POS restoran: what it covers, and what it misses

Most warungs and small cafes in Indonesia run on two things. A counter, and a phone.

The counter is the pos restoran: the screen or the drawer that prices an order, takes the cash and closes the day. The phone is everything else, and the phone is usually busier. This guide is about the second half, because it is the half nobody has ever sold a warung a tool for.

What the counter is good at, and where it stops

A counter system is worth having if people pay you face to face. It rings up an order, it keeps a record, and it lets you count the day without a notebook.

What it cannot do is speak for you when the customer is not in the room. It cannot show a menu to somebody sitting in a kos, a boarding house, two streets away. It cannot say that the ayam is finished. It cannot take an address. Those jobs land on whoever is holding the phone, and in a small kitchen that is usually the same person holding a wok.

The three questions your phone answers all night

Look at the messages a warung gets in one evening and almost all of them are one of three questions.

"Ada apa aja?" What is available right now. Somebody has to remember what ran out at seven and type it back.

"Berapa?" How much. Prices move when the market moves, so the answer depends on whether the person replying knows about this morning's change.

"Bisa antar ke sini?" Can you deliver here, and what does it cost to this building. That answer is different for the kos on the corner and the apartment block by the main road.

Each of those is a small job. Fifty times a night, with a pan on the heat, they stop being small.

"Every warung we visit has a system for the customers standing in front of it and a phone for everybody else. The phone is doing more work than the system, and nobody sold them anything for it."

— Anzul Aqeel, founder of Get Menu

WhatsApp is the right channel for this in Indonesia. It is where your customers already are, and the messaging platform is documented and built for business use. The problem is not the channel. The problem is that a person has to sit inside it and answer.

A menu page that answers instead of you

An ordering page is a link you send once. The customer opens it, sees what is actually on today, and places the order themselves.

Sold out means gone. Stock counts fall on items and on options as orders come in, and a dish greys itself out at zero. Nobody has to remember to say the ayam is finished.

Levels and sambal are choices, not notes. Options and add-ons carry their own prices, and a required choice has to be made before the order goes through. If your ayam geprek comes in five spice levels, the kitchen gets the level on the ticket instead of guessing from a sentence.

The price on the page is the price charged. Every line is priced again at checkout from the live menu. Raise a dish in the morning when the chilli price jumps and the change is safe the moment you save it, even for a customer whose page has been open since lunch.

The whole menu goes in at once. If you already keep prices in a spreadsheet, upload it instead of typing every item.

It looks like your warung. Your own ordering page carries your name, and there are 12 page layouts, so a rice-and-side warung does not have to read like a coffee bar.

The order arrives finished

When somebody orders, three WhatsApp messages send themselves. A confirmation to the customer. A ticket to the managers' group with every choice on it. And a link to the riders' group carrying the GPS pin the customer dropped at checkout. Counted up, that is 3 messages in about 2 seconds, none of them typed by a person.

For delivery this is the part that saves the most arguing. Delivery fees are set per building, so the kos on the corner and the tower by the road each pay what they should, and the rider opens a link without needing an account or a password.

Sitting down to eat

For the tables, every table gets its own code. The code carries the table number, so a ticket arrives knowing where the food goes and nobody writes anything down. The code is made in a designer so it looks like your place rather than a plain sticker, and the print pack is emailed to you ready for printing.

If four friends sit down together, each of them can order from their own phone and it all lands on one bill.

Regulars, without an app

A warung lives on people who come back. Most schemes for that fail because they need the customer to install something, and a phone with little space free will not keep an app for a place somebody eats at twice a week.

The card goes into the wallet that is already on the phone, using Google's loyalty card format, so there is nothing to download. Stamps accrue from the order itself, tiers your regulars grow into carry their own automatic discount, and the card takes your colours and logo from a designer. Coupons, upsells and fixed-price bundles come with caps, exclusions and expiry dates, and two automatic discounts never land on the same order.

Invoices carrying your registration number can be downloaded by the customer as a PDF without an account, which matters when you feed offices as well as students.

What this does not replace

It is not a cash register. It opens no drawer, drives no card machine, and does not close your day. If people pay you at the counter, keep what you have. A guide to what a restaurant POS actually covers is worth reading beside this one.

Payment stays exactly where it is now: cash, or your own card machine when the food arrives. There are no online payments in the system. That means no card details are held anywhere in it, and the contents of an order are wiped after 120 days without anybody asking.

What to try in the first week

Do not test the sample menu. Put your real one in, including the dishes with levels and sambal choices.

Then do four things. Put a code on 2 tables during a real evening. Let one dish run down to zero on purpose and watch it disappear. Take one delivery order yourself and open the rider link on a phone. And at the end of the week, count how many messages you did not have to answer. A QR menu is easy to set up, so this is a week of watching rather than a week of work.

You have 15 days to try it and no card is asked for. What it costs is kept on the pricing page, not in a guide, because a number written into a guide goes quietly out of date.

Frequently asked questions

Is Get Menu a pos restoran?

No. It is not a cash register and does not try to be. It is the ordering, menu, stock and loyalty layer that runs beside the counter you already have.

Do I need a counter system as well?

If customers pay you in person, yes, keep it. This handles the orders that arrive by message and never reach your counter.

How do customers pay?

Cash, or your own card machine when the food arrives. The software carries the order and never touches the money.

Does the customer have to install anything?

No. The menu opens in the browser already on the phone, and the loyalty card goes into the phone's own wallet.

Can I still change prices myself?

Yes, in a browser, whenever you like. The next order is priced from the menu as it stands, not as it stood this morning.