POS

Run the counter: tables and zones, orders, kitchen tickets, bills, receipts and the day close, with a waiter's phone and a kitchen screen beside it.

POS is the counter. It takes the order, sends it to the kitchen, raises the bill, takes the money and closes the day.

Three apps share one menu, one floor and one set of numbers:

• The counter app, built for an iPad at the counter. This section’s pages describe it unless they say otherwise.
• The captain app, the same job on a waiter’s phone, with a deliberately smaller set of powers.
• The kitchen display, one screen per station, showing the tickets as they fire.

Everything about the menu, the reports, the stations and the printers is set in the console, not at the counter.

Words we use

A dish variation is folded into the dish’s own name, so “Fried Rice (Chicken)” is what you see on the screen, on the kitchen ticket and on the receipt.

Signing in

The counter signs in with a WhatsApp code, which is the default, or with an email or phone and a 4-digit PIN. Remember this device is off by default here, because the counter is shared hardware; a registered counter gets a longer session.

There is no shift start and no clock-in. Signing in is the whole ceremony, and it puts you on the Floor.

Finding your way

The counter has exactly three destinations, and everybody who signs in sees all three:

On a wide screen these sit in a rail on the left, which folds with Cmd B. On a narrow one they become a floating capsule at the bottom with a More button. Your account block holds a per-device Sound on switch and Sign out.

When the connection drops, a strip reads “Reconnecting. Service is paused.”

Availability

Availability is where a dish goes off, and it says Off, never anything shorter. The header reads “On, off and where it cooks.”

It is a matrix: one row per item, one column for the kitchen display and one per sales channel. Switch a row off for a channel and it stops selling there. Expand a row and you can turn individual options off too.

The badge on an off dish says why: Turned off when somebody did it, Out of stock when stock ran out, or Bounced. A dish that is off because of stock is locked here and restocked in Procurement instead. Where a dish cooks is shown but not editable: routing is set in the console.

On the order screen an off dish is greyed with a chilli badge reading Off and the reason your manager gave, for example “Off · Out today”. A dish whose required choice has run out is greyed the same way and borrows that option’s reason.

Setting up the room

Set up floor, from the floor header, has two tabs. Zones adds, renames, reorders and removes the rooms. Tables adds, edits and retires the tables in them, each with a label, a number of covers, a zone and a type.

A table has one of three types:

• General, which stays on the floor plan.
• Ad-hoc, for seating outside the zones. Retire it after service.
• Comped, which settles every bill at zero. A manager approves it once, and must say why. See Comps, voids and owner alerts.

Guides

• Working the counter: the floor, opening an order, adding items, notes and discounts.
• Kitchen tickets: firing a KOT, what prints, and reprinting.
• Bills and receipts: raising the bill, taking payment, settling, and reprinting a receipt.
• Comps, voids and owner alerts: putting something on the house, and who hears about it.
• Closing the day: the blind close, what blocks it, and what the owner sees.
• Printing and devices: network printers, counters, screens and stations.
• The captain app: the waiter’s phone.
• The kitchen display: the station screen.