25 questions to ask before you buy a food hall POS

Most POS demos are good. That is the problem: a demo is a happy path run by somebody who knows where the sharp edges are. The questions below are the ones that move a decision, grouped by the thing they protect you from. Ask them of every supplier you are looking at, including us.

Multi-vendor and settlement

1. When a guest buys from three vendors and pays once, how many orders exist afterwards, and who owns each one?
2. Whose bank account does the money land in first?
3. How is a basket-level discount split between vendors, and where does the odd penny go?
4. When a guest is refunded, which vendor pays for it?
5. Can a vendor see their own sales without the hall handing them a report?
6. Can the hall pause one vendor without stopping the others trading?

Trading when the internet does not

1. What exactly happens to a sale taken while the connection is down?
2. Does the kitchen screen keep working, or only the till?
3. When the connection returns, does the operator have to do anything?
4. What is the failure you have actually seen in the field, not the one in the brochure?

The menu, and the law

1. How do allergens get onto a QR menu, and who is responsible for keeping them right?
2. Can a dish carry different names and photographs on the counter, the QR menu and a delivery app?
3. How does a modifier — “add bacon”, “no cheese” — affect the price and the stock?
4. How quickly can somebody mark a dish sold out, and where does that show?

Stock and margin

1. Does selling a dish take its ingredients off the shelf, or only count the sale?
2. What does the system show for a dish nobody has costed yet — a margin, or a blank?
3. Can a recipe contain another recipe?
4. How does a supplier price change reach the dishes that use it?
5. What does a stocktake produce — a new number, or a variance you can argue with?

Hardware and lock-in

1. What happens to the hardware if I leave — is it mine, leased, or bricked?
2. Can I use a card machine I already have?
3. Is there a per-terminal charge, and does that change when I add a stall for a weekend?

The contract, and getting out

1. What is the notice period, and what does the second year cost?
2. Can I export my sales, menu and customer data, in what format, and does that cost anything?
3. Who owns the photographs I upload, and where are they stored?
4. What is the actual response time when a till dies mid-service on a Saturday?

Question 24 catches something operators only discover on the way out. If your photographs are stored on a supplier's infrastructure and your contract ends, your menu can lose its pictures overnight. It is worth knowing whose storage they are on before you upload two hundred of them.

We publish what HelchPOS does not do as prominently as what it does — no card integration, no delivery adapters tested against a live payload, and of the three printer paths only one proven (a Star TSP143IV at a live venue, since 27 August 2026; Epson and label printers are built to spec and unproven — when this was written, none had printed). If a supplier's site has no equivalent list, ask them for one verbally and write the answer down.