It is 9:15 on a Saturday night at a karahi and BBQ place in Bahadurabad, Karachi. Every table is full. The cashier is billing a family of eight while the phone rings with a delivery order from Block 7. A foodpanda tablet beeps on the side counter. In the kitchen, the tikka station is waiting for a handwritten slip that the waiter has not brought yet, and the tandoor guy is asking whether table 6 wanted four naan or six.
Most busy restaurants in Pakistan run this way on weekends. The problem is that the counter, the kitchen, the phone and the delivery tablet are all working from different pieces of information. Restaurant POS software is supposed to fix that. Many systems sold as a “POS,” though, are really billing software with a receipt printer attached.
If you are comparing restaurant POS software in Pakistan, here is what it must do, and what to check before you sign.
1. Bill fast at the counter, including orders that stay open
The basics come first. Your cashier should be able to take a dine-in, takeaway or counter order in a few taps, apply the right modifiers (extra raita, less spicy, half portion), and print a clean receipt. Ask how the system handles open or on-hold orders: a table that keeps adding items for an hour, or a takeaway customer who steps out and comes back. If the cashier has to cancel and re-enter orders to change them, your rush hour will feel it.
Discounts and vouchers belong here too. Staff discounts, a weekday deal, a voucher from a corporate tie-up: these should be set up once in the system, not worked out on a calculator at the counter.
2. Send kitchen tickets (KOTs) to the right station automatically
This is where many restaurants lose the most time. Once an order is punched in, the kitchen order ticket (KOT) should print or appear on the right station by itself. BBQ items go to the grill, naan to the tandoor, drinks to the counter, desserts to whoever handles them. No more walking slips back and forth or reading someone’s handwriting.
Ask the vendor directly: can KOTs be split by category and station, and does it work the same way for dine-in, takeaway and delivery orders? If delivery orders reach the kitchen differently from table orders, you will get missed and duplicated items.
3. Bring your own online orders and delivery into the same system
This is the point that separates a modern restaurant POS from a billing machine. Today your orders probably come from several places: walk-ins, phone calls, WhatsApp, foodpanda, and maybe your own website. If each of these lives on a different screen, someone ends up retyping orders, and your sales report never matches the cash in the drawer.
A good POS pulls all of these into one order hub. Orders from your own branded website or app should land in the POS like any counter order and go straight to the kitchen as a KOT. Delivery app orders, such as foodpanda, should flow in automatically instead of being copied from a tablet.
Your own channel matters for cost as well. In a 2021 interview with Dawn, foodpanda’s then-CEO said its commission rates ranged from 22–23 percent to 29–30 percent (Dawn, October 17, 2021). Orders through your own branded channel still carry a small per-order fee of around 1% on systems that include your own ordering, plus your own rider and packaging costs. We broke down those costs in our post on POS system prices in Pakistan.
4. Manage delivery and riders from the POS
Once delivery orders sit in the POS, the next step is knowing which rider took which order. For restaurants with their own riders, the system should assign orders to riders and keep a rider-wise list for closing. If you use third-party riders such as Bykea or pandago on busy nights, check whether the POS can book them from the same screen.
This matters most at closing. When every cash-on-delivery order is tied to a rider in the system, settling cash takes minutes instead of an argument. We covered that process step by step in Rider Cash at Closing.
5. Keep billing when the internet drops
Load-shedding and patchy internet are part of running a restaurant in Pakistan. Your POS should have an offline mode that keeps taking orders and printing KOTs when the connection goes, then syncs once it is back. Ask to see it in a demo.
6. Reconcile revenue across every channel
At the end of the day, you want one number you can trust: how much came in through cash, card, wallets, your own online orders and delivery apps, branch by branch. Revenue reconciliation in the POS saves your manager from matching three reports by hand, and it shows you quickly when something does not add up.
7. Handle menu, shifts and more than one branch
Menu changes should be made once and appear everywhere: at the counter, in the kitchen and on your online ordering. If you run, or plan to run, more than one branch, check that you can manage menus, prices and reports for every branch from one place. Shift scheduling helps you know who was on the counter when.
8. Connect to inventory, recipes, analytics and loyalty when you are ready
You do not need everything on day one, but your POS should be able to grow with you. Recipe management lets you see what each dish should consume. Integrated inventory shows what actually went out. Analytics tell you which items and hours make money. Loyalty is worth having only when it is tied to the POS, so that a regular’s orders at the counter and online both count. These features are often part of higher plans, so ask which tier includes what.
Checklist: what to ask before you choose restaurant POS software
- Can the cashier handle dine-in, takeaway, counter and on-hold orders without re-entering them?
- Are discounts and vouchers set up in the system?
- Do KOTs print or display automatically by category and station?
- Do orders from my own website or app go straight into the POS and the kitchen?
- Do foodpanda orders flow in automatically, or will staff retype them?
- Can I assign orders to my own riders, and book Bykea or pandago when needed?
- Does it keep working offline, and will you show me?
- Is revenue reconciled across all channels and branches?
- Can I manage menus, prices and reports for multiple branches from one place?
- Which plan includes recipes, inventory, analytics and loyalty?
One practical step
Pick your busiest night of last week and list every place an order came from: counter, tables, phone, WhatsApp, foodpanda, website. Then ask each POS vendor to show you, in a live demo, how each of those orders reaches the kitchen and the end-of-day report. Tools like Blink bring counter billing, KOTs, your own online ordering and delivery into one system, so that demo should be short.
