Free. No card, no plan.
A quick service POS system for an independent counter
Build the order in a handful of taps, send it with every modification still attached, and follow it by a short number the counter can call. This is a quick service restaurant point of sale that runs in a browser on the phones and tablets your team already carries — no station to license, and no card processor to sign with.
No card needed. Nothing to install.
What a quick service POS has to do that a full-service one does not
A full-service system is built around a check that lives as long as the party does: a table is seated, the check opens, courses go out over an hour, and it gets split at the end. A counter has none of that. The order is finished before the guest has finished speaking, it is paid at once, and the only thing that persists is the wait between the till and the pass — ninety seconds in which the guest has nothing to do but watch. So the software is judged on different things. Not on how well it splits a bill, but on how few taps the fifth-most-common order takes, whether the modification survives the walk from the screen to the fryer, and whether anyone can answer "is thirty-eight up?" without shouting. The enterprise end of this category answers that with kiosks, drive-through timers, delivery-app connectors and a menu console for two hundred sites. An independent takeaway, a food hall stall, a fast food counter with one till or a fast casual room needs a much smaller core than that, and it needs it to cost accordingly.
Speed is not extra taps saved. It is nobody having to ask.
The rush does not slow down because the menu is one screen deep. It slows down when the till has to ask whether the kitchen saw it, when the pass has to work out which of the three burgers is the one with no pickles, and when the person handing food out calls a number that turns out to be missing its fries. Every one of those is the same failure: two people holding two versions of one order. Platevio keeps one — the items, the extras and the note on each unit, the short number the counter reads out, and each unit’s live state — on a server every device reads from, so what the till sent is what the pass sees, and the answer to "is it started" and "is it up" is on a screen instead of in somebody’s head.
What Platevio gives a quick service counter
Six things, all of them about the ninety seconds between the till and the pass.
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A menu built for the same order forty times
Your categories, in the order you sell them, each item with its price and a line of description for whoever started this week. The high-volume things go where a thumb reaches first, and a price changed on the counter tablet reaches every other device without anybody reloading.
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A short number on every order
Each order gets a short, human number of its own — the counter runs per restaurant, so it stays short rather than growing into a database id — and it is drawn on the order everywhere the order appears. That is what the till writes on the cup and what the pass calls out.
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The modification reaches the pass attached
"No pickles." "Sauce on the side." A priced extra and a free-text note both sit on the single unit they are about, so the change made at the till is on that unit when the kitchen reads it, rather than on a ticket that says three burgers and leaves the rest to memory.
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A live kitchen view, on a device you already own
Open the same orders on a screen at the pass and each unit moves through ordered, preparing, ready and served as the work happens. Two of the same item move separately, so one can be ready while the other is still on. Every device reads the one service off the server, and each change lands on the others without anybody touching them.
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The ladder goes back down
Mark something ready too early and you can walk it back to preparing; a unit cancelled by mistake can be put back on the ladder. Nobody has to void the order and re-key it to fix one line. The single thing you cannot do is send a unit back to ordered — that is where the kitchen receives it, not somewhere anyone moves it to.
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A login each, and a role that matches the job
Owners, managers, cashiers, cooks and waiters each get their own access rather than one till password taped under the counter. Change somebody’s role or take it away when the job changes, without changing it for everyone.
One counter order, till to pass
A Thursday at ten past one, with six people in line and two of you working.
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13:10
The order goes in at the till
Two burgers, one of them without pickles, fries and a drink. Five taps, an extra on one unit and a note on it, and it is sent as order 38.
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13:11
The pass picks it up
The same service, on the screen by the fryer as soon as the till sends it rather than kept as a copy of its own. Each unit arrives with its extras and its note, so nobody is asking which burger is the plain one.
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13:13
The fries are up before the burgers
Each unit goes to ready by itself, so the counter can see that 38 is not complete yet and does not call it a minute early with half of it missing.
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13:14
“Thirty-eight!”
The number is on the order wherever it is drawn, so whoever is on the pass calls it without working out whose is whose.
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13:15
It is settled and off the board
The card goes through the reader you already own; Platevio records that the order was settled and under which method. Then the finished order is hidden by hand, and the board is back to the five people still waiting.
Pay-first service: the honest answer
A quick service counter usually takes the money before the kitchen starts, and Platevio does not work that way. It records what was settled and how, after the order has been sent — the payment is a mark on what was served, not a gate in front of the kitchen. There is no integrated card step that has to succeed before an order fires, because Platevio never touches the card at all: you take it on your own reader and record the settlement here. In practice a small counter absorbs that fine — the guest pays at the till while the order is already being made, which is what happens anyway. What it does not survive is a service model where the kitchen must not see the order until the payment clears, or one where the order arrives from a kiosk or an ordering page with the money already taken. Platevio has neither of those channels today. If pay-before-fire is how your counter has to work, buy a system that does it now, not one that might.
