Estes Restaurant Point Of Sale. About.
What is Estes Restaurant POS?
Estes Restaurant Point Of Sale is a system aimed to help small restaurants make their work flow more efficient.
It doesn't need any specialized hardware for operation. This software is Open Source and Linux oriented, although it can run on Windows without any problems.
Right now system consists of 2 programs - actual POS called "Estes" and helper program called "Estescook" which makes all the process of taking orders, sending them to kitchen and getting information about the stage of the orders from kitchen fully computerized.
Estes
Some may wonder, what's up with the name? Well, there is a town in Colorado called Estes Park. I've spent 2 summers there and the place is just gorgeous! The mountains, the air, the people - it's all just awesome there.
When time came to give a name to my program (it was called "restaurant_pos" before, which is not original at all) I decided to go with the "Estes".
Image is the screenshot of the main window of the program. This what is supposed to used every day by the cashier.
There is "Menu editor" where all the items available for purchase should be entered. Different tax categories are allowed.
It is also possible to add some custom items without actually making entries for them in a menu editor. It might be useful if the restaurant is combined with a gift shop (which is quite common).
Program can display accounting (by periods of time/days/orders) and statistical data which might be helpful in determining which items are most popular and which make most revenue.
It is also possible to send an order to kitchen for preparation and to communicate with the cooks with embedded chat window which brings us to the other part of the system called "Estescook".
Estescook
I think the name doesn't require an explanation :) This program is optional and only required if you want to make kitchen - dining room communication fast and efficient.
What this program does is connecting to the same database as actual POS and to the Estes program itself. Interface is designed to be finger-friendly, because operating keyboard in the kitchen with the greasy hands is probably not such a good idea (I have a real-life experience :)).
On the main screen of the program cook sees what items should be prepared. Division by items is intentional - compare it to the situation when cook has 10 paper orders. Some of them have burgers, some of them have something else. So he has to go through the orders to determine how many burgers he has to take out from the fridge and of what type. Program on the other hand shows how many dishes of the same type need to be prepared with time elapsed from the order placement. It speeds up things considerably. It is of course possible to see every order by itself. When every dish in order is done Estescook send signal to Estes POS so waiter can go ahead and pick the order up. Pretty neat ;)
These programs are completely free and opensourced.
These programs sre released under GNU GPLv2 which makes it free and opensource.