Cloud based restaurant POS systems: what actually changes

Here is a question that sorts the market faster than any demo. If the computer behind your counter were stolen tonight, what would you have lost?

If the honest answer is the hardware and nothing else, you are looking at a cloud system. If the answer is last night's sales, you are looking at a local system with a backup and a new label. Cloud based restaurant pos systems keep your menu, prices and sales on a supplier's servers instead of on that machine, and that is the whole technical difference.

Four things follow from it that matter to a restaurant, and this guide takes them in the order they will affect you.

The definition worth holding a supplier to

There is a published standard rather than a marketing one. NIST's definition of cloud computing lists the properties a service needs before the word applies: it is available on demand, reached over a network from ordinary devices, built on pooled resources, and able to scale quickly.

You do not need to quote that in a meeting. You do need to know that "cloud" on a brochure is sometimes a hosted copy of a fifteen year old product, and the stolen-computer question tells you which one you have in front of you.

Change one: what happens when the connection drops

This is the most important question in the purchase and the one demos skip.

Every serious system keeps working offline to some degree, and they differ enormously in how much survives. Get specific answers to four things:

• Can staff keep ringing up orders with no connection at all?
• Do card payments still work, or does that depend on your payment provider rather than the software?
• What happens to the orders taken offline when the line comes back, and has any customer ever lost one?
• How many hours can it stay offline before it stops?

Insist on the last answer in hours. A system that survives twenty minutes is a different product from one that survives a whole service, and both will be described as working offline.

Change two: how updates arrive

On an older system an update was a visit. Somebody came after close, touched the machines and left, and you found out on Friday whether anything had moved.

A cloud system updates itself. That removes the visit and adds a different risk: the change arrives whether or not you were ready for it. Ask whether an update can be deferred, whether release notes exist, and whether they have ever shipped a change that altered a workflow without warning. Every supplier has. The ones worth buying will say so.

Change three: several locations in one view

With the data in one place, two or ten restaurants can genuinely sit on one screen. This is the clearest advantage of the model, and it is worth testing rather than believing.

Ask to see two sites side by side in the demo, with different menus and different opening hours. Then ask what a manager at one site can see. Hospitality pos systems often show everything to everyone by default, which is fine right up until a site manager is reading another site's numbers.

Change four: who is holding your data

Here is the question that decides your next five years. Can you export your sales history and your customer list yourself, today, without asking anyone?

If the answer involves a ticket, a fee, or a file nobody can open, the cloud has not given you your data. It has put your data in somebody else's keeping, and that is what makes your next decision harder than this one.

"Every owner asks about features and almost nobody asks how they would leave. The leaving question tells you more about a supplier than the feature list does."

— Tanzeel ur Rehman, co-founder of Get Menu

While you are on the subject, ask how card data is handled. Anything that touches a card falls under the PCI Data Security Standard, and a supplier should be able to describe how they meet it without going away to check.

Apply the same four questions to the ordering side

A register serves the guest in front of it. Getting your menu in front of guests who are not in the building is a separate job. Judge that job by the same four questions, rather than buying it as a module because it happened to be on the same quote.

Offline. Be honest about this one: an ordering page needs a connection, because the customer is somewhere else. What it does not need is hardware, an installer or a cable.

Updates. There is nothing on your counter to update, so an improvement arrives without a visit and without a shift being disturbed.

Several locations. Each restaurant keeps its own menu, hours and delivery area. Staff logins only reach their own site, and the owner sees them side by side.

Your data. Names, numbers and order history belong to the restaurant, and the whole list is exported by you on any day you choose, including the last one.

What it actually does

The work itself is ordinary and it is the part a register was never built for. Your restaurant gets its own ordering page, with 12 page layouts so a taproom and a bakery do not read alike. A QR code for the tables and the window is made in a designer rather than printed as a plain sticker. Each code carries its own table, so a ticket already knows where the food goes, and a table can order from several phones and still get one check.

You edit the menu yourself. Options and add-ons carry their own prices, required choices have to be made before the order goes through, and a long menu comes in from a spreadsheet in one go. Every line is priced again at checkout from the live menu, so a page left open cannot sell at yesterday's number. Stock counts on items and options fall as orders come in, greying out a dish at zero.

When an order lands, three WhatsApp messages send themselves: a confirmation to the guest, a ticket to the managers' group, and a rider link carrying the GPS pin dropped at checkout. 3 messages, about 2 seconds, and nothing typed. Delivery fees can be set per building. Regulars collect stamps, grow into tiers that carry their own automatic discount, and hold a card in the phone's wallet with no app to install and a designer for its colours and logo. Coupons, upsells and fixed-price bundles come with caps, exclusions and expiry dates, and two automatic discounts never land on one order. Tax invoices carrying your registration number are downloaded by the guest as a PDF, with no login, and sales can be read by day, item and channel.

If the loyalty side is what you are really shopping for, our guide to designing a loyalty program goes into the mechanics.

Payment stays with you: cash or your own card machine. There are no online payments in the system, so no card details sit in it, and what an order held is removed automatically once it is 120 days old.

What it all costs once everything is on

Quotes usually cover hardware, a monthly licence per site and installation. What turns a quote into a bill is the rest: payment processing, add-on modules, a fee for each connected app, and a support tier.

Ask for a two year total with every module you actually intend to use switched on, then ask what the notice period is. Our own pricing sits on the pricing page rather than in this guide, and the trial runs 15 days without a card so the comparison can be made on your own numbers. If you want the plain version of what a register does and does not cover, our restaurant POS guide is the place to start.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between cloud and on-premise restaurant POS?

On-premise keeps the software and the data on a machine in your restaurant. Cloud keeps them on the supplier's servers and shows them to you through a browser or an app. The practical difference is what you lose if that machine dies, and how easily a second site joins.

Do cloud based restaurant pos systems work without internet?

Most keep working offline to a point, and they vary a lot in how long that lasts and what survives. Ask for the limit in hours and ask separately what happens to orders taken while the line was down.

Is Get Menu a cloud POS system?

No. It runs no cash drawer, no card terminal and no end of day. It is the ordering, menu, stock and loyalty layer that sits beside the register you already have.

How do guests pay if there is no payment step on the website?

They pay you directly, in cash or on your own card machine, at the door or at the table. The software carries the order and never touches the money.

Can I move my data to another system later?

From ours, yes, and you do it yourself on any day including the last one. Put the same question to every other supplier and get the answer before you sign.