How to choose a restaurant POS in India

1 · Make them unplug the internet

This is the single most revealing test, and almost nobody does it during a demo. Ask the salesperson to switch off the Wi-Fi mid-bill and keep going.

Broadband in most Indian high streets drops several times a week, usually at the worst moment. A POS that needs a live connection to add an item means your counter stops during a rush. Watch specifically for: can you still take an order, print a KOT, and settle a bill while offline — and does everything sync correctly afterwards without duplicate bills?

"It works offline" often means "it caches the menu." Test the whole path.

2 · Understand the pricing model, not just the price

Indian POS vendors price in very different ways, and the cheapest headline number is often the most expensive over three years:

• Annual licence — one predictable figure. Easiest to budget.
• Per-bill or per-order fee — scales with your success. Do the arithmetic at your actual monthly cover count, not today's.
• Per-terminal — fine for one till, painful when you add a second counter and a captain tablet.
• Free POS, paid everything else — check what "free" excludes. Usually reports, inventory or KOT printing.
• Hardware bundles — a "free" POS with a locked-in printer at 3× market price is not free.

Ask directly: what will I pay in year three, with two terminals and double today's volume?

3 · Ask who owns your data — and how you get it out

Your sales history, customer phone numbers and recipes are business assets. Before signing, ask two blunt questions: can I export everything to Excel or CSV whenever I want? and what happens to my data if I stop paying?

If export needs a support ticket, or the answer is vague, treat that as a lock-in risk. You should be able to leave a vendor with your numbers intact.

4 · Test printing with your printer

Printing is where POS deployments most often fail, and it's very specific to hardware. If you already own thermal printers, insist on a trial with those exact models before paying.

Check that it can route food to the kitchen and drinks to the bar automatically, print without a browser print dialog every time, handle 58 mm and 80 mm rolls, and print a cancellation slip when an item is removed after firing. We go into this in the KOT printing guide.

5 · If you serve alcohol, check the tax handling

Alcohol sits outside GST and is taxed by your state, while food attracts GST. That means a single bar ticket needs two tax treatments computed and displayed separately.

Plenty of POS systems apply one tax rate per bill. Put a beer and a plate of food on one ticket during the demo and look closely at the tax lines. If it can't do it, you'll be reconciling by hand every month. Details in the GST guide.

6 · Time an actual order

Bring your real menu, not the demo data. Ask to add a five-item order the way a cashier would at 9pm on Saturday, and time it. Then ask for the awkward operations every restaurant needs daily:

• Split one table's bill between three people
• Move an item from one table to another
• Merge two tables that joined up
• Remove an item already sent to the kitchen
• Apply a discount — and see whether it needs a manager's approval
• Reprint a bill from two hours ago

These are boring, and they're exactly what your staff will do a hundred times a week. A POS that's elegant on a clean new order and clumsy on a split bill will frustrate everyone.

7 · Ask what happens at 9pm on a Saturday

Support hours matter more than feature lists. Restaurants are busiest exactly when software companies are closed. Ask: what are your support hours, what's the realistic response time on a weekend evening, and is there a phone number or only email?

Then ask the harder version: what do I do if your servers are down? If the answer is "that doesn't happen," ask again. A system with a genuine offline mode gives you an answer that isn't "we wait."

8 · Insist on a trial with your own menu

A polished demo tells you the software works for the demo. Loading your own 200-item menu tells you whether item search is fast, whether variants and portion sizes fit your reality, and whether your staff can find things without a manual.

Have a cashier who was not in the sales meeting try it for one shift. If they can bill without asking for help, that's the strongest signal you'll get.

Where a system like ours is the wrong choice

Honest answer, because it saves everyone time. Aqouncy is built for single-outlet and small multi-outlet restaurants, bars and hotels in India. It's probably not the right fit if you:

• Run a 50-outlet chain needing centralised franchise management and regional pricing hierarchies
• Need deep native integration with an existing ERP such as SAP or Oracle
• Want a fully self-serve product with no human onboarding — we set your menu up with you
• Need live two-way Swiggy/Zomato API sync today (aggregator orders are currently entered manually)

If that's you, a larger enterprise vendor will serve you better, and you should talk to one.