Expanding a daytime coffee shop into a pizza restaurant by night was easy with Poynt and ElavonConnect, leaving Mo to focus on the food and his customers.
From a small premises in the Dublin suburb of Donnybrook, Mohammed (Mo) Mrabat fuels up locals with breakfast, lunch and dinner. From morning coffee and cakes to panini and pizza, his first love is food.
Originally from Morocco, Mo has worked in five-star hotels and as the personal chef for the Moroccan ambassador to Ireland.
In 2013, he set up his coffee shop, Café Diem, in Donnybrook. But it’s much more than that.
“It’s not just a coffee shop; it’s a community,” Mo says. “Local groups meet here, new visitors chat with regulars, and people even leave their spare keys here with me. I always call them the Café Diem ‘family’… I never really call them ‘customers’.”
In 2021, he invested in a striking, mirrorball-style wood-fired pizza oven to facilitate expansion of his business. Not only does he run Café Diem by day, now he also runs Mo’s Pizza restaurant by night.
“I’m not an accountant. I’m a chef,” he says. “I love food and that’s what I want to focus on. I needed a payments solution that could help me run all aspects of my businesses in one system, especially as Café Diem and Mo’s Pizza are quite different.”
Mo chose Poynt from Elavon, the smart, wireless terminal that lets diners pay at counter or table, indoors or outside, as well as online or over the phone.
“Elavon gives you the opportunity to customise your terminal – you can add apps tailored for your business, add different categories, and identify your busiest times and most popular items. In one system, you can do everything,” he says. “The cloud system [ElavonConnect] means I can check my business from anywhere, in real time.
“Elavon gives me the opportunity to look after my business properly,” says Mo, “and if there are any problems, customer service solves them quickly. With Elavon, it’s really easy.”
