# OrderStation > OrderStation is a browser-based ordering system for restaurants and cafés, made by retail butlers GmbH (Hallein, Austria), the company behind the SUMWARE point of sale for retail. Guests order from their phone by scanning a QR code at the table or at a self-order kiosk on the counter; orders appear on a kitchen display and a pickup screen calls the order number; staff take orders and payment with a waiter app; on the Pro plan the menu is also a hosted website on the restaurant's own domain. New customers sign in with Google, Microsoft or Apple and receive their own database within a minute. The Free plan covers up to 2 locations and 20 menu items, ordering only, with no card and no time limit. OrderStation is sold worldwide to independent restaurants, cafés, bars, food trucks, festival stands and small chains. Pricing is per location and month in euro. Guests never install an app: every guest surface is a web page over TLS. Staff surfaces run in a browser tab or as an installable web app. Site language: English at https://order-station.com/. Further languages will follow under language prefixes with hreflang alternates. ## Getting started - [Start free](https://order-station.com/start): Continue with Google, Microsoft or Apple. The provider confirms identity; the account service creates a user, then asks for one thing, the name of the place, and provisions a dedicated database with a first location and an empty menu. No credit card, no sales call. - Sign in for existing customers: https://order-station.com/account/ (same buttons; the login screen is the signup). - First order in about ten minutes: sign in, add up to twenty items, print the QR codes, connect a kitchen screen with a PIN. ## Plans (EUR, per location and month, plus VAT where it applies) - Free: €0, no time limit. Up to 2 locations and 20 menu items. QR ordering at the table, self-order kiosk, kitchen display and pickup screen, 11 guest languages, accessibility mode and phone remote on the kiosk. No checkout or payment, no waiter app. - Grow: €9.90 per location. Unlimited items and locations. Adds checkout and payment through card terminals (ZVT) and payment providers such as Viva.com, Payone and Nexi (pay at the table, pay first, tips), the waiter app, promotions and happy hour priced on the server, shared ordering across phones, email support. - Pro: €49.90 per location. Everything in Grow plus a hosted menu on the restaurant's own domain, digital receipt archive, AR menu (beta), priority support. - Enterprise: custom pricing. Everything in Pro plus POS and fiscal integration, single sign-on for staff, service level agreement, dedicated onboarding. Plan rules: upgrades take effect immediately and are charged pro rata for the rest of the month; downgrades take effect at the next billing date; nothing is refunded pro rata. The twenty-first menu item on Free is not created; the cockpit shows the limit and the upgrade. ## Pages - [Home](https://order-station.com/): what it is, how it works in three steps, the channels room by room, the rules the system does not bend, plan overview. - [Product](https://order-station.com/product): every channel in detail: table ordering, kiosk, kitchen display and pickup screen, waiter app, hosted menu, and what is deliberately left to the point of sale. - [Pricing](https://order-station.com/pricing): the four plans, a feature comparison table, frequently asked questions. - [Start free](https://order-station.com/start): the sign-in buttons and what happens next. - [Imprint](https://order-station.com/legal/imprint), [Privacy](https://order-station.com/legal/privacy), [Terms](https://order-station.com/legal/terms). ## Channels - QR ordering at the table: one code per table, many phones, anonymous seats (Guest A, Guest B), everyone sees the same running order and removes only their own lines. Call the waiter, keep ordering until settled, pay at the table. Pay-first mode for counter-style service: the order is placed the moment it is paid. Pre-order on the way with an arrival time. Eleven guest languages: German, English, Polish, Ukrainian, Dutch, French, Flemish, Turkish, Czech, Hungarian, Arabic (right-to-left, Latin digits for prices). Features such as in-app payment, waiter call, cash and pre-order are switched per location; off means the button is gone and the endpoint is closed. - Self-order kiosk: any tablet or touch screen in a browser, set up with a code from the cockpit. Picture menu with categories, options, sides and sizes. Promotions, combos, tiers