Short answer. For a single restaurant with standard processes, do not buy custom development: a well-deployed market POS fixes the first two leaks in two weeks, the lost order and the inaccurate till. Custom is justified in three cases: when your delivery orders, WhatsApp, website, Yassir and your own couriers, must land in the same stream as the floor; when you have several addresses or a central kitchen; and when you want stock to be kept by recipe, each dish sold decrementing its ingredients. In every case, the week that decides everything is not the software week, it is the week you describe your recipes.
This guide answers a question a restaurant owner asked on this site in four words: "a POS for my restaurant: orders, menus". Here is the complete answer, honest about when you do not need us.
What "I want a till" means
Nobody wants a till. You want table twelve to get its dish before table fourteen, the drawer to match at night, chicken not to run out at eight, and the seven-thirty WhatsApp order not to fall between two services. A till is only one of the tools serving those four goals. Here they are, in the order they cost money.
The first two leaks are fixed by any serious POS. The third requires your recipes to exist somewhere as ingredients. The fourth requires all your order channels to enter the same system, and that is what decides between a market POS and a custom system.
«Nobody wants a till. You want table twelve to get its dish before table fourteen and the drawer to match at night.»
Market POS or custom system
Tablet-based restaurant POS products exist in Algeria and do order taking, receipts, kitchen screens and till closing well. We describe them in our guide to POS software for restaurants and shops. The question is not whether they are good, but where they stop.
Choose the market if you have one restaurant, standard processes, and marginal delivery or delivery handled by a platform. You will be running in two weeks and will have fixed the essential.
Choose custom if delivery orders are a serious share of revenue and arrive through several channels, if you have or are preparing a second address, a central kitchen or a dark kitchen, or if your rules, menus by time of day, set menus, courier commissions, do not fit the boxes of market software. Custom is often built around an existing POS rather than instead of it: keep the till, add the order stream, recipe stock and dashboard. We described the online ordering side in our guide to ordering apps for restaurants.
What the system must contain, from the counter to management
Whether it comes from the market or is built, here is what your system must cover, and in what order you will see the gain.
The kitchen screen changes the evening from the first service: orders arrive in sequence, each dish has its time, the kitchen marks "ready" and the floor sees it. Paper slips disappear, and with them half the errors. Recipe stock changes the margin after a month: each dish sold decrements its ingredients, the system warns before a stock-out and computes the supplier order from real sales. It is the feature owners underestimate most, because it takes a week of work at the start: describing each dish in ingredients, once.
Delivery orders in the same stream remove the fourth leak. WhatsApp, your website, Yassir and your own couriers land on the same kitchen screen as the floor, with the same priority and the same receipt. If you are preparing your own ordering app, our guide to selling on Instagram and WhatsApp explains why an ordering link is almost always enough.
«The kitchen screen changes the evening. Recipe stock changes the margin.»
Where AI helps a restaurant, and where it adds nothing
Two uses pay, after six months of clean data. Sales forecasting by dish and by day, which drives purchasing and staffing: a Ramadan Friday looks nothing like a February Tuesday, and the system learns it. WhatsApp order handling, which takes the order, confirms price and lead time, and pushes it to the kitchen without anyone typing. The rest, generated menus, recommendations, waits until your sales exist in a system. A restaurant running on paper has nothing to give AI.
How long and how much
A market POS is paid by subscription or purchase and deploys in one to two weeks. A custom system with multichannel order stream, recipe stock and dashboard sits in category 2 of our price grid, more if you add a customer app. In both cases, the timeline that works fits in eight weeks and closes no evening.
The test service rule: two quiet services, a weekday lunch for instance, with the system and paper in parallel. You switch when the kitchen has not looked at a paper slip for a whole service. It usually takes three days.
The mistakes we see in restaurants
- Buying custom for a single standard restaurant. A market POS would have been enough, in two weeks.
- Installing the POS without describing recipes. It will count dishes, never ingredients, and the margin stays invisible.
- Leaving delivery outside the system. Three streams in the kitchen, one at the till: the leak continues, now with software.
- Switching on a Saturday night. Two quiet services first, alongside paper.
- Wanting AI before the first month of sales. It learns from your data, not your intentions.
Frequently asked questions
- Do I need custom development for my restaurant?
- For a single restaurant with standard processes, no: a well-deployed market POS is enough. Custom is justified with multichannel delivery, several addresses or a central kitchen, and your own rules.
- How long to set up a POS?
- One to two weeks for a market POS, six to ten for a custom system. In both cases, plan a week to describe your recipes in ingredients: that is what makes stock useful.
- Can I keep my current till and add the rest?
- Often, yes. Keep the till for receipts and payment, and add the multichannel order stream, recipe stock and dashboard around it. It is cheaper and less risky than replacing everything.
- What about CIB and Edahabia payments on the floor?
- They go through a payment terminal from your bank, linked or not to the till. Check that the chosen POS records the payment method per receipt, so the night closing is right.
- Can AI take orders?
- On WhatsApp, yes, once your menu, prices and lead times exist in a system: it takes the order, confirms, and pushes it to the kitchen. Before that, it has nothing to work with.