Friday night has no pause button

Downtime isn’t an IT problem in a restaurant. It’s an operational emergency. The best time to plan for it is before it happens.

What’s really going on

  • Internet hiccups, cloud disruptions, and third-party outages happen.
  • Staff needs the system to keep taking orders and payments.
  • Recovery has to be automatic—manual reconciliation creates more damage.
  • Even short outages can break guest trust and staff confidence.

Common mistakes

  • Assuming your ISP will never drop.
  • Relying on ‘cloud only’ systems with limited offline resilience.
  • Not testing offline mode or recovery before a busy service.
  • No written playbook for outages and fallbacks.

What a better approach looks like

  1. Use a system that can keep orders moving offline and sync later.
  2. Design redundancy into networking (backup internet where possible).
  3. Train staff on a 2-minute outage procedure.
  4. Review outage logs and fix root causes rather than hoping.

Questions to ask any POS vendor

  • What exactly works when the internet is down—orders, payments, kitchen tickets?
  • How long can we run offline and what data is stored locally?
  • How does syncing work after connectivity returns?
  • What support is available during peak hours?

Bottom line

The goal isn’t more software—it’s clearer visibility and fewer surprises.

Soft CTA: If you’re evaluating systems, prioritize visibility across POS + inventory + labor + reporting. The faster you can spot issues, the easier they are to fix.