, experience-driven business. With multiple service categories running under one roof, managing operations across different verticals and locations—each with its own rhythm—was increasingly difficult.
Some of the key challenges included:
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No centralized view of orders and customer traffic.
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Difficulty measuring unique customer visits and walk-ins.
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Lack of data-driven insights on peak hours and lounge occupancy.
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Limited budget and infrastructure to deploy large-scale enterprise systems.
The CloudMates Approach: Frugal, Smart, and Scalable
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At CloudMates, we believe in frugal innovation—delivering high-impact solutions without bloated costs or complexity. Here's how we made it happen for Brew & Fold:
Centralized Cloud POS (Built on Serverless AWS Stack)
We built a cloud-based Point-of-Sale system that unified all service verticals—cafe, laundry, and lounge—into one dashboard. It supports:
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Order tracking across categories
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Inventory management
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Basic CRM & repeat customer tagging
Business Impact:
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Reduced manual coordination across service counters
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Enabled mobile/tablet-based ordering for flexible floor ops
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Made it easier to manage promotions and loyalty programs
Customer-Facing App (For Ordering, Tracking & Payments)
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To enhance user experience, we deployed a lightweight web and mobile app for customers.
Features included:
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Order placement (cafe/laundry)
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Queue tracking and notifications
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Digital payment integration
Business Impact:
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Improved operational efficiency by 30%
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Increased repeat visits with personalized experiences
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Reduced waiting time and customer frustration
Vision Powered Footfall Intelligence
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The most innovative part?
We used low-cost CCTV feeds + computer vision models to identify unique customer visits, track footfall, and match them with POS transactions.
How it works:
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AI model detects and anonymizes unique individuals via camera feeds
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System correlates timestamped visits with POS data (orders, services availed)
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Built a database of “anonymous unique visits” and mapped it to real transactions
Business Impact:
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Accurate understanding of walk-ins vs actual customers
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Real-time analytics for peak hour staffing and lounge utilization
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Data-driven decisions for promotions and layout optimization
Why It Matters: Scalable Intelligence Without the Overhead
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This project is a proof point that you don’t need to invest heavily to harness AI and cloud.
With minimal infrastructure and maximum reuse of existing systems (like CCTV), Brew & Fold now operates with intelligence usually reserved for enterprise retail chains.
What they gained:
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360° visibility of customer engagement
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Improved staff planning and resource allocation
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Better business decisions through data
Final Thoughts
Brew & Fold is more than just a cafe—it’s a blueprint for resilient, modern, and customer-centric operations. And CloudMates is proud to power this transformation with smart, scalable, and cost-effective tech.
Want to do more with less?
Let’s talk: hello@cloudmates.me