Oct 15, 2026 · 5 min read
Power cuts and patchy broadband are part of running a restaurant in India. A cloud POS is easier to set up and maintain than a terminal, but it has to answer one question honestly: what happens at 8:30 pm on a Saturday when the internet goes down?
A proper app at the counter
The BistroBot desktop app for Mac and Windows puts the POS in its own window. It prints bills and KOTs straight to your thermal printers without browser print dialogs, and pops a desktop alert the moment a QR or online order is waiting. It updates itself in quiet hours.
The offline hub, installed for you
Switch on the offline hub and the app installs it on that computer, checks it every minute and restarts anything that stops. Hub updates are installed overnight, outside service hours. Steward phones and tablets on the same network find the hub automatically and keep taking orders, printing KOTs and billing when the internet drops. Everything syncs to the cloud when the connection returns.
One hub per restaurant
Two hubs in one restaurant would mean two versions of the truth. So each restaurant runs a single hub: set up the app on a second laptop and it finds the running hub and offers to use it — or to move the hub over when you are replacing the old machine.
What computer you need
- ✓One always-on Mac or Windows 10/11 (64-bit) computer on the restaurant network
- ✓We recommend a quad-core CPU, 8 GB RAM and an SSD
- ✓Prefer Linux? A setup script installs the same hub
- ✓Your steward phones and tablets need no changes
What it costs
The desktop app is a free download on every BistroBot plan. The offline hub is included from the Diner plan, and every new restaurant gets every Pro feature free for 3 months.