POS for bar and restaurant in Germany: the tax rules first

A venue with a bar and a dining room sells two things that the German tax system now treats differently. Choosing a pos for bar and restaurant use therefore starts with the law, not with the screen. Whether you search for it as a pos for restaurant and bar or the other way round, the same two rules decide the shortlist.

This article covers the two rules that apply to your register, what they mean for a place selling both plates and drinks, and the separate set of problems your register was never meant to solve.

Rule one: food and drink are taxed differently

From the first of January 2026, restaurant and catering services in Germany are taxed at 7 percent, and beverages are excluded from that reduced rate, staying at the standard 19 percent.

For a pure restaurant, that is one change to make once. For a bar with a kitchen, it is a permanent split running through every bill, every day.

One table orders two schnitzel, a Weizen and two Cola. Three items on the plate side, three on the glass side, one bill, two tax lines. Your system has to carry the right rate per item, not per order, and it has to keep carrying it when the kitchen adds a new dish at four in the afternoon.

Ask any supplier to show you a printed bill for a mixed table before you sign. Not a slide. A bill.

Rule two: the register itself must be sealed and must print

The second rule is older and stricter. Germany's Bundesfinanzministerium explains that every electronic recording system taking cash payments has needed a certified technical security device since 1 January 2020. The device gives each transaction a number so gaps can be spotted, and the receipt obligation applies to every sale.

Two practical points come out of that page.

The security device is not optional and not something a supplier can talk around. If a system takes cash in Germany, it needs one.

The receipt is deliberately technology-neutral. The ministry states plainly that receipts may also be issued by email or to a phone. So the paper roll is a habit, not a requirement.

What that means for your shortlist

A register you buy in Germany has to be sold and supported here, with the security device and the tax rates handled by the supplier. That narrows the field usefully, and it is the right narrowing to do first.

Then compare on the things that actually differ between German systems. How fast does a bar tab open and close? Can a table be split by person and by item? How does the shift handover work, and who comes out on a Saturday when the printer dies?

Bar and restaurant management software sets out the awkwardness of running a drinks counter and a dining floor from one system. A bar POS covers what a counter behind a bar has to do quickly, and POS systems for bars is the shortlist guide.

The other half of the problem

Here is what almost no register quote mentions, and what most owners are quietly annoyed about by month three.

The register knows everything about the guest sitting in front of it and nothing about anyone else.

The table that booked and did not arrive. The order taken over the phone while the bar was three deep. The regular who came every Thursday for a year and then stopped, whose name nobody wrote down. The delivery run where the driver called twice to find a back entrance. None of that is a counter problem, and buying a bigger counter system will not touch it.

That second half is what we built.

What we do, said plainly

Get Menu is not a register. It has no drawer, no certified security device, and it cannot be your cash system in Germany. It handles ordering, delivery and the guests attached to them, alongside whatever runs your counter.

Your own ordering page. A menu at an address of your own, with 57 colour themes and a font picker so it matches the room rather than looking generic. Guests open it from a link or a printed code.

A menu you keep current yourself. Categories and items reordered by dragging, options and add-ons with their own prices, required choices so a steak never arrives without a doneness. Upload the whole menu from a spreadsheet if you already keep one, which most kitchens do.

Honest availability. Counts fall per item as orders come in and per option too, so the last portion of Spätzle takes itself off the page. Cancel an order and the count comes back.

Correct totals, every time. Every line is priced again from your live menu at checkout, so nobody is charged last month's price and nobody adds up by hand at the end of a shift.

Table codes for the dining room. A code for every table, generated for you, with a designer so the printed card fits the room. The table is the address, and a group can order from several phones onto one bill.

Delivery that knows where it is going. A map pin dropped at checkout, a building and unit picked from a list, a delivery fee per building, and rider links that work without an account.

Everything reaches the team on WhatsApp. A confirmation to the guest, a ticket to the managers' group, a dispatch to the riders' group. Every message is logged with whether it arrived, so a missing order is a question with an answer.

Guests who come back. Stamps per order, per euro spent, or only on the dish you want to move. Tiers your regulars grow into, with an automatic discount attached. The card sits in the guest's Google Wallet and updates itself with no app to install, and Apple Wallet is built and waiting on a certificate.

Offers that stop by themselves. Coupons with caps, exclusions and expiry dates, bundles at a fixed price, and win-backs for a regular who has gone quiet.

Records you can read. A sales dashboard by day and item, an export to a spreadsheet whenever you want one, and old order details cleared automatically after 120 days.

"The first German venue we spoke to had a perfectly good register and a shoebox of paper notes beside it. The notes were the delivery orders. That shoebox is the part nobody sells them a system for."

— Agha Shah Zaman, co-founder of Get Menu

Where we stop, so nobody is surprised

We do not replace your German register and we do not carry a certified security device. Cash taken at the counter belongs in the system that is built and certified for it.

There are no online payments. A guest pays cash or on your own card machine, at the table or at the door. That means no card details sit in our system at all, but it also means we are the wrong tool if you need money taken before food leaves the kitchen.

There is no scheduled ordering and no pre-order, so nobody can book Friday's order on Wednesday. There is also no collection order type, so a guest cannot mark an order as pick-up.

Say those out loud before you plan around us. The rest works better when the edges are known.

A sensible order of purchases

Sort the counter first, because it is a legal question and not a preference. Get a German supplier, confirm the security device, and see a printed mixed bill with both tax rates on it.

Then, and only then, look at what your counter cannot see: the phone orders, the deliveries, the table codes and the guests you never recorded.

We can be tried for 15 days without card details and take 0% of what you sell, which means you can run us beside your register on delivery orders only and stop if it changes nothing.

Frequently asked questions

Can this be my cash register in Germany?

No. We are not a certified cash system and carry no technical security device. Buy a German register for the counter and use us for ordering, delivery and guests.

Does it handle the two different VAT rates on one bill?

Your register handles the tax on cash sales at the counter. Our invoices carry your registration number and the tax details you set, and the correct answer for your venue should be confirmed with your Steuerberater.

Do guests need an app?

No. The menu opens as a normal web page from a link or a printed code, and the loyalty card goes into the Google Wallet already on the phone.

How do guests pay?

Cash or your own card machine, at the table or at the door. No online payment happens in our system, so there is no card data in it.

Can I use it for delivery only at first?

Yes, and that is what most venues do. Leave the dining room exactly as it is and put only the delivery orders through it for the first fortnight.