Bar POS software in Bahrain: what it does and what it misses

Search for bar POS software and you get quotes for a machine. A screen, a cash drawer, a printer, and a monthly fee for the program that runs them. That is a real product and a bar needs one. It is also only part of the night.

This article is for a bar owner in Bahrain who already has a counter that works, or is about to buy one, and wants to know what the rest of the evening costs. We build Get Menu, so we have a side in this. We will be plain about where we help and where we do not.

What a bar point of sale software package covers

A point of sale package is built around one moment: money changing hands at the counter. It opens tabs, splits bills, prints a receipt, tracks what each bartender rang up, and closes the day with a total the owner can check. Good ones also count bottles.

Every one of those jobs happens within two metres of the counter. That is the design. The bartender is standing at the machine, so the machine is where the work is done.

Now think about the parts of the night that happen away from that spot. A group of six on the terrace waiting to catch someone's eye. A regular who came every Thursday for a year and has not been in since Ramadan. A food order going out to a flat in Juffair. A guest asking for a VAT invoice because the evening went on the company card. None of those sit at the counter, and a bar pos system is not built to reach them.

The gap, in the order it costs you money

Waiting time on the floor. A guest who cannot get served orders less. Not because they decided to, but because the second round never got asked for.

Names you do not keep. The counter knows a drink was sold. It rarely knows who bought it. So the regular who stopped coming stays invisible until the quiet month arrives.

Orders that leave the building. Food orders taken by phone or by message get copied by hand onto paper. The mistakes are always the same: the wrong flat number, a missed side, an address nobody can find at eleven at night.

Paperwork. Bahrain applies a standard rate of 10% VAT, and the national portal states that this rate has applied since 1 January 2022, collected by the National Bureau for Revenue. A guest who wants a proper invoice at midnight should not have to email you on Sunday for it.

Where Get Menu sits, said plainly

Get Menu is not a cash register and does not try to be. It does not open a drawer and it does not read a card. Payment happens the way it already does in your venue: cash, or your own card machine, at the table or at the door. There are no online payments in Get Menu at all, which also means no card details of your guests exist inside it.

What it does is take orders on the guest's own phone and put them in front of your staff.

A code on every table. Get Menu generates a code for every table and gives you a card designer so the printed card matches your brand, then emails a print pack ready for the printer. A terrace with 20 tables is one set of files. The table is the address, so a guest scans, orders, and nothing has to be typed or repeated.

The order lands in WhatsApp. A ticket goes to the managers' group the moment the guest confirms. Meta's own documentation for the WhatsApp Business Platform lists sending order confirmations as a standard business use, and that is the shape we use it in. Your staff read the ticket in the group they already have open.

The menu behaves like a bar menu. Options and add-ons carry their own prices, so a double, a mixer choice or a garnish is a priced choice rather than a note. Required choices stop an order reaching the bar without the part the bartender needs. Stock counts fall as orders come in, and a bottle that runs out greys itself out on every table at once, which saves the walk back to explain.

Every line is priced again at checkout from your live menu, so the number the guest saw is the number they pay. A double tap cannot create two orders.

One bill for a table. Group ordering lets everyone at a table order from their own phone into a single bill. The round still arrives together.

The regular you never wrote down

This is the part a counter machine almost never solves, and it is where the money is.

Get Menu keeps a loyalty programme on the guest's phone. Stamps build up, tiers your regulars grow into can carry an automatic discount, and the card itself lives in Google Wallet. Google's own developer documentation for loyalty cards in Google Wallet explains that a pass can be issued through an ordinary link on a web page, in an email or in a message, with no app to install. Apple Wallet is built on our side and is waiting on a certificate, so we do not promise it yet.

The card updates itself. When a reward is waiting, the guest sees it on the card rather than in a folder of emails.

"The first bar we set up had a shoebox of paper stamp cards behind the counter. Half of them were somebody's tenth stamp and nobody could prove it. Putting the card in the phone was not the clever part. The clever part is that nobody behind the bar has to remember anything."

— Anzul Aqeel, founder of Get Menu

Around that sit the promotions. Coupons with caps, exclusions and expiry dates. Quiet-night offers aimed at guests who have gone quiet. Discounts never stack by accident, because the best single one wins.

The paperwork side

Get Menu produces VAT invoices carrying your registration number as a PDF the guest can download without logging in, with invoice numbers running in one unbroken sequence. Your sales dashboard breaks the week down by day and by item, and the whole lot exports to a spreadsheet when your accountant asks.

Two smaller things owners notice later. Old order details are cleared automatically after 120 days, so your guest list does not turn into a filing cabinet nobody looks after. And the customer list is yours to export on any day, including the day you leave.

What it does not do

It does not replace the counter for walk-up service, it does not run staff clock-ins, and it does not cost recipes bottle by bottle. A pos for a bar is worth buying on its own terms, and if those jobs are your main problem, buy the register first and read our piece on bar POS choices for the shape of that market. For the wider back-office question there is bar and restaurant management software, and if the loyalty side is what you came for, how a restaurant loyalty programme is built goes deeper than this page does.

Get Menu takes 0% commission on your orders. You pay a flat monthly amount for the software and nothing per drink sold. The current figures live on our pricing page rather than in an article, because prices change and articles do not.

A realistic first week

Day one, upload the menu from a spreadsheet if you have one, or type it once. Day two, print the table cards. Day three, watch three or four tables order themselves and fix the two items you named badly. By the second weekend the staff stop looking at the screen, because the tickets arrive on their own.

The trial runs 15 days and asks for no card details, so nothing can be charged by accident while you are deciding.

Frequently asked questions

Does Get Menu replace the cash register behind my bar?

No. It does not open a cash drawer, print a receipt at the counter or read a card. It takes orders from the guest's phone and sends them to your staff. Most bars run it beside the machine they already own.

Can guests pay online?

No. Payment is cash or your own card machine, at the table or at the door. That is a real limit, and it is also why no card details of your guests are stored anywhere in the system.

Do my guests need to install an app?

No. The menu is a normal web page opened from the code on the table. The loyalty card goes into the Google Wallet already on the phone through a link, so there is nothing to download.

Will it produce a VAT invoice for a company guest?

Yes. The invoice carries your VAT registration number and can be downloaded as a PDF from the order page without a login, and the numbering runs in one sequence for your books.

How long does setting it up take?

Most venues are taking orders the same day. The slow part is naming the drinks well, not the software.