Color Café OS: every piece, from brush to kiln to your hands

What I noticed

Color Café is already a small production business, not only a café.

I went through the whole public side: every one of the 165 pages, all four studios, events, home workshops, the kit shop and the blog. What stood out is that the most complex part of the business, the journey of each physical piece, happens after the guest leaves and is invisible to them.

0studios, from Tel Aviv to Kiryat Ono and Hod Hasharon

0home-kit products in the online shop

0event types with their own pages

0hand-offs between booking and pickup for every piece

The dark steps happen behind the scenes. Today the guest sees none of them, so they call and ask.

When is it ready?

“in about a month”“about two weeks”“4–6 weeks”

Three different promises across the site. A real status replaces the promise.

Will you tell me?

“we'll send an SMS”“we don't send notifications”

Some pages promise a message, some older blog posts say there isn't one.

Where exactly?

Naomi Shemer 8Naomi Shemer 5two phone numbers

The same studio details are typed by hand on many pages, so they drift apart.

30 days

After a piece is ready it waits one month on the shelf, then it's donated. Every forgotten piece is a guest who paid, created something and never got the joy back. A gentle reminder with a map link, a photo of the finished piece, and a “deliver it to me” button turns that into a happy ending, and sometimes into extra revenue.

The first ready feature · Pottery Tracker

Try it yourself.

Three screens at once: the team's phone, the production board, and the guest's phone. Press Play the story or tap through it yourself.

114:30 at Yirmiyahu. Alina arrives with three friends. Tap Check in on the team's phone.

Team · studio app

14:30●●● 5G

Yirmiyahu 46

Today

Scanning…

Production board

All four studios and the warehouse, live

Kiln queue · warehouse

K-3022 load 71%

Kiln K-3022

24°C
waiting for the batch

Guest · Alina's phone

14:30●●● 5G

WHATSAPP · COLOR CAFÉ

How a piece keeps its identity

Paper can't go into the kiln. So every piece carries its code twice.

One short code, two copies. One is written on the piece itself in underglaze pencil and survives the firing. The other is a paper QR label that travels next to the piece and gets scanned at every step. The system knows they are the same piece.

One code per piece

Y-4832-2

StudioY = Yirmiyahu, B = Ben Yehuda, H = Hod Hasharon, K = Kiryat Ono

Visitcreated at check-in from the booking

Piecethe 2nd piece of that visit

✎ Short enough to write by hand in five seconds✦ No look-alike characters: no 0/O, no 1/I⌗ The QR on the label holds exactly the same code

← swipe to see all steps →

Why the pencil survivesAn underglaze pencil is ceramic pigment, not ink. It fuses into the clay like the colors on the piece. The base stays free of glaze so the piece doesn't stick to the kiln shelf, and underglaze doesn't stick either.

A photo as a backupA quick phone photo when painting is finished. Every piece is one of a kind, so even a smudged code is found in seconds by the first digits plus the photo. The same photo goes to the guest in the “ready” message.

What doesn't work

Paper or sticker labels burn
Heat-resistant labels hold ~300°C, the kiln needs ~1,050°C
Ceramic QR decals need an extra firing
Pressing a number in only works on raw clay, not on bisque

How it fits

Keep the website. Add a brain behind it.

The current site has years of search ranking behind it: 16 event pages and 43 blog posts. Rebuilding it from scratch risks all of that for little gain. The new layer plugs into what already works.

Wix stays the shop windowPages, the kit shop and forms stay where they are. Wix can send and receive data, so orders and requests flow into the new system automatically.

One source of truthAddresses, hours, prices and firing times live in one place and appear everywhere from there. No more “5 or 8”.

Works on any phoneA web app the team opens on a phone or tablet. Nothing to install from a store.

Why not an off-the-shelf tool? Studio trackers exist abroad (Kilnfox, ClayTrack), but they're English-only, email-first and built for a single studio. Color Café needs Hebrew, WhatsApp, Ontopo bookings, four branches with a shared kiln flow and transfers between them.

Roadmap

Step by step, starting where it hurts most.

Every step works on its own and pays back on its own. The order is my guess from the outside, and the right order comes from talking to you and the team.

1Quick wins

One source for addresses, hours and firing times. A clearer booking path and kit checkout.

start here2Pottery Tracker

QR per piece, kiln batches, shelves, pickup, WhatsApp “it's ready”.

3Inventory

Stock per studio and warehouse, transfers, low-stock alerts, glazes.

4Events CRM

From request to quote, deposit, event, firing and delivery.

5My Color Café

Guest page: bookings, creations, gift card, book again.

6Analytics

Studios, pieces, kiln load, events, all in one view.

7Redesign

A fresh, fast front end, built on top of the working system.

Pilot in one studioStart at one location with a label printer and the team's phones. Keep the current process running in parallel until the team trusts it.

A few weeks, not monthsA first working tracker is a few weeks of focused work, plus time to set up the business WhatsApp account.

Measured, not guessedOne week of baseline first: how long a pickup takes, how many “is it ready?” calls come in, how many pieces go unclaimed. Then we compare.

Before building anything

What I'd love to learn from you.

Which part of the day costs the team the most time or nerves today?

How many pieces a month go through the kilns, and are they fired centrally or in each studio?

How does a pickup work right now, and how often can a piece not be found?

Which register and tools do you use today: sheets, WhatsApp groups, Ontopo reports?

How many pieces end up unclaimed after 30 days?

What do guests ask most often by phone and WhatsApp?

Every piece,
from brush to kiln
to your hands.