Choosing a POS for your café or restaurant: what really matters

A till for a shop and a till for a café look alike, but they do very different work. In a shop, a sale starts and ends at the counter. In hospitality, an order lives for an hour or more: it starts at a table, grows with every round, goes partly to the kitchen and is only paid at the end, sometimes by three people at once.

That is why a retail till rarely works well behind a bar. Here is what a hospitality POS has to get right.

A floor plan that matches your room

During service nobody wants to search for table 14. A visual floor plan shows at a glance which tables are open, which are waiting for the bill and which are free. If you have a terrace or a second room, you want to switch between areas with one tap.

Orders that stay with the right table

Every round has to land on the right bill, without the team keeping notes on the side. Look for a POS where you add items to a table in a few taps and the bill stays clear, even when the evening runs late.

A clear line to the kitchen

Starters first, mains when the table is ready. A good hospitality POS sends courses and changes to the kitchen, so the kitchen does not have to guess and the floor does not have to walk back and forth.

Staff PINs and a clean end of the day

With several people on one till, everyone logs in with their own PIN. That way you see who rang up what, and the daily report at closing time shows turnover and payments without a separate spreadsheet.

Hardware: start small

You do not need a full set of hardware on day one. A POS that runs in the browser works on a tablet or laptop you already own. When you want a fixed counter setup, a touchscreen terminal and a cash drawer are usually enough. A barcode scanner, essential in a shop, is something most cafés and restaurants can skip.

How Registerly Hospitality fits in

Registerly Hospitality is built for exactly this: a visual floor plan, table orders, a kitchen workflow, staff PINs and daily reports in one simple system. It runs in your browser, costs EUR 29 per month and you can try it free for 7 days first. Hardware such as a SUNMI terminal and cash drawer can be added whenever you are ready.