Volume III · The Stories
Stories from the people
running the floor.
A working journal of restaurant operations, software, payments and the small physical objects in between — written by the people who build, run and rely on ORDR.
In circulation
37 stories
Since 2020 · All free to read
20 Oct 2026
7 min
Licensing and opening hours in England and Wales: the layers behind the licence on your wall
A premises licence, a personal licence and a Temporary Event Notice each do a different job, and your council sets much of the rest. A plain guide to the Licensing Act 2003, its limits and the reforms since 2025. Rules vary by council, so check yours.
16 Oct 2026
6 min
Desperdicio alimentario y márgenes: qué exige la Ley 1/2025 a la hostelería y cómo reducirlo
La Ley 1/2025 obliga a los bares y restaurantes a ofrecer envases para llevarse las sobras y, desde abril de 2026, a muchos a tener un plan de prevención. Qué exige, qué multas prevé y qué reduce el desperdicio de verdad.
16 Oct 2026
6 min
Food waste and margins: where the money goes and what actually reduces it
WRAP puts the cost of food waste to UK hospitality at £3.2 billion a year, about £10,000 an outlet. Restaurant data from 114 sites suggests measuring waste, engaging staff and cutting overproduction pays back quickly. Here is how to start.
17 Sept 2026
7 min
Costes de personal en hostelería en 2026: SMI, cotizaciones, registro de jornada y un cuadrante que siga las ventas
El SMI de 2026 es de 1.221 € al mes en 14 pagas, y la empresa suma alrededor de un 30 % más en cotizaciones. Qué cuesta de verdad una hora de trabajo, qué exige el registro de jornada y cómo montar el cuadrante según las ventas.
17 Sept 2026
6 min
Staff costs in 2026: the legal floor, the hidden extras and a rota that follows sales
From April 2026 the National Living Wage is £12.71, and employers pay 15% National Insurance above £5,000 a year per employee. Here is what a staff hour really costs and how to build a rota around sales, not habit.
7 Sept 2026
6 min
Verifactu y TicketBAI en hostelería: qué te toca y cuándo
Verifactu, TicketBAI y el IVA del 10 % explicados para un bar o restaurante: qué sistema te corresponde según dónde tributes, qué cambia en el tique y las fechas oficiales vigentes, que ya se han movido dos veces.
7 Sept 2026
7 min
VAT and digital tax records for venues: Spain's Verifactu and TicketBAI, and the UK's Making Tax Digital
Spain is moving to tamper-proof billing software (Verifactu, or TicketBAI in the Basque Country), with official deadlines of 1 January and 1 July 2027 that have already moved twice. The UK charges 20% VAT on hospitality and is phasing in Making Tax Digital for sole traders.
25 Aug 2026
7 min
Propinas en hostelería: qué dice la ley en España y qué ocurre en el Reino Unido
En España las propinas son voluntarias, no son salario y tributan como rendimientos del trabajo; no hay una ley específica que diga cómo repartirlas. En el Reino Unido, desde el 1 de octubre de 2024, el empresario debe entregar el 100 % y llevar un registro.
25 Aug 2026
6 min
Tips and service charges: the UK rules, and how Spain differs
Since 1 October 2024 a UK employer must pass on all tips and service charges, with a written policy and three years of records. Spain has no equivalent law: tips are voluntary, taxed as pay, and mostly governed by your collective agreement.
17 Aug 2026
6 min
What card payments really cost a UK or Spanish venue
Interchange is capped for consumer cards in both the UK and Spain, but your bill is interchange plus scheme fees plus your provider's margin. Here is how the pieces fit, where the caps stop, and what to ask for when you compare quotes.
17 Aug 2026
7 min
Cuánto cuesta de verdad cobrar con tarjeta en un bar o restaurante en España
La tasa de intercambio de las tarjetas de consumo está limitada por ley en España, pero lo que pagas por el datáfono suma intercambio, tasas de las marcas y el margen de tu banco o proveedor. Te explico cómo encajan las piezas y qué pedir al comparar ofertas.
10 Aug 2026
6 min
Seguros para restaurantes y bares: qué es obligatorio, qué es opcional y qué mirar en la póliza
En España no hay una ley estatal única que obligue a todo bar a tener seguro de responsabilidad civil: la exigencia sale de las leyes autonómicas, de los ayuntamientos y del convenio colectivo. Aquí va lo que está comprobado y cómo revisar tu póliza.
10 Aug 2026
6 min
Restaurant and bar insurance: what the law requires, what it does not, and what to check
In the UK only employers' liability (at least £5 million) is compulsory for most venues with staff. Everything else is a choice, and the bigger risk is usually a sum insured that no longer matches what it would cost to rebuild.
7 Aug 2026
6 min
Los alimentos se moderan, la carta no: cómo revisar tus precios en 2026
Los alimentos suben un 1,9 % interanual en España y los precios de restauración un 4,5 %. Por qué hay esa distancia, por qué tus facturas pueden contar otra historia y cómo revisar la carta con números en vez de con intuición.
7 Aug 2026
7 min
Food prices are easing, menu prices are not: what to do with your menu in 2026
UK shop food inflation has fallen to its lowest in almost two years, while prices in restaurants and hotels are rising at more than twice that rate. Why that gap exists, why your invoices may tell a different story, and how to reprice without guessing.
31 Jul 2026
6 min
Energy bills for pubs and restaurants in 2026: what the numbers say and where venues can cut
The official average for business electricity in early 2026 was 24.14p per kWh, but your price depends on when you signed, how you are metered and how you run the kitchen. Four places to look before you blame the market.
