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Comment by Lazare | Hacker News Reader

Kind of an odd article. There's a lot of POS systems out there, and Aloha isn't be best, or the most popular, or the most innovative, or the newest, or the first. There's a lot of competition in the space, but no context is given. It's just... "Hey, did you know POS software is a thing? Well it is! And one of them is called Aloha. The reason Aloha is so great is that it's AMAZING! Did you know Aloha is made by a company that once employed Thomas Watson?!"

Feels more like a corporate press release than anything trying to inform people.

(That being said, I work for a company that integrates with Aloha, among many of their competitors, so maybe I'm not the target audience here.)

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yes there is indeed like a bajillion of POS systems. I'm the founder of one of them https://www.waiterio.com

I found ridiculous how there is a bajillion and everyone is claiming to be the LEADER IN THE INDUSTRY or 1# POS SYSTEM

It's a big market, there are a lot of restaurants and there is space for a lot of software. As far as I experienced there isn't a lot of virality in growth due to referalls since it's a B2B so no winner takes all happened (despite what some POS would like to make you believe).

I'm not in the service industry and I've seen it in enough places to have noticed it. I couldn't tell you the name of any other POS system (though the aloha bouncy screensaver is particularly notable)

It’s fairly ingrained.

NCRs market share especially among chain QSRs and FSRs is fairly dominant if they were founded 15+ years ago. Easy to configure but hard to do complicated things (No well supported places to integrate, requires a partnership which NCR doesn’t give easily). They fell behind in implementation speed compared to other vendors and were slow to market with effective online ordering integrations and chip card acceptance.

In some ways they are a victim of their own success. Small business owners in a tight margin industry aren’t ones to upgrade hardware and software when what they have works. Further the state and configuration is complex and maintained in multiple locations making upgrades challenging for those not using systems. When I was using it they’d done a big overall switch from version 6.7 which was a release that wouldn’t die 7.0 but there were ongoing issues with the new version that held us back from upgrading for a long time (thinking promo rounding rules and inventory calculations downstream). The upgrade hesitancy makes it hard to get the needed integrations.

Now NBO (formerly MenuLink) is hot garbage. And don’t even get me started on Configuration Center (CFC) or Command Center...

Trying to get hundreds of franchises to agree in an interface change is a special circle of hell. The only thing wise is converting to a new POS system.

I administered and did integrations for a large chain (1000+ stores from 2013 to 2016).

I agree. I thought the article was interesting but it felt unfinished.

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