Free Restaurant POS Software: Open-Source Tables, Kitchen and Stock

Restaurant POS systems are often cheap to start and expensive to keep: monthly fees per terminal, card fees and extras for stock control. An open-source POS removes the licence fee and links the till to stock and purchasing.

Restaurant features in Odoo Community

Odoo's Point of Sale has a restaurant mode in Community. It covers:

• Floor plans with tables you can arrange to match the room
• Table orders, held open until the bill
• Kitchen and bar printing by product category
• Split bills and tips
• Several payment methods
• Offline mode, so service carries on if the internet drops

Ingredient stock and buying

The till is half the job. The other half is knowing what you used and what to order:

• Recipes as bills of materials, so selling a dish uses its ingredients
• Inventory for ingredients, drinks and packaging
• Reorder rules that suggest purchase orders
• Purchase orders to suppliers

Tracking ingredients properly takes discipline: recipes need to be accurate, and waste needs to be recorded. It's worth it for the margin you can finally see.

What Community doesn't include

• Kitchen display screens are an Enterprise feature. Community uses kitchen printers.
• Delivery-platform integrations are third-party or custom.

What it costs

The software is free. Budget for:

• Hosting
• Hardware: tablets or terminals, printers and card readers
• Card fees from your payment provider
• Setting up recipes for your full menu

Free setup from ERP Builders

We set up Odoo Community's restaurant POS, inventory and purchasing for free. Hosting and hardware aren't included. See free open-source restaurant POS and ERP, or the restaurant ERP page.