Fast food and takeaway software for the counter, combos and portion cost

The queue is the product

At lunch, anything that adds ten seconds to an order costs you customers. Hunting for a price, doing sums on paper, arguing about a combo — each one sends somebody to the next counter.

So counters stay quick by staying informal. Orders are shouted and three people take money from the same tin. That works until you ask why a busy week made less than a quiet one.

The answer is not more paperwork but fewer decisions at the counter: fixed items at fixed prices, tapped in as the order is taken, so the record happens inside the sale.

How a takeaway runs it

1. Fixed items, fixed pricesEverything on the board exists in the app at one price. Whoever is on the counter picks rather than types, and calculates nothing.
2. Use the till screen at the rushPoint of Sale is a separate touch-friendly screen built for a counter rather than the full sale form — same records, fewer taps.
3. Take the money the way it cameCash, Mobile Money, card, or split across two. Reports break income down by method, so the tin and the MoMo statement reconcile at close.
4. Make the combo its own productA combo is one item with its own selling and cost price, not three items discounted at the till. Only then can you see whether it earns.

The board you'll set up

Pick "Fast food & takeaway" at sign-up and this list is already there. Keep it short on purpose: fewer items on the screen, faster counter at one o'clock.

Small chips and large chips are two products, not one with a quantity — two prices, two portion costs. Boxes are on the list because you buy and consume them.

A week at a busy takeaway

Packaging came to roughly UGX 570 an order — more than a fifth of everything the shop kept, spent on boxes and bags nobody prices into the menu.

Portion drift, and what the app cannot see

A scoop of chips is not a measurement. On a slow afternoon it is generous, at the rush hurried, and the difference between 180g and 220g across 1,240 orders is fifty kilos of potatoes a week.

PesaScope cannot see that. There is no scale and no portion control in it. What it shows is the gap: potatoes bought against orders sold. When cost per order climbs with no price rise behind it, go and stand by the fryer.

Delivery is the same kind of honesty. PesaScope connects to no delivery platform and there is no integration to switch on. You record the sale as normal and the commission as an expense — the only way to learn whether delivery pays.

Where a takeaway loses money

1. Combos priced below their partsChicken at 9,000, chips at 4,000 and a soda at 2,500 is 15,500. Sold as a combo at 13,000, each one gives away 2,500 — fine as a decision, expensive as an accident.
2. Oil, gas and the weekly buysBought so often they stop registering as costs. Record each purchase as an expense; the weekly total is usually bigger than anyone guessed.

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