TL;DR: Menu.cash is a new integrated Point-of-Sale (PoS) platform for restaurants, enabling customers to order with their phone at the table. The venue uploads its menu online, and diners scan table-specific QR codes containing items they’d like to order, paying with Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Waiters, kitchen, and assorted staff are alerted automatically, and food can be delivered directly diners. CoinSpice talked with creator Tobias R. to find out more about his interesting take on a different way to do PoS.

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Menu.cash is a Personalized Restaurant Point-of-Sale System Using Bitcoin Cash

Integration of ordering and paying systems in venues has been a tough nut to crack by developers, and also a pain for cryptocurrency adopters. Menu.cash comes to change this, integrating the paying system with the order system to ensure a seamless experience for venus and also for the users.

Restaurants register on the Menu.cash site that is currently free, and it will give them the ability to register its name and the number of tables of the establishment. Users will be able to order from that menu via a QR code located at each table. After ordering, customers pay via Bitcoin Cash.

We wanted to know more about the innovative project, and so we chatted up Tobias R., its creator. Even while traveling in Israel and out of his environment, he was kind enough to answer some questions about the development of the system and the decisions leading to Menu.cash.

Interview with Tobias R. of Menu.cash

CoinSpice: In a nutshell, how would you define menu.cash?

Tobias R.: I’d say it’s a simple way to set up your online menu, which also enables your customers to directly order from the table.

How can customers do that?

They just scan the QR code (or type the intentionally short URL into their browser), order from there, and pay with their favorite wallet. It’s very simple!

So it is also a PoS replacement?

Yes. It uses Webpush to send the orders to the phones of the waiters, which means they don’t even have to install an app – just scan the QR login code of the PoS and they get the notifications directly once the customer pays!

A complete paying system for free? How would you monetize it?

Well, the servers and the domain have to be paid for, so I’d prefer it if I would be able to charge a small amount as a fee. I’d love to open-source it, though, so people can choose whether they like to host their own solution.

What made you build this amazing tool?

I went to a Bitcoin Cash meetup in October and there I paid using Bitcoin Cash. However, the waitress just used a wallet where I had to scan the QR code and type the amount I had to pay. It seemed pretty unprofessional and ad-hoc. After thinking about how to improve the UX of ordering in a venue, I came to this solution and started implementing it. Once I realized that the domain menu.cash was free, I felt like I definitely had to do this for real.

Has the system been implemented at a real venue?

Unfortunately no; I just announced it recently though. I’d love to get it implemented, however! I’m still trying to find out how to get it used in the venues, I’m thinking about affiliate marketing, but I’m not good with that. If there’s someone who wants to help spread the word or has an idea of how to do it, I would be very happy. Just contact me at mail@menu.cash.

Why did you use Bitcoin Cash specifically to make this tool?

I’m a libertarian, and I believe Bitcoin Cash has the best shot at giving the world economic freedom. It’s also insanely easy to develop something on. Maybe Ethereum would be easier, but the fact that I could debug on the main chain because fees are almost zero makes it much easier. I think I paid like 5 cents to the miners during the whole development.

Do you think these kind of payment systems are the future?

Of course. There are many ways I’d like to improve Menu.cash, but I wanted to get the word out first to see if there’s demand for it and if people are interested. I would love if it would grow into something used widely, basically the go-to option for accepting bitcoin cash for venues. Of course, I would like to enable cash payments, too (where the waiter gets the notification without the customer having paid already, basically how it works today). However, it would nevertheless be useful already for, say, a BCH meetup, where most people pay with BCH anyway.

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