Everything a new restaurant, café or cloud kitchen has to get right before and after opening day: which registrations and licences you need and in what order, how to implement a POS system without disrupting service, and what a POS application actually changes in daily operations.
| Business entity & PAN | Week 1 |
| Trade licence & Shop Act | Week 2 |
| FSSAI licence | Week 2–4 |
| GST registration | Week 3 |
| POS, printer & menu setup | 1 day |
| Staff training & soft launch | 1 service |
| Open for business | ✓ |
The order matters: every licence is issued to your registered entity, and most premises approvals need a rent agreement in that name. Here is the sequence that avoids rework.
| Step | What it involves |
|---|---|
| Choose and register the business entity | Decide between proprietorship, partnership, LLP or private limited company, and get the PAN and registration documents in that name. Every later licence is issued to this entity, so changing it afterwards means redoing the paperwork. |
| Open a current account | A current account in the business name is needed for supplier payments, payment gateway settlement and GST. Banks ask for the entity documents and usually a registration certificate. |
| Shop & Establishment registration and trade licence | Register the premises with the local labour department or municipality, and take the trade licence from the municipality or panchayat that covers your location. These are the licences an inspector asks for first. |
| FSSAI registration or licence | No food may be served without it. Small outlets take a Basic Registration; most restaurants need a State licence. Apply on the FoSCoS portal before you open, and display the number where customers can see it. |
| GST registration | Required once turnover crosses the threshold, and in practice needed to list on Swiggy or Zomato. Once registered, every bill must be a proper tax invoice with your GSTIN. |
| Fire, health and any speciality licences | Depending on size, seating and menu you may also need a fire NOC, a health or sanitary certificate, an eating house licence from the police, an excise licence for alcohol, a signage licence for your board, a music licence and legal metrology approval for weighing scales. |
| Staff registrations and insurance | Register for EPF and ESI once your headcount crosses the limits, and take fire and public liability insurance. Keep appointment letters and ID copies for every employee on file. |
A cloud POS does not need a dealer visit or a dedicated computer. Worked through in order, most restaurants are billing on the same day.
Write down your order types (dine-in, parcel, delivery, QR), the number of billing counters, kitchen stations, branches and bills per hour at peak. Every later decision follows from this one page.
Compare cloud and desktop options, then trial the shortlist on your own phone or tablet with your own menu and a real thermal printer. Bill ten orders before you decide.
An Android phone or tablet per counter, an 80mm thermal printer (LAN or Wi-Fi if you need kitchen routing), stable internet with a mobile-data backup, and a UPS or power bank for the router.
Enter your GSTIN, set the correct rate per item or order type, choose inclusive or exclusive pricing to match your menu card, and connect UPI and a payment gateway so a dynamic QR prints on the bill.
Define each kitchen station, assign items to it and connect its printer or display screen, so the tandoor only sees tandoor items and the pass sees the whole order.
One login per person, roles for waiter, cashier, kitchen and manager, and manager approval for voids after KOT, discounts and reprints. Never share a login.
Thirty to sixty minutes of training is usually enough. Run one service in parallel with your old bill book, fix what surprises you, then switch over fully and check the day-end report that night.
Run through this the evening before you switch over.
| When | What to do |
|---|---|
| Day 0 | Menu built, tax and payments configured, printers connected, staff logins created, team trained |
| Day 1 | Bill one full service on the POS with the old bill book beside you as a backup; check the day-end report that night |
| Week 1 | Drop the bill book, review void and discount logs daily, fine-tune favourites and modifiers |
| Month 1 | Add recipes and inventory for your top ingredients, switch on QR ordering or your own online ordering page, review item profitability |
What changes once billing, the kitchen, payments and stock all run off the same system.
Two taps and a printed bill instead of writing, adding and re-checking. On a busy evening that is the difference between serving the queue and losing it.
The kitchen works from a printed ticket or a screen with the table number and modifiers spelled out, instead of a shouted order. Fewer remakes, fewer complaints.
