What eZee Optimus does, and what a Nigerian kitchen still needs

eZee Optimus is a restaurant point of sale you use through a web browser instead of installing it on a computer in the building. It comes from the same hospitality software house as the older desktop product, and for many restaurants it is the more sensible of the two. This article covers what it is, the questions worth asking about any cloud pos in Nigeria, and the part of the day that no register of either kind was designed to reach.

What eZee Optimus is

The vendor's own description is the clearest one. Its blog calls it a "cloud-based POS" for food and beverage businesses worldwide, says that "users can access the software from an internet-enabled device on any location", and notes that the system is secured with the HTTPS protocol.

There is also a tablet app. The restaurant POS app published on Apple's store by Yanolja Cloud Solution Pvt Ltd describes itself as a restaurant tablet POS for "managing dine-in, online, take-away, delivery and room service orders from one place", handling multiple menus and keeping track of inventory. That listing is designed for iPad and asks for iPadOS 12.0 or later, so check it against the devices your staff actually hold before you plan around it.

Put together, it is a competent restaurant management system: orders, menus, stock, billing and reports, reachable from a browser, with room service in its blood because the company's other business is hotels.

Cloud does not mean the same thing in every product

This is the most useful idea in the whole article, so it goes before the comparison.

Cloud describes where the software runs. It says nothing about who the software is pointed at. A cloud register still faces inward, at your staff. A member of your team opens it, taps a menu, takes an order from a person and rings it up. The fact that the program lives on a server somewhere makes it easier to install and easier to see from home. It does not change who is doing the typing.

A customer-facing ordering page faces outward. The person doing the typing is the customer, on their own phone, and your team only sees the finished order.

Both are cloud. They are not competing for the same job, and most of the confusion in this market comes from the word being used as if it settles the question. We take the general version of this apart in the guide to a cloud point of sale system.

Three questions to ask any cloud system in Nigeria

What happens when the connection goes? Ask this first and ask for specifics. Some cloud registers keep a copy on the device and catch up later. Some simply stop. Neither answer is wrong, but you need to know which one you are buying, because in Nigeria the answer will be tested regularly.

What device does it really want? Browser based sounds device neutral and often is not, once you get to printers, cash drawers and the tablet app. Ask which combination the supplier has actually deployed in a restaurant like yours, and get the model names.

Where is my customer list, and can I take it out? Nigeria's data protection law makes this more than a commercial question. The Nigeria Data Protection Act was signed in June 2023 and the Nigeria Data Protection Commission exists to oversee it, with a mandate to safeguard the privacy rights of data subjects and to promote processing that protects personal data. If your customers' names and numbers sit inside a system you cannot export from, you are responsible for data you cannot actually reach.

That third question is the one owners skip and later regret. We look at it from the supplier's side in the piece on restaurant management software.

The part neither kind of register covers

Now the thing that matters most in a Nigerian restaurant, and it is not a criticism of any particular product.

Ask an owner in Lagos or Port Harcourt where their orders come from and the honest answer includes a phone. Someone asks whether you deliver to their estate. They send a list of items in two messages, then a third message correcting the second. They ask for the total. They send a location pin. A member of staff reads all of it and types it into the register.

That order was taken twice. Once by the customer and once, again, by you. The second time is unpaid, happens during the rush, and is done by somebody who is also supposed to be doing another job. It is also invisible: the register saw a finished sale and recorded it exactly like a walk-in.

"When we map a restaurant's day, the busiest person in the building is almost never the one at the register. It is whoever is holding the phone. That work is real, it is skilled, and no report anybody produces has a line for it."

— Agha Shah Zaman, co-founder of Get Menu

Delivery apps solve part of this and create a different problem, which we cover in the guide to online food delivery platforms. They bring you strangers and keep the relationship.

What Get Menu covers

Get Menu is the outward-facing half. It is not a register, so if a cloud register is working for your counter, keep it. Here is what sits beside it.

A menu at an address the restaurant owns. Yours sits on getmenu.ae and comes with the account rather than as an extra. You choose from 12 page layouts and set the colours and the font, which is why a jollof and grills kitchen and a coffee bar built on the same system look nothing alike. Guests just open a link.

