Open source restaurant POS: what free software really asks of you

An open source restaurant POS is a cash register program whose source code you are allowed to have, run, study and change. That is the whole meaning. The Open Source Initiative's definition sets out ten criteria, and the two that matter here are free redistribution and the rule that "the program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form".

Notice what that does not say. It does not say the year costs nothing. This article is about where the money and the effort actually go, written for an owner in Doha or anywhere else who is weighing a free register against a paid one.

What is actually out there

The projects are real and some of them are good.

uniCenta oPOS, an open source point of sale for shops and kitchens, calls itself "commercial-grade open source software for retail and hospitality", licensed under GNU GPL3, running on Windows, Linux, Mac and in a browser. The software is free to download, and the makers sell a support subscription for fixes, updates and their forum.

Odoo ships a restaurant point of sale with a community edition on GitHub. Its own page describes a "real-time floorplan" so staff can see which tables need attention, order instructions sent to bar and kitchen printers by product category, and offline payments that sync when the connection returns.

Floreant POS is the older Java-based option many people meet first, still downloadable and still used in small dining rooms.

None of these are toys. If your problem is ringing up sales at a counter, one of them will probably do it.

What the licence does not cover

Here is the honest list of what you take on when nobody is charging you a monthly fee.

A machine, and a place to put it. The program has to run somewhere, usually a computer in the back office. That computer is now part of your kitchen equipment, with the same dust, heat and power cuts.

Updates and backups. Somebody has to apply new versions and check that a backup exists and can be restored. Nobody does this until the week they wish they had.

A person who fixes it. Free software does not answer the phone at nine on a Friday. Either you learn it, or you keep an IT person on call, and that person's hourly rate is the real subscription.

Hardware. Printers, cash drawers, a screen, sometimes a scanner. This is the same for any register, paid or free, but it is often left out when people compare prices.

Where open source genuinely wins

Three places, and they are worth saying plainly.

You cannot be switched off. The software sits on your machine and keeps working whatever a company decides next year. You can change it, or pay a developer to, if your kitchen does something unusual. And on a busy counter with several terminals, a licence that does not charge per terminal is real money saved every year.

If those three matter more to you than the maintenance, open source is a sound choice and you should take it.

The job a register does not do

A cash register, free or paid, is built for a person standing at a counter. Almost all of them are. That leaves a second job untouched, and in most kitchens it is now the bigger one: the customer who is not standing at the counter.

That customer needs a menu they can read on a phone, a way to order without a phone call, an address to deliver to, and a reason to come back. A register does not do any of that, and adding it is not a plugin.

What we built for that second job

Get Menu is the ordering side, not a counter register, and it is worth being clear about the split.

Your menu gets an address on getmenu.ae, included from day one, with 12 layouts so the page suits how your menu reads. Items carry options and add-ons with their own prices, required choices where the kitchen needs an answer, and you can upload the whole menu from a spreadsheet instead of typing it. Stock counts fall as orders arrive, per item and per option, so running out of one sauce does not take the whole dish down, and an item flips to sold out at zero on its own.

When an order lands, 3 messages go out over WhatsApp in about 2 seconds: a confirmation to the customer, a ticket into the managers' group, and a dispatch link for the rider with the GPS pin dropped at checkout. Delivery fees can be set per building, which matters in a city of towers. Every line is priced again at checkout from your live menu, so the price shown is the price collected.

Indoors, a code is generated for every table, so the table is the address and the ticket says which one. Group ordering puts a whole table on one bill while everyone orders from their own phone.

Then the part that pays for itself: stamps turn into rewards, regulars grow into tiers, and the loyalty card sits in Google Wallet and updates itself, with no app to install. Apple Wallet is built and waiting on a certificate, which we say rather than promise. Coupons carry caps, exclusions and expiry dates. The invoice PDF carries your tax number and needs no login to download; once an order is 120 days old its details are wiped automatically.

Payment is cash or your card machine at the door. There are no online payments in the product, so there are no card details to protect, which quietly removes one of the reasons people fear self-hosting anything.

"I sold point of sale software to small businesses for four years before I built this. The register was never where the owner was losing time. The orders arriving from outside the shop were, and no register I sold had an answer for that." — Anzul Aqeel, founder of Get Menu

A sensible arrangement

You do not have to choose. Plenty of kitchens keep an open source register at the counter for walk-in sales and run a separate ordering page for delivery, dine-in codes and repeat customers. The register handles the cash drawer. The ordering page handles the phone in the customer's hand.

If you are still comparing registers, our restaurant POS guide covers the category, POS software for restaurants covers features to look for, and cloud based point of sale covers the hosted option, which is the middle ground between free and installed.

Trying the ordering side takes 15 days with no card asked for at signup, and after that it is a flat monthly price with 0% commission on your sales, whatever the weekend does.

Frequently asked questions

Is open source restaurant POS software really free?

The licence is. The year is not. Budget for a computer to run it on, hardware, updates, backups and somebody who can fix it quickly, then compare that total against a paid plan.

Which open source restaurant POS should I look at first?

uniCenta oPOS and the Odoo community edition are the two most maintained general options, and Floreant POS is the classic lightweight one. Try each on a spare machine with your own menu before deciding.

Can an open source POS take online orders?

Not on its own. Registers are built for a counter. Taking orders from phones needs an ordering page, a way to reach the customer, and a delivery address, which is a separate piece of software.

Do I need to run a server for it?

Usually yes, even if the server is just the back office computer. That machine needs power, backups and someone responsible for it, which is the part most comparisons leave out.

Can I keep my current register and still take orders online?

Yes, and many kitchens do exactly that. The counter keeps its register, and the ordering page handles delivery, table codes and loyalty.