Pay at the table: order and pay by phone

Your order, €11.56: pay at the counter or pay on my phone

Paying at the table means the guest settles the bill on their own phone, at the table, when they decide to leave. Nobody waits for the bill and then for the card machine. With order and pay, the same phone sends the order too, so a second round of drinks doesn’t depend on catching a waiter’s eye.

Volio does both. Guests order and pay at the table from a code, in the browser, with no app, and pay at the table, a round a waiter took in Volio’s waiter mode included. Vendors use these names loosely, and what order and pay means sets a QR menu, order and pay, pay at table and a tab side by side.

What the guest does

Everyone at the table scans the same code and the QR menu opens. Each guest adds what they want from their own phone, and the table orders together. Another round goes in the same way an hour later.

When they are ready to go, they pay on the phone with Apple Pay, Google Pay or a card. Each guest can pay their own part, so nobody does sums on a napkin. The tip comes before paying.

A guest who would rather pay cash or hand a card to the waiter still does. The phone is one more way to pay, added to the ones you have.

What your team sees on a Friday night

Orders from phones land where every other order lands: on the orders board as new, being made or ready, and in the kitchen as a ticket with the table on it. Each order is marked paid or not, so “has table 7 paid?” is answered by a screen. The floor plan shows who is seated, for how long, and what is still open on each tab.

The work on the floor shifts from writing to carrying. Three trips to a table no longer need a waiter: taking the order, bringing the bill, bringing the card machine. Short-staffed restaurant counts all seven trips to a table and says which four should stay with a person.

If this saves a table time, it is before the order and after the last plate. Table turnover rate has the formula, a worked Friday and a peer-reviewed study of tabletop ordering devices and meal length. Volio makes no claim of its own about minutes saved.

Keep your till or replace it

You don’t need to change the till to take phone payments. If you keep it, Volio’s back office has “Paid at the table”: the list of what phones paid today. At close you match each payment on your till. Volio does not write into another company’s till, so the matching is a job for whoever cashes up.

The other way is to let Volio’s POS replace the till. Then tables, takeaway and phone payments are in one system.

What it costs and who pays

A system like this has three costs: a monthly plan, a card fee on each payment, and often a fee per order or per bill that either the venue or the guest pays. What a QR ordering system costs puts published prices on each line and works a month for a 15-table café.

Volio takes a small fee on a bill paid by phone. Guests see it before they pay, or you switch to covering it. Nothing is taken when a guest pays cash or the waiter. The money goes to your own account with the payment provider, then to your bank.

Order and pay at the table is in every plan, and every plan starts with 30 days of Pro, free. A venue that cancels keeps its QR menu online, free: see the plans and prices.

Where it fits and where it doesn’t

It fits a room where guests sit and waiters walk: a full dining room, or a terrace across the square.

A counter-service café is a different case. The regular who taps a card for a flat white gains nothing from a code. QR code ordering for cafés shows which seats to put codes on, and what a fee per order does to a four-euro ticket.

If the POS you run already sells QR ordering, look at that first, because the payment lands on the check and there is no list to match. sunday app alternatives sorts the options by the till you have. QR code ordering systems compared puts the systems on sale today side by side, with what each one needs you to own already.