Café & Bistro

POS setup and configuration for a café and bistro. From an empty account to serving tables: the floor plan, the kitchen, and the settings that matter.

What it does

A café or bistro runs two service styles at once: people who order at the counter and sit down, and people who sit down and order from the table. Coffee in the morning, brunch at eleven, a glass of wine at six — and a bill that stays open until the guest is ready. This guide sets POSolid up for that: a tab that follows the guest from counter to table, drinks that reach the bar the moment they're ordered, and a bill that splits without arithmetic on a napkin.

The short version: unlike a takeaway counter, your guests pay at the end — so the settings that matter most are the ones about keeping a bill open.

What you need

"Optional" means your choice — not an upsell. Every optional line above is hardware you may or may not want; none of it unlocks anything in POSolid. Table management, the Kitchen Display, the Customer Display Board, QR Menu, loyalty cards, split bills and extra users and devices are included in your subscription from day one, with no per-device or per-feature charge. You can switch any of them on later, mid-season, without changing plan or paying more. The only thing you'd ever spend money on is the physical equipment itself — and only if you decide you want it.

How everything connects

One router, everything on it — with one rule worth stating twice.

Router (broadband + Wi-Fi) --( internet )-------> POSolid
Till, waiter phone, screens --( staff Wi-Fi )---> Router
Till with the Print Agent   --( USB cable or staff Wi-Fi )--> Printers

Three things are worth understanding:

1. Every device reaches POSolid over the internet. Tills, waiter phones and the pickup screen just open POSolid in a browser. Nothing needs to be installed on them.
2. The Print Agent runs on one device only — normally the till at the counter. It collects print jobs from POSolid and sends them to your printers. It only makes outgoing connections, so there's nothing to configure on the router.
3. Keep printers off the guest Wi-Fi. Guest networks normally stop devices talking to each other, which is exactly what the Print Agent needs to do. Put tills and printers on the staff network and give each network printer a fixed address (a DHCP reservation) so it doesn't move after a power cut.

Getting started

1. Create your organization — see Create Your Account. Set your country, currency and, if you're in Poland, your tax settings.
2. Build the menu in Menu → Catalog: drinks, brunch and food, with variants for cup size and modifiers for milk, syrups and extras — see Modifiers. If you already have a printed menu, the Menu Scanner in AI Tools can do the first pass for you.
3. Set up your tables so a tab can belong to a table — see Tables & Reservations. Draw the room once; you'll use it every day.
4. Tune the register in Settings → Orders configuration — for a café these four decide the whole flow:
   • Assign table to order — turn on. This is what makes a bill belong to table 6 instead of to nobody.
   • Require payment before accepting order — turn off. Guests pay at the end, so the order has to be accepted and sent to the bar before any money changes hands.
   • Use multiple checks per order — turn on if groups share a table but want separate bills.
   • Allow split receipt — turn on so one bill can be paid by several people.
5. Install the Print Agent on the till (Settings → Printers → Connect) and link it with the one-time code — see Printing.
6. Add your printers — the fiscal printer (Poland), and a bar printer if you want drinks to start immediately.
7. Set up prep stations — bar and kitchen, so drinks and food go to different places. See "Setting up the bar and kitchen" below.
8. Add your staff in Staff & Roles and give each person a PIN — see Quick Access with a PIN.
9. Do a dry run: open a tab on a table, add a coffee and a brunch, add another round, split the bill two ways, pay, then check Reports.

Open tabs, splitting and paying at the end

This is the part that makes a café different from a takeaway counter, and it's mostly about four settings working together.

The tab stays open. With payment-first turned off, an order is accepted and sent to the bar without being paid. Staff keep adding to it — a second coffee, a dessert — and the bill is settled when the guest asks. That's the whole point of table service, and it's why the takeaway advice ("always take payment up front") is wrong here.

The tab belongs to a table. With table assignment on, every open bill shows its table, so anyone on shift can pick up someone else's table without asking who ordered what. The active-orders list groups them by table, with a table icon and the table name.

Several tabs on one table. Turn on multiple checks when two couples share a big table and want to pay separately — one order, two tabs, each with its own items and its own total.

Splitting one bill. Turn on split receipt when one tab needs to be paid by several people. That's the "we'll do card and cash" case, and it's a different thing from separate tabs: one bill, several receipts.

