Industry Specific Notes: Restaurant

Restaurant support in L'ânePOS is newer than retail support. Since restaurant support required only minor changes to the system, I consider restaurant support stable too.

Register Interface: Most restaurants will want to use touch screen terminals, as it is easier to change items on the screen than it is to modify physical key-tops on a keyboard. Plus, it is easier to organize a large number of items by using the tabs in registerTk than by color-coding a keyboard
Hardware: When using the touch screen interface, no additional hardware is necessary. Unfortunately, touch screen terminals tend to be expensive.
Guest Checks/Tabs: Guest checks and customer tabs can be simulated by using "Suspend" and "Resume" on the registers. Suspend/Resume/re-Suspend the sale as the customer adds items to his or her ticket. Tender the ticket when they are finished.
Kitchen/Bar Printers: Plugins to handle kitchen/bar/remote printers are in the plugins page. Add rprint# to the products' extended fields. # is a bitmask of the printers to print the item. To print at remote printers 1 and 2, put rprint3 in the extended field of the appropriate products.
Sizes and Modifiers: Plugins to handle sizes/modifiers are in the plugins page. You'll need size pseudo-products, and sized pseudo-products. All sized and actual products will need numeric product IDs.
Drive-Ups/Queuing: The Resume function will automatically recall the oldest, suspended sale, if no ticket number is given. But, only one terminal in a system can then recall the queued tickets. This limitation is caused by the lack of sale locking. Both single-terminal and dual-terminal (one order/one pay) setups are supported in drive-ups/queuing.
Centralized Pay Register: Some restaurants use touch screen server stations, but the customer pays at a centralized terminal. As registerCurses and registerTk (the touch screen interface) use the same backend, one could install a much cheaper "retail" terminal at the central pay location. A sale created on the touch screens can be recalled on the "retail" terminal.
Limitations: This version of L'ânePOS doesn't support table management (reservations) or employee time and attendance.