Mobile point of sale
Waitermate puts the whole till in a phone. Staff take the order, take the payment on the same device by tapping the customer's card against it, and the owner gets the day's numbers without opening a laptop. No terminal on the counter, no separate card machine.
The problem
Removing the hardware means the phone has to absorb everything the hardware used to do: accept a card, keep an auditable record of the day, and satisfy the reporting a hospitality business is expected to produce, all on a screen a fraction of a till's size.
What we built
Not a feature list, the pieces that had to exist for the product to do what it claims.
The customer taps their card against the staff member's device. No separate terminal, no pairing, no second thing to lose.
Daily revenue, order count, average sale value, tips and refunds on one screen, with comparison against the day before, so the picture is available mid-service rather than at close.
The end-of-day reads hospitality operators are expected to run, in the pocket-sized form factor rather than as an afterthought.
Backup triggered from the app, because a business running entirely on one phone needs its records to survive that phone.
Item management with pricing and ratings, order handling, and courier assignment for venues doing delivery alongside counter service.
They put an entire till into a phone without cutting the corners that matter, contactless payment on the device, the end-of-day reads we are expected to run, and backups that survive the handset. Removing the hardware was the whole point, and they made it work.
Founder, WaitermateEverything here follows from one decision: no dedicated hardware. That is what makes the app viable for a small operator, and it is also what makes it hard: every function that a purpose-built till gets to solve with a physical button has to earn its place on a phone screen used one-handed, mid-service.
Tell us where your business is stuck. We'll show you what an AI-native team can ship, and how fast.
