Modernisation

Turning legacy restaurant software into one POS for the floor, the table and the till.

Short
summary

Industry: Hospitality, restaurants
Model: Modernisation of an existing restaurant ERP
Platforms: POS terminal, handhelds, self-order kiosk
Roles: Hosts, servers, cashiers, managers, back office

A restaurant runs its whole evening through one system: who is sitting where, what each table ordered, when the kitchen fires the next course and how the bill is settled. The existing software did all of that, but it looked and behaved like a different program on every screen. The redesign keeps what it does and changes how it reads.

The challenge

The system already handled seating, orders, payments and the back office, but its interface had aged: dense grids of coloured buttons, windows stacked over the floor plan, and a different layout on every screen.

Staff use a POS at speed, standing up, with guests waiting. Every screen that has to be remembered rather than read slows service down.

The solution

The floor plan became the home screen, with tables coloured by where they are in the evening and grouped into restaurant, terrace, takeaway and VIP. Opening a table leads into one order screen: the menu on the left, the ticket on the right, modifiers and courses chosen in place. Checkout, manager tools and the back office share the same cards, pills and spacing, so a second screen is learned from the first.

01Hosts

A floor plan per section, tables coloured by status, and the selected table's guests, courses and next reservation beside it.

Floor plan with tables coloured by status and table 7's courses in the side panel

Terrace plan on a handheld with the selected table in a sheet

Seating

4 sections

restaurant, terrace, takeaway and VIP on one plan

The plan answers the host's questions at a glance: which tables are free, which are waiting on the bill, and which are held for a reservation later in the evening.

Table order on a handheld grouped by course, with a new line ready to send

Adding a ribeye with cooking, side, sauce and course chosen, beside the table's ticket

02Servers

Pick a dish, set its cooking, side, sauce and course in place, and add a note for the kitchen before sending it.

Courses

3 courses

held and fired separately from the same ticket

Starters, mains and dessert sit on one ticket but go to the kitchen when the server fires them, and each line shows whether it prints in the kitchen or at the bar.

03Cashiers

Split the bill by guest, take each share by cash, card or voucher, and print or email the receipt from the same screen.

Split bill on a handheld with one guest's items selected

Checkout

7 ways

to settle a table, from cash to per-guest splits and pro forma

A table can be paid in full, split by guest or by item, or printed as a pro forma, and every share keeps its own receipt with the VAT worked out.

Sales for the day with a list of tickets and the selected ticket's lines and actions

04Managers

The day's tickets with open sales, payment and status, and the selected ticket's lines and history beside them.

Control

5 actions

on a closed ticket: reopen, change payment, reprint, history, cancel

Corrections happen on the ticket itself, with its history underneath.

05Back office

Drag articles into place on each POS page and edit the article behind a button without leaving the layout.

Back office POS page editor with a tile being moved and the article's settings

Setup

6 areas

articles, tables, people, stock, hardware and settings

What staff see on the POS is arranged here: the button grid for each page, and behind each button the article's price, VAT, course, prep zone and modifiers.

Kiosk

Guests ordering for themselves

The same menu was explored as a self-order kiosk for takeaway. Categories run down the side, dietary tags filter the dishes, and a dish is personalised one step at a time, with the base price and extras shown as they change.

Outcome

Manager tools, the back office and the kiosk were brought into the same design language, so the parts of the system used less often are no harder to read than the ones used every minute.