How it actually works, from a scanned code to a queried invoice.
The rest of this site argues that a busy restaurant can still lose money in four specific places. This page is the machinery underneath that argument: what you set up, what happens on a Friday night without anybody doing anything, and how a delivery on Monday ends up changing a price on your menu.
Getting on it
Staged, not switched on all at once
You do not have to have it all on to get anything out of it.
Most venues start with the menu and the codes, because that pays for itself before anything else is configured. The parts that take real work are marked as such below — we would rather you knew now than found out in week two.
- Tonight15–30 minutes
Menu on, codes on the tables
Upload a PDF, a photo or a URL and the menu is read into dishes, prices and categories for you to correct. Print the codes, and guests can order.
- This weekAn hour or two
The diary and the kitchen
Declare your sittings and how many covers each takes, put the booking link on your site, and open the kitchen screen on whatever tablet is already in the pass.
- When you are readyDays, spread out
Suppliers and the shelf
Add your suppliers and their catalogues, then map dishes to ingredients. This is the slow one — a full menu is days, not minutes — but it is what makes food costs real rather than remembered.
- NeverNot required
Replacing your till
Your EPOS stays where it is. AtTable is the guest-facing layer, the kitchen screen, the diary, the shelf and the numbers on top of them.
One service
Who touches what, and when
A Friday night, with the software doing the filing.
The question behind “how does it work” is usually “who has to learn it?”. So this is a service in order, with the surface each moment lands on — and most of them are a phone the guest already owns.
- 16:40OfficeOffice
You check tonight against the shelf. Ninety-six booked, stock for sixty on the beef.
Two portions short becomes a line on tomorrow’s order, not a surprise at 20:00.
- 18:00Kitchen screenKitchen screen
The pass screen comes on. Stations filtered, nothing to log into.
- 19:41Guest phoneGuest phone
Table seven scans the code. The menu opens with their nut filter already on.
A third visit, recognised by device. No account, no name.
- 19:47Guest phoneGuest phone
They order and pay. Sea bass, sourdough, two glasses.
Ticket to the kitchen, stock off the shelf, and the food cost of that plate — at once.
- 19:48Kitchen screenKitchen screen
The ticket lands. Bumped item by item as it goes out.
- 20:15FloorFloor
A walk-in wants the risotto. It is eighty-sixed on the menu already, so nobody promises it.
Availability came off the ingredients, not off a whiteboard.
- 20:52NobodyNobody
Table nine opens the risotto, reads it, and orders the chicken instead.
Opened, dwelled, walked away. The line your till will never have.
- 21:12Guest phoneGuest phone
They split the bill four ways, tip, and leave without waving at anyone.
- 23:10OfficeOffice
Service closes. Covers, takings, tips by person, and what was left on the table.
Ready before you have finished cashing up.
Four of those nine moments happened without anyone on your team touching anything — on a phone the guest already owned, or on nothing at all.
One week
The van, the prices, the order
Monday's delivery is what Thursday's margin is made of.
Service empties the shelf as it sells. A delivery fills it, and the price on that delivery note — not the one on the order — is what your dishes are costed at from then on. There is no cost field anyone has to remember to update.
By Friday, the covers already in the diary are added to what your usual week needs, and the shopping list is grouped by supplier on the weekday you order from each one.
- Mon 07:15
The van arrives
Chelmsford Meat Co · 6 lines
- Mon 07:22
You sign for what came
10 kg accepted · 2 kg refused
- Mon 07:22
The charged price is recorded
Ribeye £8.40/kg · was £7.10
- Mon 07:22
Every dish using it re-costs
11 dishes · no field to update
Ribeye & chips
On the menu at £12.00
- Ribeye · 250 g
- £1.78
- £2.10
- Chips, butter, garnish
- £1.35
- £1.35
- Food cost
- £3.13
- £3.45
- Gross profit
- 73.9%
- 71.3%
£0.32 a plate. You sell 14 a night, so it is £4.48 a night you were not pricing for — against a costing nobody had to remember to update.
The loop
One dish, one week
Nothing above is worth anything until it changes something.
- Fri 19:43At the table
A guest opens the Truffle Risotto, reads it for forty seconds, and orders chicken.
Nothing is asked of them and nothing interrupts them. The open, the dwell and the walk-away are recorded.
- Sun 08:10In your briefing
“156 opened it this month, 12 ordered it. They are stopping at £24.”
A figure, a plain-English read, and what the evidence suggests is causing it — not a chart to interpret.
- Sun 08:11One decision
The fix is already drafted: £21 for two weeks, and a description that leads with the truffle.
Half your guests see the new version, half see the old one. You approve it or you ignore it.
- +14 daysSettled
Opens that became orders go from 7.7% to 19%, measured against the guests who saw the old version.
So the number is the change, not the weather. The version that won is the one that stays.
+£486in orders that did not exist a fortnight ago
The same shape runs through the other three: a table that would have gone empty, an ingredient that quietly got dearer, an invoice that did not match the van. Each one hands the next its numbers.
- Bookings
Covers you already know about
96 booked · Sun - Orders
What those covers actually bought
312 covers · £18,410 - Stock
The food that left the shelf to make it
Ribeye −14 kg - Suppliers
What replacing it really cost
£8.40/kg · was £7.10 - The decision
Re-price it, re-plate it, or leave it
GP 73.9% → 71.3%
The decision goes back to the top — a price on the menu, a dish moved up the page, a different quantity on Friday's order — and the next Sunday is measured against the one before it.
Who is on what
Five surfaces, one set of data
- Your guests Their own phone
The menu, the order, the bill and the review. No app, no account, nothing to install — and nothing for you to hand out or support.
- Your floor Any browser, or a phone
Tonight’s tables, the diary, taking an order for someone who would rather not use their phone, and splitting a bill.
- Your kitchen A tablet in the pass
Tickets by station, bumped item by item, over a live connection. It installs as an app and holds its own login, so nobody signs in mid-service.
- You The dashboard
Revenue, what almost sold, the shelf, the rota and the supplier trail — the only surface that needs a proper screen, and the only one you look at outside service.
- Your suppliers A link you send them
They accept, amend or price an order without an account, and say what actually went on the van. They never see your stock or your reorder levels.
What it needs from you
Worth knowing before, not after
Five things, and one of them is a habit.
None of this is hardware you have to buy from us. The one that catches people out is the last kind: the numbers are only as good as what the kitchen tells them.
- Working wifi in the room
- Guests order on their own data or yours. If the connection drops, the till keeps ringing rounds and printing kitchen tickets, and they send themselves when it returns — but the guest’s own phone, the live kitchen display and card payments all need the network back.
- A screen in the pass
- Any tablet or spare laptop. It does not have to be new and it does not have to be ours — there is no terminal to buy from us at all.What it runs on
- Somebody who owns the menu
- Prices, descriptions and allergens have to be right, because the guest is reading them directly. Fifteen minutes a week, not a job.
- Honesty about the shelf
- Food costing is only as good as the recipes behind it, and stock drifts unless somebody counts. The software tells you when the two disagree; it cannot count for you.
- Your existing card setup, or ours
- Take payment through a provider you already use, or through us. Either way the money settles to your account, not to a balance we hold.
Open your assistant with a summary of AtTable already asked for. The answer is the model's, not ours — it may be out of date or wrong.