Sunday's roster lives in your head.
We drafted it Friday.
Illinois floor is $16.60. We pull 13 weeks of your Square data and draft next week — a CTA and Metra Saturday shouldn't staff like a regular Tuesday morning.
Coffee shop scheduling for Chicago, IL.
Chicago, IL
Chicago's minimum wage is $16.60/hr for employers with 4 or more employees as of 2025-07-01; tipped workers have a $12.62/hr minimum cash wage, and the employer must make up any gap if base pay plus tips does not reach the full Chicago minimum wage. The Illinois statewide floor remains $15.00/hr with a $9.00/hr tipped cash wage outside higher local rules. Illinois overtime is generally 1.5x after 40 hours in a workweek. Chicago Fair Workweek also requires covered employers to provide predictable schedules and compensation for certain changes.
Chicago coffee demand splits across morning commute rushes, afternoon walk-in traffic, and weekend brunch pulls. The same staffing for all three will overstaff one of them.
What changes Tuesday
It's 6:30 a.m. The The Loop crowd is already in line. By 9, the morning is over.
Every scheduler we've ever seen asks the manager to type in the busy hours by hand. The manager has thirteen other things to do. So the schedule is a guess wearing software.
Three months of your Chicago mornings already sit in your Square account. Real numbers. Hour by hour. The thing nobody flips through during a Sunday rebuild.
You still run the shop. We're not pretending the app knows your team better than you do.
Both of us did time behind a register before we wrote a line of code. The Sunday rebuild is the moment Coordinex was built for. A The Loop weekday and a River North Saturday don't staff the same shift, and one citywide average can't tell them apart. We don't claim to run your shop. We just stop you from guessing the busy hours — using the Square history your block already proved.
Connect Square — 4 minutes
We connect to your Square account and read three months of hourly sales. We don't change a thing in your Square account. Sign in, give read-only permission, done.
Next week, drafted in 12 minutes
Reads three months of your hourly Square sales and drafts next week from that. You spend 12 minutes editing instead of 90 building from scratch. Illinois wage assumptions stay visible before publish.
Every Sunday, your demand curve sharpens
Last week's actual sales feed back in. A demand model fitted to your shop adjusts. Next week's draft starts from a smaller error than the last.
For the people who actually pour the coffee.
How Chicago coffee shops run differently
- Loop office mornings change one part of the curve. Should not be averaged into every Chicago shift. Coordinex learns whether that signal actually appears in your Square history.
- Lakefront tourism adds another staffing layer. Can pull a different daypart than The Loop or River North. The schedule should reflect where your shop actually sits.
- During CTA and Metra commute windows, the morning curve runs hotter and longer than a regular weekday. A flat schedule will miss it.
- The wall calendar in the kitchen — the one with three names crossed out — finally retires. Mara posts Tuesday, Jess covers it, you sign off from the bar.
Frequently asked
01What does Coordinex actually read from Square?+
Hourly sales, ticket counts, and item sales for the last three months. Read-only. We don't write back, we don't change menus, we don't touch payments.
02My baristas keep asking for advances. Does Coordinex help?+
Earned wage access is built in. They see what they've already earned mid-pay-period and can pull it without going to a payday lender. We don't take a cut from them. You don't get the awkward Monday text.
03We've got someone clocking in for a friend. Can the app catch it?+
Yes. Geofenced clock-in checks the phone is actually at the shop. Buddy-punch detection flags the patterns where one phone clocks in two people. We don't want you to be the cop. We want the clock to be honest.
04Honest question — does it work on Android?+
Not yet. Coordinex is iPhone-only right now. We'd rather ship one platform that's actually good than two that are half-finished. Android is on the list. We won't put a date on it until it's real.
05How much?+
Free up to 5 teammates — no card. $9.99/mo Starter has a 7-day Apple trial. Full pricing at coordinex.app/pricing. If Coordinex isn't useful in week one, delete it.
06What happens to my data if I cancel?+
You own it on the way out. Export every schedule, timesheet, and wage record before you delete the app — nothing is held hostage, and we don't lock your history behind a final invoice. Month-to-month, cancel anytime.
Try Coordinex on Tuesday. Connect Square in 4 minutes. Schedule by 9.
More Illinois coffee shops
Same Square data, different blocks. Three more Illinoiscoffee shops we’ve drafted next week for —