Hand a pre-check first. Guests usually want to see the bill before paying. The pre-check is a non-fiscal printout of the tab; the fiscal receipt is printed when they actually pay. If your only printer is the fiscal one, it will print the pre-check too — see Supported Fiscal Printers.

Let guests order themselves, if you want. A QR Menu on the table lets guests read the menu and order without waiting for someone to come over — useful at brunch peak. It's included; turn it on when it helps and off when it doesn't.

Setting up the bar and kitchen

Drinks and food have different rhythms, so send them to different places.

Bar station. Assign coffee, tea and bar drinks to a "Bar" prep station and point it at a printer next to the coffee machine. The docket prints the moment the order is sent, so the barista starts while the waiter is still at the table. For a café this single change is usually the biggest speed win available.

Kitchen station. Assign brunch and hot dishes to a "Kitchen" station, with either its own printer or the Kitchen Display on a screen. A screen is worth more here than in a takeaway shop, because a café kitchen juggles several tables at once and you want to see what's still outstanding.

Note that printed dockets need an ESC/POS thermal printer — a fiscal printer can't produce them.

Items with no station just go through. A bottle of water assigned to no station never joins a queue; it counts as ready as soon as it's ordered. Use that for anything the waiter simply takes off the shelf.

If you print dockets and keep a Kitchen Display open somewhere, keep it to a single screen. Each open board watches for new orders on its own, so an auto-printing station can produce one docket per open screen.

Recommended setup

Minimum — counter and a few tables

Till + fiscal printer. Tables on, payment-first off. One person takes orders at the counter and carries drinks over. Everything else can wait.

Recommended — full table service

Add a bar printer so drinks start immediately, a phone for table service so orders don't need a walk back to the till, and staff PINs so the team swaps in a second. Turn on split receipt and multiple checks before your first busy brunch, not during it.

Full — busy bistro

Add a kitchen screen or printer, Reservations so the evening is planned rather than hoped for, a QR Menu for the tables, loyalty cards for the morning regulars, and Work Shifts so hours are recorded. Use the hour-by-hour report to see when the brunch peak really starts and staff for it.

Key things to know

• Turn payment-first off. It's the single setting most likely to be wrong on a café, and it blocks the whole table-service flow: with it on, an order can't be sent to the bar until it's paid.
• Tables are what make an open tab usable. Without table assignment, an open bill belongs to nobody and staff have to remember who ordered what.
• Separate tabs and split receipts are different things. Several tabs = one table, several bills. Split receipt = one bill, several payers. Turn both on if you host groups.
• Send drinks to the bar, not to the kitchen. Two stations, two printers, no queue-jumping between a latte and a shakshuka.
• Keep printers off the guest Wi-Fi. Guest networks isolate devices from each other, so the Print Agent can't reach a printer sitting on one.
• You need internet during service. POSolid runs in the cloud; there's no offline mode.
• Poland: the fiscal printer is not optional, and the daily report has to be printed to close the fiscal day.
• Loyalty pays for itself fastest in a café, because the same people come back every morning. See Discounts.

FAQ

Q: My orders won't send until I take payment. What's wrong?
A: Require payment before accepting order is on. That setting is meant for takeaway counters. Turn it off in Settings → Orders configuration and the tab will behave normally.

Q: Two couples at one table want separate bills. How?
A: Turn on multiple checks per order — one order can then hold several tabs, each with its own items and total.

Q: One table wants to split the bill between three cards.
A: That's split receipt — one bill paid by several people, each getting their own receipt. It's a separate setting from multiple checks.

Q: How do I show a guest the bill before they pay?
A: Print a pre-check. It's a non-fiscal printout of the current tab; the fiscal receipt is printed when payment is actually taken.

Q: Can drinks start before the food is ordered?
A: Yes — assign drinks to a Bar station with its own printer. The docket prints when the order is sent, so the barista starts immediately.

Q: Do I need table management if guests order at the counter?
A: Not for pure counter service. But the moment a guest sits down and adds a second round, a tab tied to a table is what stops the guesswork.

Q: Can guests order from their phone at the table?
A: Yes, with the QR Menu — it's included in your subscription. Guests scan, read the menu and order without waiting to be approached.