Your GSTIN, a continuous invoice series and the correct tax split on every bill, with tax summary reports your accountant can file from.
A dynamic UPI QR with the amount pre-filled, cards and cash all recorded against the bill, so the day-end drawer count actually matches the system.
Today’s sales, orders and top items on your phone whether you are at the counter, at a second branch or abroad.
Recipes deduct stock as you sell, low-stock alerts prevent the 7 pm surprise, and variance reports show whether the gap is waste or something else.
Every bill, void, discount and reprint carries a name and a reason, and cash shifts close against expected cash. Leakage stops being invisible.
QR table ordering, your own commission-free online ordering page and delivery-app orders all land in the same kitchen queue and the same reports.
Adding a counter, a kitchen station or a whole branch is a settings change, not a new licence purchase and another dealer visit.
| Everyday task | Manual bill book | Cloud POS |
|---|---|---|
| Producing a bill | Write, add, re-check | Two taps, printed |
| GST invoice | Hand-written, error-prone | Automatic, with GSTIN |
| Kitchen communication | Verbal or handwritten slip | KOT to the right station |
| Payment reconciliation | Bank statement, guesswork | Recorded per bill, shift close |
| Knowing your top sellers | Memory | Item report for any date range |
| Stock and food cost | Monthly, if at all | Deducted per sale, alerts |
| Owner away from the shop | Phone calls | Live sales on the phone |
| Adding a second counter | Another book | Log in on another device |
The ones we see most often in the first three months.
Aggregators verify FSSAI before activating a listing, and an inspection in week one is an expensive way to learn the rules.
If everybody bills as “admin”, no report can tell you who cancelled the order or who was short at close.
Menu prices that are inclusive on the card and exclusive in the system means every bill is wrong and every return is a correction.
Someone has to sort tickets by hand during the rush. Item-wise routing to stations costs nothing extra and pays back on day one.
Without a counted open and close, a shortage is discovered weeks later, when nobody remembers the day.
Switch over on a quiet service with the old bill book beside you, not on a Saturday night or the first day of a festival.
The questions new restaurant owners ask us most.
A restaurant typically needs a registered business entity with PAN, a current account, Shop & Establishment registration, a municipal trade licence, an FSSAI registration or licence and GST registration once the threshold applies. Depending on size and menu you may also need a fire NOC, health certificate, eating house licence, excise licence for alcohol, signage and music licences, and EPF/ESI once staff cross the limits.
Entity registration and a current account take a few days. FSSAI Basic Registration is usually quick, while State licences, trade licences and fire NOCs depend on departmental review and inspection and can take a few weeks. Most owners start the licence process at least a month before the planned opening.
Register the business entity first, because every other licence is issued in its name. Premises-linked approvals such as the trade licence and FSSAI licence come next, once you have the rent agreement or ownership proof for the location.
Map your order types, counters and kitchens; trial shortlisted software on your own device with your own menu; prepare a tablet, thermal printer and internet; build the menu; configure GST rates and UPI payments; set up kitchen routing; create staff logins with roles; then train the team and run one service in parallel before switching over.
A single-counter restaurant can be billing the same day: about an hour for the menu, twenty minutes for the printer and payments, and half an hour of training. Full inventory, multiple kitchens and several branches take one to two days of setup.
A cloud POS needs only an Android or iOS phone, tablet or computer with a browser, plus a thermal printer. Kitchen display screens, cash drawers, customer displays and barcode scanners are optional additions.
Faster billing at the counter, fewer wrong orders because the kitchen gets a printed ticket, GST-ready invoices and tax reports, UPI and card payments reconciled automatically, live sales visible from anywhere, stock and food cost under control, and a record of who billed, discounted or cancelled what.
Yes. Menu items, prices, customers and supplier lists can usually be imported from Excel or CSV, and you keep your old system's historical reports as exports. Switch at the start of a month or a quiet week so your reports stay clean.
Deeper guides on the parts that matter most.
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