Glossary
Offline-first POS
offline POS · local-first POS
An offline-first POS is a point-of-sale system whose record of truth lives on a device in the venue, so that taking orders, sending them to the kitchen, taking payment and closing the day all keep working when the internet goes down, for as long as it is down.
Offline-first against offline mode
Most cloud POS products offer an offline mode: the app caches what it can and queues sales until the connection returns. The record of truth is still the vendor's server, so the list of what stops working offline is long: refunds, reports, new customers, sometimes card payments and logging in. Where card payments do continue, they are often stored and sent to the bank later, and a card that is declined then is a meal already eaten. An offline-first system inverts this. The venue's own device holds the record and every screen talks to it over the venue's own network; the cloud, where there is one, receives copies. Nothing on the order, kitchen or payment path waits for it.
What still needs the internet
Buying or renewing a licence, sending the day's aggregate close to a backoffice, and receiving orders from delivery platforms, which arrive over the internet by definition. Everything that happens between a guest and the kitchen does not.
Why it matters in a restaurant
A dead line on a Friday night is not a rare event in most of the world, and a terminal that stops is a room that stops. What an outage really costs is the queue at the counter while the app reconnects.
How Brindola does it
Brindola's master device holds the venue's event log in a local database and serves every terminal, phone, tablet, kitchen screen, printer, guest display and kiosk over the venue's own network. A device that loses the master reconnects and catches up on its own. The internet is used for licences, the aggregate close and platform orders, and for nothing on the service path. Cards are taken by the bank's own terminal on its own connection, beside Brindola, so Brindola keeps no card payments waiting to be approved. The FAQ lists what keeps working piece by piece, and the test to run before you buy.
What keeps working when the internet goes down