For a café, takeaway counter or restaurant selling items paid for on the spot, Tawi offers a catalogue-led payment workflow. List what you sell, build a cart and request a wallet or M-Pesa payment. This is counter sales, not a promise of a full restaurant-management suite.
Create catalogue products and categories for the meals, drinks and other items staff charge for. Use variants for separately priced choices. Keep names and prices clear, and update availability when an item should no longer be sold. Stock quantities, where configured, refer to saleable catalogue items rather than a recipe or ingredient engine.
Organise items into categories staff can find quickly.
Give separately priced choices their own configured variants.
Review the total with the customer before requesting payment.
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Choose a payment route at checkout
A customer can show their Tawi Pay identity QR or use a paired Tawi NFC card or band with a compatible staff device. Staff send a wallet request and the customer authorises it. For M-Pesa, the Merchant POS sends a payment prompt to the customer’s phone. Scanning a code or receiving a prompt is not yet a confirmed sale.
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Connect the shift to the receipt
Use staff access that matches counter responsibilities and keep the owner login separate. Review confirmed wallet and M-Pesa sales when closing the shift. A receipt or provider reference provides a starting point for checking an individual transaction if a customer asks about a payment.
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Keep kitchen and table operations in their proper system
The features described here do not include kitchen display screens, recipe costing, table reservations, automatic service charges, split bills or delivery dispatch. If those are essential to your restaurant, evaluate them separately. Tawi’s documented fit here is the catalogue and payment moment at the counter.
Getting started
Three steps to your first sale
Configure the counter menu
Add the catalogue items, categories and variants staff will sell. Confirm prices and availability before opening.
Prepare staff checkout
Set permissions and test QR scanning, network coverage and any paired NFC setup with your actual counter devices.
Complete one sale at a time
Review the order amount, request authorisation and check payment confirmation before treating the order as paid.
This guide does not claim a kitchen-order or kitchen-display feature. It covers catalogue selection and payment requests at the counter.
Can I track ingredients with the stock catalogue?
The catalogue can track configured product quantities. It should not be represented as recipe-based ingredient deduction or food-cost management.
Can a customer use M-Pesa instead of a Tawi wallet?
The Merchant POS offers an M-Pesa STK-prompt flow to a Kenyan customer phone number. Check your business’s account setup and wait for confirmation in the app.