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Brooklyn Wine Shop Replaces Cash Register With iPad

NEW YORK (WCBS 880) - One Brooklyn wine shop and grocery store is uncorking the wave of the future.

WCBS 880's Alex Silverman On The Story

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"We never anticipated that we would be in tech," says Amy Bennett, who runs the Greene Grape in Fort Greene.

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But that was before things got frustrating.

"We were having so much trouble with our point of sales system," she says. "Two of our servers in two of our stores went down at the same time."

She couldn't take it anymore.

"We basically wanted to continue to be retailers. We didn't want to be I.T. professionals," she tells WCBS 880 reporter Alex Silverman.

But now, they kind of are I.T. professionals.

Amy and her partner Jason Richelson created ShopKeep. It's a cloud-based checkout system for small businesses.

Fab Cafe manager Erica Livingston points out she has no clunky cash register, just an iPad on the counter.

"I would say like one out of five customers that's new here is like 'What?! You're running on the iPad?'," she says. "It's really awesome."

The ShopKeep system is in 200 stores now and while Bennett's thinking big, she says, "My heart will always be as a small business owner."

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