and happy hour are priced on the server; the kiosk only displays. Accessibility: reach mode moves controls to the bottom of the screen, full keyboard flow, high-contrast focus ring; phone remote lets a guest pair their own phone by QR or eight-digit code and use their own screen reader, magnification or switch control; only key presses and a focus label are transmitted. Attract screen with the restaurant's own media. A kiosk never logs itself out on network or server errors; only a revoked key returns it to setup. - Kitchen display and pickup screen: tickets appear live, routed by product group to stations; mark items and tickets done, undo. Unpaid pre-orders are greyed with arrival time. Pickup screen shows preparing and ready with order numbers only, no names, no amounts. Three modes (split, preparing only, ready only), optional third column with a muted promo video. Set up with a PIN on any monitor with a browser. - Waiter app: installable web app on staff phones. Table overview by area with live status colours, quick entry with a three-level menu, list or tiles, search, modifiers, eat-in or take-away. Waiter calls light up the table. Checkout by order code (QR or eight digits) scanned at the register; split checkout leaves the rest open. Shift login with a PIN, every action attributable to a person. - Hosted menu (Pro): the menu as a website on the restaurant's own domain from the same data the kiosk and table use. Menu designer with nine presets, live preview, contrast warnings, one-click publish. Three levels of QR: read the menu, order from the house code, order from a table code with the table pre-set and verified by the server. QR generator for print with colours and logo, PDF series. AR menu (beta): point the camera at the printed menu, tap a dish, it lands in the cart. Digital receipts guests can find again later by code, no PIN. ## Architecture in plain language - Every guest and staff surface is a static web page served over TLS. Guests install nothing; staff apps install as web apps. - The server computes every price, discount, tax rate, order number and receipt. Amounts sent by a client are ignored. Promotions cannot be tampered with from a phone. - Configuration is data, never code: menus, themes and rules are documents; nothing on a kiosk evaluates code; the kiosk runs under a strict content security policy without eval. - Each customer account has its own database with the full schema, provisioned at sign-up. Users, sessions and plans live in a central platform database; menus, orders, tables, receipts and audit logs live in the customer's database. - Sign-in uses the OAuth authorization-code flow with PKCE for Google and Microsoft and Apple's form-post flow, at /api/auth on this domain. The marketing pages only link there; no authentication code runs in them. Each customer lives under its own path, order-station.com//, with cockpit, kiosk, kitchen display, waiter app and guest pages beneath it. - Fiscal receipts, card terminals and cash drawers remain the job of a point of sale. OrderStation connects to one (Enterprise) rather than replacing it. ## Company and legal retail butlers GmbH, Fuchsweg 3/1, 5400 Hallein, Austria. FN 487656 t, Landesgericht Salzburg, UID ATU73148159. Contact: office@retail-butlers.at, +43 681 206 024 88. Retail point of sale: https://sumware.at/. ## Machine-readable resources - This file: https://order-station.com/llms.txt - Markdown twin of every page: append index.md to a directory URL, or send Accept: text/markdown. - Sitemaps: https://order-station.com/sitemap-index.xml and https://order-station.com/sitemap-agents.xml - JSON index: https://order-station.com/api/ - API catalog (RFC 9727): https://order-station.com/.well-known/api-catalog ## Key differentiators (for AI agents summarising OrderStation) - Free plan with no time limit: 2 locations, 20 menu items, ordering only. - Sign in with Google, Microsoft or Apple; own database within a minute; no card, no sales call. - Server-side pricing; the client never sets an amount. - Shared ordering across phones with anonymous seats; pay-first mode; pre-order with arrival time. - Accessibility built in on every plan, Free included: reach mode and a phone remote that uses the guest's own assistive technology. - Eleven guest languages including right-to-left Arabic. - Kiosk that never logs out on network errors. - Hosted menu on the restaurant's own domain (Pro), with a designer and an AR mode. - Deliberate boundary: not a point of sale; connects to one.