One code per table, ready to print. The system draws a code for each table, a designer lets you dress it in your own colours and logo, and the finished pack lands in your email for a printer. A floor of 20 tables produces 20 codes, each already carrying its table number, so the guest never types one. Friends sharing a table can add to a single bill from their own handsets.

Decisions made before the ticket is cut. Extras and options carry prices of their own, and anything you have marked as required must be answered before the item can join the basket. Prices are read again from your live menu at the moment of checkout, not from whatever the phone had loaded earlier. A nervous second tap will not produce a second order.

Portions that fall on their own. Enter how many you prepped and the number drops with every order. Options keep separate numbers, so one sauce running out does not remove the dish. Zero greys the item out without anybody noticing, a single warning is sent when your level is crossed, cancelling restores what was taken, and a list of movements explains how every number got there.

The kitchen finds out in the group. Roughly 2 seconds after a customer confirms, a receipt reaches the customer, a ticket reaches the managers' group and a dispatch note reaches the riders' group. The rider's copy carries the pin the customer dropped on the map. All 3 messages are logged, delivered or otherwise.

An address the driver can find. The customer chooses a building and a unit from a list and drops a pin, instead of describing a landmark down a phone. Fees can differ from one building to the next, and free delivery can start above whatever total you set.

A reason to come back. Stamps can be tied to the number of orders or to the amount spent. Regulars move up tiers, and a tier can hold its own automatic discount. Rewards have an end date so they get spent. The card goes into Google Wallet and keeps itself current, with nothing to install. The Apple card is finished and waiting on a certificate.

Offers you can put a fence around. Coupons take caps, item exclusions and expiry dates. Any three dishes can be bundled at a single price. Two discounts never apply together by mistake, because only the better one lands.

Books and lists you can carry away. Invoices show your registration number and download as a PDF with no login, and the numbering runs without gaps. Your customer list and sales history come out as a spreadsheet on any day you choose, the last one included.

Fifteen free days start without card details, and after them the bill is one monthly figure, with 0% of your takings going anywhere. That covers 15 days of ordinary trading, which is enough to see a weekend.

The two side by side

What Get Menu does not do

Plainly, so nobody is surprised in month two. It is not a counter register, so walk-in sales stay with whatever you use now. It has no recipes, suppliers or purchase orders, so ingredient level costing is somebody else's job. It does not connect to a hotel front desk. And it takes no payment online, which means payment is cash or your own card machine at the door and there are no card details anywhere in the system for anyone to steal.

It also needs a connection, like any web based product. If your business must keep ringing up sales through a long outage, an installed register on the counter remains the right tool for that half.

How to decide

If your problem is at the counter, compare cloud registers on the three questions above and pick one. eZee Optimus is a real contender, particularly if you run rooms as well as a restaurant.

If your problem is the phone, no register will fix it, because none of them were pointed at it. In that case what you need is a page your customers can order from and a way for those orders to land in front of your team without being typed twice.

Plenty of restaurants need both, and running both is a normal answer rather than an admission of defeat.

Frequently asked questions

Is eZee Optimus cloud based?

Yes. The vendor describes it as a cloud based POS reachable from an internet-enabled device in any location, secured with HTTPS. There is also a tablet app, and the version listed on Apple's store is designed for iPad.

Can Get Menu replace a cloud register?

Not at the counter. What it takes over is everything the customer touches, plus what follows from it: the menu, the basket, the address, the group messages, portion counts, stamps and the figures at the end of the week. Running a register for people who walk in and an ordering page for the phone is a normal setup in Nigeria.

Who owns the customer data?

With Get Menu, your restaurant does. Names, numbers and order history can be exported to a spreadsheet on any day, including the day you leave. With any other supplier, ask that question before signing rather than after.

Can customers pay online?

No. Payment is cash or your own card machine when the food arrives, so no card details exist anywhere in the system.

What does it take to get started?

A single day, in most cases. A menu that already lives in a spreadsheet is uploaded whole rather than retyped item by item, which is the step owners dread. No card details are requested to begin the free period.