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by tauntz
2286 days ago
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We've been using uniCenta at our restaurant for 4 years (the open-source version).
It's barely usable, all our employees hate it, the UX (and UI) gives the impression that all the people working on it have never actually used it themselves. It's dead-slow and sometimes you need to log into the mysql DB directly to clear some tables.. The reason why we use it? We're not in the US - there's not too much room for a commercial $$$/month solution for us at the moment and the switching costs (retraining people, integrating our custom reporting and monitoring) would be way too huge. I'd definitely consider a different solution if I'd ever start a new restaurant (highly unlikely though - it's hell. Much harder than running a startup of a similar size :)) but I'd much prefer a % revenue-based approach (with an upper cap) than a fixed pricing model. |
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The problem with being a small shop selling POS products is finding customers at the right time. It is very sales intensive process. You have to reach them at the right time, once a restaurant is invested in a POS, it is almost impossible to convince them to switch. They choose to just live with whatever choice they made and focus on other things that matter. So now, as a developer, you need to give them a good reason to switch.
Money is a good one. So now you are in a price race to the bottom; never a good place to be as a small shop.
Another common ask is integration. They want to try out the product before committing but they can't afford to train folks to use two products at the same time. So now you need to come up with an integration strategy without even having a clear API/structure to work with.
It's a nightmare. Unless you have customers ready to commit which to me seems impossible in the retail business without already knowing people on the inside.