Technology for Restaurants and cafes
Direct answer
QR ordering is worth having when the table menu is a PDF, a third-party page the cafe cannot change, or a printed card that is wrong by Thursday. Sunbeam builds a menu the team can update, a QR code that opens it, and a ticket the kitchen or counter can work from. If a POS already does this well, the right work is the public menu and the gap around it.
Where the work breaks
A PDF on the website, a different PDF behind the table QR, and a handwritten note for the dish that ran out. Guests order something the cafe cannot serve, and the counter spends the rush apologising for a file nobody updated.
A guest tells the server, the server tells the pass, and someone keys it into the till. Each step is a chance to lose a modifier. A small cafe feels this most on the days it is too busy to fix mistakes politely.
Reservations arrive by phone during service, which is the worst moment to take them. Aggregator orders, dine-in and takeaway then get reconciled at the end of the night from three different lists.
Hours, location, the current menu and whether a table can be requested are the whole job of the site. A gallery with last year's menu sends people to a map app and a phone call.
What we would build
01
Items, prices, a short note, and a way to mark something unavailable without deleting it. The website and the table QR read the same menu, so there is one place to correct it.
02
The guest opens the code, chooses, and sends the order. The counter or the kitchen sees a ticket and accepts or adjusts it. Payment can stay at the counter or with the provider the cafe already uses. We do not become the cafe's bank.
03
New, in the kitchen, ready, served. Sized to a single site or a small group, not to a chain's head office. The point is that the ticket exists once.
04
A request for a time, a party size and a phone number, if the cafe does not already have a reservation tool it likes. Confirmed bookings are visible before service, not in a personal phone.
How the system has to behave
Connected capabilities
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FAQ
Often, yes. The QR flow can send a ticket the counter still enters, or it can connect where the POS allows an order in. We look at the till before recommending a second system of record.
Usually the way they pay today: at the counter, or through a payment provider the cafe already has. Building a new payment gateway is a different project and rarely the point of a menu.
Yes. That is the main reason to own the menu. An item can be hidden or marked unavailable without republishing a PDF.
A single cafe feels the PDF problem as much as a group does. The build stays small: one menu, one QR, one ticket view. Multi-branch reporting is a later step if the group actually needs it.
Not every operational issue needs custom software. See when Sunbeam is not the right fit, compare practical options in our decision guides, or .