Restaurant technology is the software and equipment a restaurant uses to take orders, cook them in the right sequence, bill its customers and check the money it receives. A busy restaurant today takes orders from its tables, from two or more delivery apps and from its own website. Each channel has its own menu, its own prices and its own rules.
Consider a busy restaurant in Kochi on a Friday night. At 9 p.m., table 6 orders appam and stew from a waiter. In the same minute, an order arrives from each of two delivery apps, and one from the restaurant's own website. All four orders must reach the same kitchen, and be cooked in the right sequence.
The main system is the restaurant POS. POS stands for point of sale, the counter where a sale is billed. A restaurant POS is a kind of POS software built for tables and kitchens. The waiter's handheld device, the billing counter and the kitchen display system, a screen that shows the cooks each order, are all part of it.
The delivery orders arrive through an online order aggregator. It collects the orders from every delivery app on one screen, and sends them to the POS. When a dish runs out, the restaurant marks it once, and the aggregator removes it from every app.
Every week, each delivery app pays the restaurant for its orders, after deducting its commission and any refunds. Delivery app reconciliation software checks each payment against the orders delivered, and claims back money that was deducted wrongly.
The same layer covers other places that serve food. Corporate cafeteria management runs office canteens, where employees pre-order lunch in an app. Smart beverage vending machines brew tea in office pantries and report when they need refilling. Drive-thru headsets and timers link the staff at a drive-through restaurant, and time every car.
Many restaurant software companies also process the restaurant's payments, and some lend it money against its future sales. This is embedded finance.