Restaurant management system Kenya: what a small kitchen needs

A restaurant management system Kenya search returns products that do very different things. One is a cash register. One is a stock ledger. One is an ordering page. They are sold under the same three words, so comparing them feels impossible.

The way out is to split the phrase before you shop. There are six jobs inside it. Your kitchen probably has three.

The six jobs hiding in one phrase

Taking the order. From a table, a phone call, a link or an app. Everything else follows from this.

Getting the order to the kitchen and the rider. Paper, screen, shouted, or a message.

Charging correctly. The right price, the right add-ons, the right delivery fee.

Knowing what you have. Ingredients on one hand, finished dishes on the other. These are not the same problem.

Keeping the paperwork. Tax invoices, records, and the ability to hand your accountant a file.

Keeping the customer. Who came, what they ordered, and a reason to come again.

A restaurant with a hundred covers a night and three suppliers needs all six solved. A kitchen doing thirty deliveries a day needs the first, second, third and sixth, urgently, and can run the fourth on a notebook for another year.

Two of those jobs are decided by law, not by preference

Kenya Revenue Authority describes eTIMS as a software solution that provides taxpayers with options for a simple, convenient and flexible approach to electronic invoicing, and states that all persons engaged in business are required to onboard it and issue electronic tax invoices, effective as at 1st January 2024. It can be reached from computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones.

The second is customer data. Kenya's Office of the Data Protection Commissioner enforces the Data Protection Act 2019 and asks data controllers and data processors to register. The moment your system stores names and phone numbers, this is your responsibility and not your supplier's.

Neither of these is a reason to buy any particular product. They are a reason to know where your invoices and your customer data live before you sign anything. Ask a supplier both questions in the first meeting.

What to ask before you compare features

Does it work on the phones my staff already own, on the connection I actually have?

Can I change a price myself, at eight at night, without emailing anyone?

When I leave, do I take my customer list with me, in a file I can open?

Who answers when it breaks on a Friday?

Those four questions eliminate more products than any feature table. Restaurant management software goes through the wider category, and POS software for a restaurant covers the counter side that sits next to it.

Most of the work in fitting software to a restaurant is deciding what not to automate. A kitchen that is already busy does not want a second screen to feed. It wants the order to arrive where its people are already looking. — Agha Shah Zaman, co-founder of Get Menu

Where Get Menu sits, plainly

We solve four of the six jobs and part of a fifth. Here is which, and how.

Taking the order. Your restaurant gets its own ordering page on an address that belongs to you, built for one thumb on a phone. A code for every table is generated for you, so a seated customer orders without waiting for anyone. There is a secret menu behind an unlock code if you want to test dishes quietly.

Reaching kitchen and rider. In about 2 seconds the order is in three places: a confirmation to the customer, a ticket to the managers group, and a dispatch to the riders group carrying the GPS pin the customer dropped at checkout. The rider opens a link without an account.

Charging correctly. Every line is re-priced from your live menu at the moment of checkout. Options and add-ons carry their own prices, and you can make a choice required so the kitchen is never guessing. A minimum order value stops the deliveries that cost more than they earn, and a delivery fee is set per building.

Knowing what you have, on the dish side. Counts per item fall as orders come in, sold out flips itself at zero with nobody watching, and you can hold a count on a single option so one sauce running out does not remove a whole dish. There is a movement history showing where every unit went. This is finished-dish stock, not ingredient purchasing. Inventory tracking for restaurants explains the difference, and it matters.

Paperwork. VAT invoices carrying your tax registration number, downloadable as a PDF, numbered in one unbroken sequence, with a sales dashboard by day and item and a spreadsheet export whenever you want it.

Keeping the customer. Stamps and tiers your regulars grow into, with the card sitting in Google Wallet and updating itself after each order. Coupons carry caps, exclusions and expiry dates. Marketing messages travel separately so they never delay an order, and no customer gets more than the cap you set inside 7 days.

Menu management without typing. Upload the whole menu from a spreadsheet, drag categories and items into the order you want, and let photos compress themselves so pages stay fast on a weak signal.

Get Menu charges a flat monthly price and takes 0% commission on what you sell.

What we do not do, said before you ask

We are not your cash register. A walk-in customer paying at the counter is not part of this system.

We do not do ingredient purchasing, recipe costing, supplier orders or waste logs.

We do not do payroll, rotas or table bookings.

There are no online payments. Payment happens when the food arrives, which is also why no card details exist anywhere in the system.

And we do not file your returns or connect to eTIMS for you. We produce the invoice and the export; your accountant does the rest.

If you need all six jobs in one product today, we are the wrong choice and you should say so early rather than find out in month two.

A sensible order to do this in

Solve ordering and the kitchen first, because those two decide whether tonight goes well.

Add stock counts on your ten most-ordered dishes, not the whole menu.

Turn on loyalty only once the ordering page has a month of real customers in it, so the stamps land on people who exist.

Leave ingredient stock to a notebook until the menu stops changing weekly.

The trial runs 15 days and asks for no card details, which is enough to test the first two steps with real orders rather than a demo.

Frequently asked questions

What is a restaurant management system?

It is a name for software covering some mix of six jobs: taking orders, sending them to the kitchen and rider, charging correctly, tracking what you have, producing tax paperwork, and keeping customer records. No two products cover the same mix, so ask which jobs each one solves.

Does it handle KRA eTIMS invoicing?

Not directly. Get Menu produces a VAT invoice carrying your registration number, in a numbered sequence, and exports your sales to a spreadsheet. Onboarding to eTIMS and filing remain between you and your accountant.

Is there stock control for ingredients?

No. Stock counts here are per dish and per option, so a dish sells out on its own rather than being sold and then apologised for. Flour, oil and packaging are not tracked.

Who owns the customer data?

Your restaurant does. You can export the list on any day, a customer can be erased without breaking your accounts, and the detail of old orders clears automatically after 120 days.

Do I need a computer in the restaurant?

No. The admin screens work on a phone, and orders arrive in a WhatsApp group your team already uses.