The problem

For years, Carmel and Adam Wooding, the founders of Empower Digital, have been helping First Nations businesses in Australia to establish their presence on Shopify. Their work focused on empowering these merchants to take control of their digital presence, but they consistently ran into limitations when it came to food service businesses using Shopify's platform.

The breaking point came when one of their clients, a First Nations-owned business in Melbourne, approached them with a unique challenge. The merchant had successfully set up their Shopify store and retail location using Shopify POS, but when they decided to add a coffee shop to their business, they hit a wall. While Shopify excelled in many areas, it wasn't built to handle the complexities of café operations. They had no way to handle customizable drink orders with multiple modifiers, and the cost of running multiple systems was out of the question.

"Shopify is fantastic if I want to sell a large coffee, but if I want to sell a large decaf cappuccino on oat milk with two sugars, it gets a bit tricky," Carmel explained. The team recognized this was a common problem that many merchants faced, and they saw an opportunity to build a solution.

As a small team, however, building a public Shopify app was a massive undertaking. While Adam had strong frontend development experience, particularly in UI and UX design, the backend complexities of app development were daunting. Initially, they attempted to build their solution on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), but quickly encountered obstacles that made development painfully slow and inefficient. Months of work went into getting the app setup, and it was becoming clear that as a small team, they wouldn't be able to maintain such a complex system long-term.

Setting up development environments on GCP was time-consuming, and managing multiple environments for staging, development, and production became a constant struggle. The team found themselves spending more time configuring servers and managing infrastructure than building actual features. Adding to their frustrations were the unpredictable monthly costs that could fluctuate significantly, making it difficult to cover their costs while maintaining affordable pricing for their clients.

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The solution

When Adam discovered Gadget, he was initially skeptical of the promises the platform made — it simply sounded too good to be true. He took some time to evaluate by following a few tutorials and building some test applications on the free plan. The results were immediately apparent, and what had previously taken weeks to set up on GCP could be accomplished in mere minutes with Gadget.

"It was literally later that afternoon that I was building an actual app. The Shopify app was spun up, all the auth and initial setup was done for us, and I was actually working on proper business logic," Adam shared.

Despite being just days away from launching the GCP version of their public app, POS Cafe, the team made the bold decision to rebuild their entire project on Gadget. The platform's built-in Shopify connection, automatic session management, and pre-configured infrastructure meant they could focus entirely on building features that would benefit their merchants — and the time spent on maintenance would be next to nothing.

Gadget's development framework provided everything they needed out of the box, from database management to API rate limiting. The platform's opinionated approach to development meant they didn't have to waste time deciding between different technical approaches – they could simply follow the established patterns and best practices built into the platform.

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It was literally later that afternoon that I was building an actual app. The Shopify app was spun up, all the auth and initial setup was done for us, and I was actually working on proper business logic.

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The team particularly appreciated Gadget's ability to handle complex Shopify-specific challenges, such as API rate limits and webhook processing. As an added bonus, the Discord community and direct support from the Gadget team allowed for quick solutions to any challenges they encountered during development.

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The results

What had taken close to five months to build on GCP was rebuilt on Gadget in just two weeks. The rapid development time allowed the team to launch POS Cafe ahead of their original timeline, and they've been adding new features and functionality ever since.

The switch to Gadget has transformed how the team approaches development. Instead of wrestling with infrastructure and maintenance, they can focus on building features their merchants need. They're currently working on additions like kitchen display screens, improved prep area management, and better receipt printing capabilities.

With Gadget, Empower Digital can predict their monthly costs much better, which has made it easier to create a pricing model with POS Cafe that works for the small businesses and First Nations merchants they serve. "These clients often operate with tight budgets and need to carefully manage their expenses," Carmel noted. "Cost of living is really hard for people right now, and just knowing for sure what their business expenses are going to cost them is a huge deal," she said.

Most importantly, POS Cafe has become a vital tool for merchants who previously had to manage multiple platforms to run their businesses. Many customers have expressed relief at finally finding a solution that allows them to unify their operations. Carmel shared that they often hear their users saying, "We've been looking for something like this for so long."

The success of POS Cafe has been so significant that it's evolved from a side project into a full-time business. The app was even featured in the spotlight on the Shopify App Store — and thanks to Gadget, they were able to handle the traffic spike without a problem. 

The team is now able to continuously improve the platform, with a major update featuring new functionality on the horizon. As Adam puts it, "We couldn't be happier that we made the switch to Gadget. It's allowed us to focus on what really matters – building features that help our merchants succeed."