Duration: 26:01
PART 1 — Analytical Summary 🚀
Context 💼
This session from Odoo Experience introduces the new self-ordering capabilities in the Odoo 19 Point of Sale for the HoReCa industry (hotels, restaurants, cafés). Led by an Odoo presenter (Kim), it contrasts the traditional waiter-dependent flow with a modern, guest-driven experience. The talk blends live demos across smartphone, tablet, and kiosk with behind-the-scenes configuration, showing how restaurants of all types—fast-food, mid-market, and premium—can tailor the flow from simple menu display to full self-service ordering and mobile payment. Why it matters: it tackles staffing constraints, speeds up service, reduces errors, and modernizes the guest journey while keeping operations tightly integrated.
Core ideas & innovations 🧠
At the heart of the update is a redesigned, responsive Self‑Ordering experience embedded in Odoo 19 PoS. Guests can scan a table-specific QR code to browse a dynamic menu, place orders, and—if enabled—pay on mobile. For high-throughput venues, a kiosk front end offers a large-screen experience that adapts layout and image sizes automatically. The visual layer is fully refreshed: crisp PNG product images, cleaner flows, and one-click color theming via company settings apply consistently across pages.
Operationally, the system is driven by Presets (e.g., Dine-in, Takeout, Delivery) that define price lists, taxes, time windows, and availability per channel. Managers can enable or disable presets instantly—useful for seasonal menus, pop-up events, or switching off delivery during busy periods. Crucially, this is not a one-size-fits-all: premium restaurants can use self-ordering purely as an interactive menu, mid-market venues can allow ordering without payment, and fast-food concepts can go full self-service with kiosk + mobile pay.
Orders flow in real time to the Preparation Display (Odoo’s kitchen/bar KDS) with audible alerts, clear ticket context (customer name, table tracker, time, channel), and filtering (by time horizon or station like food/drinks) to keep teams focused. The presenter showed how prices and taxes switch on the fly based on the active preset—demonstrated by the same item costing differently for takeout vs dine-in via preset-specific price lists. Configuration is live-safe: you can add products or toggle whether a product is visible to self-order—even while a PoS session is open—so a high-end bottle of wine can be POS-only while the rest remains self-orderable. Free-form notes are supported via attributes, email input is validated, and future-dated orders are captured so teams can plan ahead.
Odoo also streamlined QR code operations. Restaurants can export table-linked QR codes (including URLs tied to table numbers) or order professionally printed codes through Odoo’s built-in flow. A small but practical touch: the “Get your QR code” button will auto-hide after first use in an upcoming update, aligning with access controls and front-of-house roles.
Impact & takeaways ⚙️
The revamped Self‑Ordering for Odoo PoS improves guest autonomy and speed, reduces wait times and manual transcriptions, and gives operators granular control over menus, pricing, and service modes. The combination of Presets, responsive UI, and a unified Preparation Display tightens the loop from order to production without adding new systems. Management benefits from: - Instant preset toggles and scheduled availability. - Dynamic price/tax logic per service mode. - Real-time KDS visibility and filtering for today/future. - Live-safe product visibility controls for self-ordering. - One-click visual theming and table-specific QR code generation.
For adoption, the presenter recommends a phased rollout: start with QR-based menus, then enable ordering at select tables, and finally extend to payment—scaling staff and kitchen capacity as needed. The end result is a smoother service experience and a more resilient operation that adapts to seasonality, volume spikes, and concept differences—all within the integrated Odoo stack. 💬
PART 2 — Viewpoint: Odoo Perspective
Disclaimer: AI-generated creative perspective inspired by Odoo's vision.
Simplicity is the lever that moves the industry. With self-ordering, our goal isn’t to replace hospitality—it’s to remove friction so teams can be more present where it matters. A menu that updates itself, a price that adapts to context, and a kitchen screen that shows the right work at the right time—that’s what integration should feel like.
What excites me most is choice. Some restaurants will use it as an elegant digital menu, others will go full kiosk with mobile payments. The same platform serves both because the community pushed us to keep it simple, fast, and coherent across apps. When technology disappears into the experience, we’ve done our job.
PART 3 — Viewpoint: Competitors (SAP / Microsoft / Others)
Disclaimer: AI-generated fictional commentary. Not an official corporate statement.
Odoo’s self-ordering is a strong UX play that closes the loop from guest to kitchen with minimal setup. The presets concept is clever—tying price, tax, and channel rules together improves operational agility. For mid-market hospitality, the integration across PoS, KDS, and configuration is compelling.
At scale, the questions shift to guardrails: throughput throttling, advanced capacity planning, and multi-entity governance across regions. Fiscal compliance, device management, and certifications in tightly regulated markets will influence enterprise adoption. The differentiation will likely hinge on how Odoo evolves tooling for large deployments—centralized policies, observability, and deep compliance—without compromising the clean UX that’s winning operators today.
PART 4 — Blog Footer Disclaimer
Disclaimer: This article contains AI-generated summaries and fictionalized commentaries for illustrative purposes. Viewpoints labeled as "Odoo Perspective" or "Competitors" are simulated and do not represent any real statements or positions. All product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.