How to make a restaurant POS software?

Question

Im planning on opening a restaurant but i don't like any of the software's available. All I want to make is a simple touch screen menu for my employees. It will be a small donut shop so I want to keep it small. What should I do. Thanks

Answer 1

DON'T!!!!



Buy it.



I worked on POS software for years. I'm glad to be away from it because it's *HARD*. A lot harder than you would think it would be.



For a donut shop, even a small one, speed of service is important. So is reliability. (You really, really don't want to hold up your customers because your home brew program crashed AGAIN and you have to reboot). Designing a touch screen order taker that's easy to use and easy to learn (you're going to be hiring people from the low end of the spectrum, right?) isn't as easy as it sounds.



Do you plan on taking credit cards (if not now, in the future?) That's not a trivial task if you want it integrated with the POS rather than a standalone thing.



If your business is successful, you'll find you want more and more things out of your POS. You may not think you need all the features the commercial packages offer, but as time goes by, you may find you really do need them, and trying to do that yourself at the same time you are trying to grow your business will just be a major headache.



In the 10+ years I worked in POS, I saw a number of customers who thought they could 'go it alone' and write their own POS. These were bigger (fortune 500) companies. They all failed.

Answer 2

Learn how to program one. I think you'd be better off just buying an inexpensive system until your programming skills improve or you can find a programmer; the POS systems at restaurants are much more complex than one might realize.



If you still feel you want to make your own, then I suggest you familiarize yourself with at-least some sort of programming language (like C++; scripting languages won't work), network management, database management and a whole lot more.

Answer 3

I recently came across an article from TechCrunch about their CrunchPad kit that might do the job for you. You can convert any laptop monitor into a touch screen iPad like device, but since I have not built one, I don't know how feasible this is. You may require outside help, but their are also a number of tutorials about the subject.



The price point is also surprisingly small. combined with a simple software for payment processing, this could do the job for you.



Check it out!



http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/31/introducing-the-do-it-yourself-crunchpad-kit-video/

Answer 4

You're way off point. Not only is the hardware very expensive, but the programming and bug fixing, not to mention the upgrades to menu items, would be insane. You would be better off going with a canned product or manual registers.

Answer 5

Hello Alex,



You will need to implement a simple solution using Visual Basic (VB) or any other compatible programming language, if you need to customize a software solution that serves your own needs. For instance, see what this guy -he calls himself foodman does for implementing a POS for a restaurant :



http://foodman123.com/ss.htm

Hope this helps Alex. Take care.

Answer 6

Hire a programmer, you do not want to do this yourself if your business is important to you, if you find a good programmer, translating your vision into actual software should be easy.

Answer 7

Micros RES

Answer 8

http://www.retailsoftware.com/diy.html



check out this site it is easy just using quick books

Answer 9

for arabic world check this

http://dexef.com/