Where Platevio fits, and where it runs out
It fits an independent takeaway, food counter, fast casual room or food hall stall that takes orders with staff, wants one live view of what is being made, can keep its own card processing and has a connection it trusts. It is not an enterprise quick service platform, and these are the things it does not do today. None of them are on a promised date, so weigh them as they are.
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Every order is labeled Dine-in
An order does not need a table, so a counter never has to invent a floor plan. But takeaway is not yet a kind of order Platevio creates, so the board prints Dine-in on all of them. It costs you nothing operationally and it will look wrong to you every day until we fix it.
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Kiosks, online ordering and the delivery apps
Every order is entered by your staff, on your devices. There is no self-order kiosk, no ordering page for guests, and no connection to the delivery marketplaces — so nothing arrives on the board that somebody at your counter did not put there.
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Nothing the queue can see
The number and the live status are for your team. There is no customer-facing pickup display, no order-ready text message, and no screen at the counter showing the guest what was rung up.
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Drive-through
No lane, no headset integration, no timers, no service-time reporting. A drive-through operation is not what this is.
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Inventory and a sold-out switch
Platevio counts nothing. When the day’s special is gone you remove or rename it on the menu, which does not disturb the price already captured on the orders that bought it — but there is nothing that greys it out on its own.
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Printed tickets and receipts, and offline service
Thermal printing is being built and is not usable yet, so the order lives on screens. And Platevio needs a working connection for the whole service: there is no queue of orders that syncs when the wifi returns.
How to choose a quick service POS system
Demo the rush, not the dashboard. Ring your five most common orders back to back, then a heavily modified one, then make an item ready too early and correct it. Time it against the person who actually works the till. The best POS for a quick service restaurant is the one that survives your worst twenty minutes, not the one with the longest feature list. Then ask the questions that decide what it costs you in year two.
- How many taps is the order you sell most, from empty screen to sent?
- Does the kitchen see an order before the payment succeeds, or after?
- Does a modification reach the right item at the right station, or only the ticket?
- Can somebody correct a status they got wrong without voiding the order?
- Are kiosks, kitchen screens, online orders and delivery connectors included, or monthly?
- What happens to the counter when the connection drops?
- Is the software tied to their hardware or their card processing?
Quick service POS questions
- What is a QSR POS system?
- A QSR POS system — a quick service restaurant point of sale, spelled out — is the software a quick service restaurant takes orders on, plus whatever it runs on. What separates it from a full-service system is the shape of the transaction: entered fast, modified at the till, paid at once, and handed over against a number rather than a table. Larger ones add kiosks, drive-through, delivery-channel connectors, labor and inventory on top of that loop.
- What is the difference between a quick service POS and a full-service one?
- A full-service system is organised around a check that stays open: tables, seats, courses, and a split at the end. A quick service system is organised around throughput: the fewest taps for a common order, a number the counter can call, and a kitchen queue that says what is still being made. Platevio does both — it runs a floor map for the rooms that have one — but it is configured by how you use it, not by a mode you pick.
- Is a fast food POS system the same as a quick service one?
- The same category under two names. Fast food, fast casual, quick service and QSR all describe one shape of transaction: entered fast, modified at the till, paid at once, handed over against a number rather than a table. Where the words pull apart is scale, not software — a POS system for a fast food restaurant is usually sold with a drive-through lane, self-order kiosks and a menu pushed to two hundred sites, and Platevio has none of the three. A fast food or fast casual counter with one till and one pass is exactly what this page is written for.
- Can Platevio send orders to a kitchen display?
- Orders are visible on any device you sign in on, so a screen at the pass shows the same live orders the till sent, with each unit’s status moving as the work happens. It is the same view rather than a separate product, and it is not routed — items are not split to different screens by station, so the bar and the fryer read one board.
- Does Platevio support counter and takeaway orders?
- Yes, in the sense that matters: an order does not need a table, so a counter can sell without building a floor plan, and the extras and note stay attached to each unit. One honest caveat — takeaway is not yet its own kind of order, so the board still labels every one of them Dine-in.
- Does Platevio include a self-order kiosk or online ordering?
- No. Orders are entered by your staff on your devices. There is no customer kiosk, no web ordering page and no delivery-marketplace connection, so every order on the board was put there by somebody working for you.
- Can a guest pay before the kitchen starts the order?
- Not as an enforced step. Platevio records settlement rather than processing the card, and the payment mark comes after the order is sent. A guest can of course pay at the till while the food is being made, but there is no gate that holds the order back until a card clears.
- Does the quick service POS work offline?
- No. Platevio needs a working connection to send an order and to update it, and there is no store-and-forward queue that catches up afterwards. If your site drops out mid-service, weigh that before you switch.
- How much does a quick service POS system cost?
- Count the whole bill: software per station, counter hardware, kitchen screens, kiosks, card processing, online-order fees and whatever is charged per extra location. Platevio is free to use, runs on devices you already own and takes no percentage of your sales — and your payment provider stays a separate bill with a workflow of its own.
Open your restaurant tonight
It takes a minute: your restaurant, your first menu, and you are taking orders.