Nobody opens a cafe because they are excited about network points. The fun parts are the menu, the fitout, the coffee machine and the sign out the front.
Then you open, and the EFTPOS terminal drops out during the morning rush, the printer in the kitchen stops talking to the till, and there is one power point behind the counter with four things plugged into a double adaptor.
Almost every version of this problem traces back to the same thing. The tech decisions got made after the walls went up.
Here is the order that actually works, based on the jobs that go smoothly rather than the ones that get fixed later with cable clipped to a skirting board.
Draw the counter before you draw anything else
The counter is the busiest square metre in the business. Everything electrical clusters there.
Sit down with a pen and put the actual objects on paper. Till or tablet. Card terminal. Receipt printer. Coffee grinder. Under bench fridge. Phone charger. The little speaker nobody planned for. Now add the things that hide underneath, like a router, a network switch, a modem and a power board.
You will end up with a longer list than you expected. That list determines how many power points and data points go in behind the counter, and it is much easier to write it now than to discover it when the joinery is already installed and the cables have nowhere to go.
A rule that has never let anyone down: whatever number of power points you think you need at the counter, add two.
Payments need a second path
Card payments are the one system that cannot go down. If the internet drops, you stop taking money.
Two things help. First, a terminal that can fall back to mobile data when the fixed connection fails. Most modern terminals do this, but you have to check, not assume. Second, a cheap mobile router as a backup, or a phone you know how to tether from, with the process written down so a staff member can do it without ringing you.
Test the failover before you open. Unplug the internet on a quiet afternoon and see what happens. That is a fifteen minute exercise that saves a Saturday.
Find out where the internet enters the building
This one catches people constantly, especially in older strip shops and heritage buildings.
The connection point is often not where you want the equipment. It might be in a shared riser, in a back corridor, in a locked cupboard controlled by the building manager, or in the shop next door’s roof space because someone did a favour twenty years ago.
Find it before your fitout starts. If the entry point is at the back of the building and your counter is at the front, you need a cable run between them, and that run is much cheaper before the ceiling closes and the joinery goes in.
Also ask the landlord what already exists. Some tenancies come with data points already installed and terminated. Some come with a bundle of unlabelled cable hanging out of a wall that nobody can identify.
Cable while the walls are open
This is the single biggest cost saver in the whole fitout, and it is the one most often skipped because it feels premature.
Running a data cable through an open wall or an accessible ceiling is quick. Running the same cable through a finished space means lifting tiles, cutting plaster, patching, painting and working around trading hours.
So while the walls are open, put in more than you need. Cable is cheap. Labour and making good are not.
The other reason to do it properly is that a mess of ad hoc cable becomes unmaintainable within a year. When every run is unlabelled and terminates somewhere different, nobody can trace a fault. A proper cabling plan behind the walls means each outlet runs back to one central point, everything is labelled, and the next person who touches it can work out what goes where in a minute rather than an hour.
Where to put points, at minimum:
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two at the counter
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one at each wall mounted screen or menu board
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one wherever the kitchen printer or display sits
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one in the back office
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one or two in the ceiling for wireless access points
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one at any camera position
Wireless access points belong in the ceiling, not on a shelf
A router sitting under the counter behind a metal fridge, surrounded by three other appliances, is going to give you patchy coverage. That is physics, not a faulty router.
If the space is bigger than a small shopfront, plan for one or two ceiling mounted access points fed by cable. They sit above head height with a clear line to the room, which is where wireless works best. Each one needs a data cable, which brings you back to doing the cabling early.
Decide now whether customers get wifi. If they do, it should be a separate guest network that cannot see your till, your cameras or your office computer. Any decent business router does this. Turn it on.
Cameras, and the room the recorder lives in
Most small venues end up with cameras for the same three reasons. Cash handling disputes, break ins, and slip and fall claims.
Two things matter more than camera count. Coverage of the till and the front door, and lighting good enough at those points to actually identify a face. A camera pointed at a doorway with bright daylight behind it will give you a silhouette and nothing else.
The recorder needs somewhere to live that is ventilated, lockable and not in the wet area. A hot cupboard above a dishwasher will kill a hard drive.
Music, and the licence nobody mentions
Playing music in a business is a licensing question, not a Spotify question. A personal streaming subscription generally does not cover public performance in a commercial space. Look into it before you open rather than after a letter arrives.
Whatever you choose, run the speaker cable during the fitout. Retrofitting ceiling speakers is exactly the same annoying job as retrofitting data.
Ask the landlord what you can drill
Read the lease before anyone puts a hole in anything. Heritage buildings, shared walls, fire rated construction and strata common property all come with restrictions, and a cable run through a fire rated wall has to be sealed properly.
Get written approval for anything structural. Also ask what has to be removed at the end of the lease, because make good clauses vary and some of them require you to strip out everything you installed.
A workable order of operations
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Sign the lease and read the make good clause.
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Locate the incoming internet connection.
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Draw the counter with every device on it.
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Order the internet connection early, because lead times are unpredictable.
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Run all cable while walls and ceilings are open.
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Fit off outlets, mount access points and cameras.
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Install joinery.
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Set up the till, terminal, printers and network.
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Test the payment failover.
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Open.
The tech is a small part of the budget on most fitouts. It is a large part of the daily frustration when it is wrong, because it is the bit staff touch every hour.
Get it into the plan at the same time as the plumbing and it disappears into the background, which is exactly where it should be.