31 Jul 2026
6 min
La factura de la luz en un restaurante en 2026: qué mirar antes de culpar al mercado
El precio mayorista de la electricidad ha oscilado entre 16 y 78 €/MWh en el último año, pero tu factura depende también de la potencia contratada, del tipo de contrato y de cómo funciona la cocina. Cuatro sitios donde mirar.
22 Jul 2026
6 min
Estacionalidad turística: cómo cambia el verano la vida de un restaurante o un bar
España recibe más del doble de turistas internacionales en agosto que en enero, y el empleo de hostelería sube con ellos. Qué supone eso para la plantilla y la tesorería, y qué hacen los locales para no ahogarse entre temporadas.
22 Jul 2026
6 min
Tourist seasonality: how the summer peak reshapes a pub or restaurant
Nearly a third of overseas visitor spending in Britain lands in July to September, while Spain more than doubles its monthly tourist arrivals between winter and August. What that does to staffing and cash flow, and what operators do about it.
6 Jul 2026
7 min
Cuánto cuesta llevar un restaurante en España y en el Reino Unido en 2026
España cobra un 10 % de IVA en la restauración pero carga a la empresa con cerca de un 31 % sobre cada nómina; el Reino Unido cobra un 20 % de IVA y un 15 % de cotización patronal. Qué se puede comparar de verdad y qué no.
6 Jul 2026
7 min
What it costs to run a restaurant in the UK and in Spain in 2026
The tax and labour rules differ more than the headline numbers suggest: Spain charges 10% VAT on restaurant meals but loads employer contributions at around 30%, while the UK charges 20% VAT and a 15% employer NI. Here is what can be compared fairly, and what cannot.
13 May 2026
7 min
AI in hospitality: what's worth it, and what's just hype
Every POS pitch in 2026 says "AI-powered". Some of those claims are real product, some are wallpaper. We separate the two, using ORDR's actual shipping AI features and the ones we deliberately do not ship, and argue for the narrow, bounded use of machine learning in hospitality software.
18 Apr 2026
6 min
Off Cloudflare, onto gray-cloud AWS: why and how we moved
In April 2026 we finished moving ORDR from orange-cloud Cloudflare back to a traditional CDN-less AWS setup. Here is why a restaurant POS cares about the intermittent Spain / LaLiga IP blocks, what we did, and what we gave up.
17 Apr 2026
6 min
Moving the kitchen TV display off Chromecast: the 2026 hardware landscape
Chromecast with Google TV is discontinued. We have spent the year looking at what replaces it for restaurant order displays (Fire TV, Onn, Vega OS, Apple TV), and here is where we landed.
15 Apr 2026
6 min
Tap to Pay on iPhone in UK hospitality: the state of play in 2026
Tap to Pay on iPhone has quietly become a real option for UK restaurants and bars. Here is what is different, what is the same as a traditional terminal, and why you still probably want a proper card reader on your main counter.
12 Nov 2024
6 min
Per-table QR-code ordering, three years in: what we'd build differently
The pandemic made QR ordering a default. Three years on, the patterns that worked are clear, the dark patterns are clearer, and the temptation to bolt on every clever idea is the thing to resist. A retrospective on the ORDR customer-ordering flow.
8 May 2024
7 min
Multilingual menus: where machine translation gets it wrong, and how we catch it
Machine translation is good enough for prose and dangerous for menus. Dishes are full of proper nouns, regional terms and cultural context that NMT systems mis-handle in specific, repeatable ways. Here is what we have seen go wrong, why, and the review gate ORDR builds in.
22 Apr 2024
7 min
Event ticketing for bars and nightclubs: a year in
A year after we rolled out events inside the ORDR POS, the punchline is the one we hoped for: when ticketing lives inside the till, every paid ticket becomes a pre-paid table, and the third-party 8–12% fee stays at the venue. Here is what we learned, and where third-party platforms are still the right call.
19 Mar 2024
7 min
Monolith for life, except when not: how we split CloudPrint out of the ORDR Rails app
ORDR is a Rails monolith and will stay one. CloudPrint, the printer microservice, had to live somewhere else, but for the boring physical reason that it talks to a thermal printer in a venue, not because the monolith was failing us. The rule we use: split out only when the constraint forces it.
26 Sept 2023
7 min
Switching to Bun: how moving off Yarn cut our local dev startup by 60%
After two years on Yarn, we moved ORDR's JavaScript toolchain to Bun in late 2023. Install time dropped by an order of magnitude, local dev server startup more than halved, and the migration itself took an afternoon. Here is what we changed, what we measured, and what we still use Node for.
26 Apr 2023
6 min
March and April 2023 features update
Phone-friendly staff ordering, a configurable end-of-day cut-off for reports, and product categories surfaced across downloadable reports. Three quality-of-life features bundled into one update.
23 Feb 2023
6 min
February 2023 features update
Payment terminals now work across any number of devices and networks, and our pre-payment flow has had a months-long overhaul based on thousands of real orders.
23 Sept 2022
6 min
Feature: the perfect payment terminal
Card machines. PDQs. Payment terminals. Whatever you call them, they are the lifeline of hospitality. We wanted one that was fast, reconciled to a bill automatically, and flexible enough for the chaos of a busy service.
14 Aug 2022
6 min
Feature: automagic menu translation
Translating a menu by hand is tedious. From today, getting started (or adding a new language) is a single click. Under the hood, it is machine translation, so verify with a native speaker before going live.
23 Jul 2022
6 min
Feature: translated kitchen tickets
The same translation engine that helps customers read your menu can also print kitchen tickets in the language your chefs speak. Fewer mistakes on the line, happier staff.
23 Feb 2022
6 min
Feature: translated menus
Maintain a single menu across every language your customers speak. Prices, photos, and descriptions stay in sync automatically, and ORDR shows each customer the right menu based on their device language.
✻ A standing arrangement
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