Restaurant mPOS: orders and payment on the phone

A restaurant mPOS is the till that walks. The waiter is at the table. The café cashier is in the line. Neither of them should leave the guest to type the same order again at a fixed screen. UmaPOS puts that order on the phone, then on the kitchen display, then on the bill.

What mPOS means on a food-service floor

mPOS means mobile point of sale. The phone is the ordering screen and, when you use Counter, the payment screen. It is the same restaurant POS as the Windows counter: one menu, one set of orders, one kitchen queue. A phone order is a kitchen ticket. A phone payment is a settled bill in the panel.

That matters for a café POS as much as for a dining room. A coffee line moves when the cashier stays with the guest. A dining room moves when the waiter sends the ticket before walking back to a terminal.

Waiter mPOS for tables

The Waiter app opens the floor. Staff see active tables, start a takeaway cart, and set food and drink preferences before the ticket leaves the phone. The kitchen receives the KOT. Status on the board moves through New, Preparing, Ready, and Served, so the waiter can see the table without asking the pass.

Use Waiter when guests are seated. The phone replaces the notepad and the second entry at the counter. The bill can still be settled at the counter, or from Counter on another phone, because both apps share the order.

Counter mPOS for the payment

Counter is the checkout. On a phone it takes the order for takeaway or a table and closes the bill with cash, online, or QR. Preferences stay on the item. A split can be settled from the same ticket. The panel stores the bill with its source, so you can see whether it came from the waiter, the counter, or the restaurant panel.

For a café, Counter on a phone is often the whole POS. There is no table map to maintain. Fast billing opens the menu and the guest cart so the next drink can be sold while the previous one is still on the kitchen screen.

Android and iPhone

Waiter and Counter are available now on Android and iOS. Android builds are on Google Play: UmaPOS Waiter and UmaPOS Counter. The same apps run on iPhone. Reception and Kitchen are on Google Play as well, if the door and the pass should be on a tablet rather than a phone.

You can mix them. A waiter on a phone, a kitchen tablet on the pass, and a Windows PC at the cashier all read the same orders. mPOS is an extra screen, in the same system.

The kitchen still gets the ticket

A phone order is easy to lose if it stays on the phone. In UmaPOS the kitchen display is the next step. Tickets from the waiter, the counter, and QR ordering arrive on one board. The production queue groups the same dish, so two lattes and a dine-in pasta are cooked from the screen the kitchen already watches.

QR ordering is the guest-side companion to mPOS. The guest scans, browses, and sends the order in the phone browser. Staff do not install anything on the guest’s phone. The ticket joins the same kitchen queue as the waiter’s mPOS order.

When the Windows counter is the better till

mPOS is the right tool beside the guest. A busy cashier PC is the right tool when one person is settling a queue of bills, watching the table floor, and printing. The Windows app shows the table floor for dine-in and Fast billing when the shop has no tables. Many branches use both: phones on the floor, the Windows counter at the pass-through.

You do not have to buy that PC to try mPOS. The 3-month free POS trial includes Waiter and Counter. Add a fixed till when the line earns it. Optional hardware packages cover a counter, a kitchen screen, and a printer if you want them supplied together.

Who should start with mPOS

• A dining room that wants the order taken at the table and the ticket on the kitchen screen immediately.
• A café or coffee shop that sells from a phone in the line and still needs the kitchen to see the drink.
• Takeaway that needs a pickup token and a payment on the same device.
• A second branch that should open on the phones already in the manager’s bag.

mPOS is a poor fit only when you expected it to be a separate guest app or a delivery-app inbox. The guest app and Swiggy or Zomato sync are still on the way. Today the guest path is QR ordering, and delivery orders are entered at the counter until that sync exists. Staff mPOS is the part you can use this week.