CoffeeGrab founder Keagan Bradley on why he built an order-ahead app for independent cafes – and the $500 one of its customers wins every Friday.

We’ve all done it. You have a meeting at 9am, which means (checks watch) you’re already running late. Add in a coffee stop, and you’re bound to be walking into a full room. Yet, it’s a risk you’re willing to take.

So, you make a pitstop – the cafe is en-route, after all. Of course, the line is snaking out the door. By the time you leave with flat white in-hand, the meeting is about to start, you can’t find a car park, and you’re cursing the barista for daring to be busy.

For what is supposed to be a quick fix, coffee can so often slow us down. From on-the-go yo-pros to parents on the school run, grabbing a coffee is a morning ritual across many walks of life – yet can brew up so many complications.

Now one Kiwi app wants to remove the queue altogether – and is also giving customers another reason to order ahead, with $500 going to a customer every Friday.

For CoffeeGrab founder and CEO Keagan Bradley, the original concept seemed almost deceptively obvious – why weren’t more Kiwis ordering their coffees ahead of time?

“At some cafes I’d go to, there would be lines out the door. I’d see that time day in and day out, and I was like, ‘Man, so many people are wasting time’,” Bradley says.

“I thought about the idea of ordering ahead, and it seemed too simple. I thought it had probably been done. And then, the more I looked into it, the more I realised that no one had given it the time and attention it needed.”

At that time, the big chains already had their own order-ahead apps, but most local cafes didn’t.

“The whole point is to help cafes compete with the bigger chains like Z, BP and Starbucks. We want to give them a platform where they’re not left behind,” he explains.

After more than a year of development, CoffeeGrab was officially launched in 2025. A day later, it hit number two in the New Zealand App Store’s Food & Drink chart.

The premise, like Bradley says, is simple. After opening the app, you are presented with participating cafes nearby – there are currently almost 70 across Auckland, from Britomart to Takapuna to New Lynn.

Browse the menu, customise your drink, schedule your pick-up time, and pay in the app. Your order will be sent to the cafe, and when you arrive, your coffee will be ready and waiting for you.

There is also an option to save your regular order, making the morning coffee run even quicker. With one tap, your large extra-hot trim-milk triple-shot latte is in your cart, no questions asked.

Then there’s CoffeePoints, the app’s loyalty programme. Unlike a stamp card, the points aren’t stuck at one cafe: customers earn them on their orders and can spend them at any cafe on the app, with 100 CoffeePoints worth $1 off. There are rewards for referring friends, too. Customers can also top up a balance in the app and pay from that, so a week of coffees can show up as one transaction on their bank statement rather than one for every cup.

From Monday, October 12, 2026, every eligible drink ordered through the app at a partner cafe earns an entry into that week’s $500 Friday draw, with one winner taking home $500 every Friday. There’s no separate ticket to buy and no entry fee beyond ordering the coffee you were already going to drink.

“It’s the same coffee from the same cafe. You just might get $500 with it,” Bradley says.

Nearly all partner cafes offer the same prices in the app as they do in store.

A 2% service fee is added at checkout, about the same as the surcharge some cafes apply to contactless card payments in store, and when a customer spends CoffeePoints, CoffeeGrab covers the cost, not the cafe. The technology runs alongside the business’s existing POS system, with dockets sent automatically to the receipt printer.

For businesses, it maximises their opportunity to bring more customers through the door – especially the ones that swiftly pivot as soon as they spy a queue.

Bradley cites a coffee stand at a Datacom conference in Rotorua. Its previous record for a single day was 93 orders. With CoffeeGrab it took 290 – and where it had averaged around 70 orders a day at earlier events, it averaged 263 a day for the rest of the week.

“The frequency of orders goes up as well. If you’re an office worker on the 12th floor, you spend most of your morning and afternoon breaks just getting to the cafe and waiting, which is a deterrent. Now, you can order your coffee beforehand and actually enjoy your breaks.”

Group ordering, handy for the office coffee run, is coming soon – and further ahead, Bradley wants to bring CoffeeGrab to Wellington and Christchurch.

Ultimately, in a world where you can pick up breakfast, lunch and dinner on the go, why should your coffee be any different? CoffeeGrab brings that same convenience to your daily caffeine fix – no queue, no fuss.

And now that everyday coffee could come with something extra: $500, with a new winner drawn every Friday.

For more information and full $500 Friday terms and conditions, visit coffeegrab.co.nz or download CoffeeGrab from the App Store or Google Play.