Opening a restaurant, looking for good linux software :)
 

Im opening up an italian restaurant in my town and im looking for linux software, if you happened to miss the topic. Im going to have this computer at the restaurant so i have access to it constantly.

What im looking for so far is software to create a menu, manage inventory, and schedules and such. Obviously im aware of open office, but i dont think i can make a menu using it. Im sure i can use OO spreadsheet for inventory and maybe scheduling but there might be something better out there for that specific purpose. The previous owners, my aunt and uncle, were very unorganized and this cost them time, money, and frustration, so im looking for software to help organize primarily. A nice calendar program would be nice. Im already running kalarm so i have something along those lines for reminders and such.

Also im asking anyone out there that manages or owns a restaurant to give me any of their suggestions, even if its not all that related to the topic. Im all ears :) Also for other restaurant owners/managers... im looking into a Point of Sale Touchscreen Computer for managing the menu and orders. Any recommendations or advice?

BTW its a ubuntu 5.10 box and im pretty experienced with compiling stuff and linux terminology so ya dont have to simplify anything.

Thanks in advance,
Marty

It's not about the topic or anything, but I just wanted to say Good luck..

and give details where it is, so if I drop by I go to eat in a nice Italian Restaurant with that uses linux ;]

tomake your menus... try scribus.. it's a desktop publishing program... equals to pagemaker in my eyes.
as for other progs to helpl run your restaurant... try:

sourceforge.net
or
freshmeat.net

they are the biggest open source software repository on the net for linux

good luck!

M.

Saw a write up about TuxShop as a decent point of sale, can't find the article now... wierd, but here's their website.

I know of some php web based solution for time tracking (scheduling, etc), if this is something you'd be interested in I can dig up the specifics for you.

looking at this bananapos
 

Anyone hear of it? www.bananapos.com

From what i understand, its free and has all the capabilities of a normal POS system. Plus it looks alot like one and supports touchscreen. But i cant get it to compile andthe instructions are poor to say the best.

Hi Marty,

You should take a look at Volante POS systems, it runs on Linux and has lots of features.
http://www.volantesystems.com.

I worked in the restaurant/hotel business as a manager for 20 years...I realized early on that the key to a busy restaurant is actually very simple:

good food
good value
consistently good and friendly service
location

Service is very important, almost as important as the food...invest in training and pay/treat your staff decently. The loyalty you get back more than pays off. Also, give you customers value, they will return. One piece of advice for menu planning...place the menu items with the biggest profit margins at the top of the menu, where people look first. You'll be surprised at how well this works.

Good luck

I live in Canada, and the local grocery store uses an RPM based distro with their POS system. The teller did not know what it was, but it worked very well!

She said they had no problems with it at all. (no crashes and no freezing)

MJKelly, maybe you should look into an RPM based distro, as the BananaPOS do have RPM's for installing their software.


Good Luck!

First zacker:
"One piece of advice for menu planning...place the menu items with the biggest profit margins at the top of the menu, where people look first. You'll be surprised at how well this works."

Thats some excellent advice, i would not have thought of that. I'll definately do that when i make the menu. Thanks alot.
Also im going to look into volante and let ya know how it goes right after im done this post.

elmo:
I was thinking the exact same thing. I mean i use alien to convert the debs into rpms but im having all sorts of problems with bananapos and ntpv. They run off of mysql or postgresql and i dont have the slightest clue about those services. I mean they both look great but i just cant get them installed for the life of me.


I'm doing some construction at the site now and I dont plan to open for about 6-8 weeks so i have plenty of time to look into my PoS choices so any other advice is appreciated.


Ok im gonna download an RPM based distro but im not too sure which one. SUSE was downloading at 7Kb a second so thats not happening.