Poster POS: From 15-Minute Setup to Quietly Powering 27K Businesses Worldwide (Expert Voices & Tips)

For Retention Podcast 58, we sat down with Rodion Yeroshek, co-founder of Poster POS. It’s a cloud-based point-of-sale platform built for cafés, bars, restaurants, and other food service businesses. The platform also helps manage sales, finances, and analytics in one place, works on a tablet, phone, or browser, and can be set up in just 15 minutes.

What started as a small project in 2013 has grown into a platform now powering 27,000 businesses across 110 countries. Rodion shared what it takes to build technology that makes life easier for restaurants and cafés around the world, why this work is both demanding and rewarding, and how Poster has adapted through crises and changing customer needs.

Here are the main takeaways from our conversation.

The Quiet Power Behind Every Restaurant Visit

The restaurant industry runs on more than just good food. It depends on systems that make the flow from order to payment nearly invisible. Point-of-sale software sits at the center: a server keys in an order, it prints to the kitchen, processes payments through the terminal, and feeds data back as analytics for the owner. It’s the backbone that keeps cafés, bars, and restaurants moving.

Behind the counter, that information flow reduces delays, minimizes errors, and helps service run smoothly for both staff and guests. Orders reach the kitchen without confusion, payments clear quickly, and managers get a real-time view of how the business performs. It’s technology designed not to draw attention but to make every dining experience feel easy.

How Crises Test Restaurants

The industry has learned to bend without breaking. During COVID-19, people still craved the ritual of dining out, so restaurants pivoted to delivery, pickup, and sometimes bending the rules. It was a shock, but most businesses managed to recover within months.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was an entirely different challenge. Markets disappeared overnight, revenue dropped by more than half, and recovery stretched across years. Through it all, the same connected systems that keep restaurants running became both a lifeline for survival and a reminder of how fragile operations can be when the outside world shifts.

The Value of Looking Beyond Borders

Looking at how things work internationally matters. While some restaurant automation may look dated and clunky, standout examples always emerge. Products like Revel, Vend, and Square showcased that point-of-sale software can be simple, intuitive, and run on something as light as an iPad while handling complex operations behind the scenes.

That contrast is important. It proves that point-of-sale and restaurant systems don't have to feel stuck in the past and that inspiration often comes from outside your own market. Observing how others solve similar problems can spark new ways of thinking about service and automation.

From Simple Tools to Complete Systems

Every product starts small. In smaller restaurants, even the most basic setup — an iPad with a printer, a digital menu with photos and prices, and a simple sales chart — can feel like a breakthrough. For businesses that never used automation, it removes the need for expensive hardware, licensing fees, and expensive training. Early adopters tend to be curious about new tech or eager for easier ways to handle daily work.

Over time, needs naturally grow. Software expands to more platforms, supports a range of printers, and integrates fiscalization (the process of sending sales data to tax authorities). What begins as a sales tracker evolves into a comprehensive system with inventory management, financial tools, and even QR-code payments. The path shows how restaurant technology starts with simplicity and gradually grows into a full ecosystem.

How Product Priorities Evolve

The way product features are chosen shifts as it matures. Initially, it often means listening closely to users, collecting suggestions, and building what people ask for. Some ideas fit, others are set aside because they don’t align with the vision, or the cost outweighs the value. At this stage, growth comes from adding.

Later, when the product establishes its place in the market, the focus changes. Instead of chasing every request, teams refine what already exists and eventually face the harder task of simplification. Years of additions can pile up, and the real work becomes streamlining — rewriting, reworking, and letting go of what no longer helps the product move forward.

Finding the Right Role for AI in Restaurants

AI hasn’t transformed restaurant technology overnight, but it already takes the weight off repetitive tasks. Transcribing and analyzing calls, converting paper invoices to digital entries, and speeding up routine data entry are all faster with AI. The results still need human verification, but the time saved is real.

The bigger shift is still ahead. Right now, AI mostly accelerates existing processes, but its real potential lies in inventing entirely new workflows. Smarter feedback loops between product, marketing, and support teams, or breaking complex requests into smaller parts that AI can handle, could reshape daily operations. The challenge is identifying where AI stops being just a productivity tool and starts fundamentally changing how the industry operates.

How Restaurants Balance Tech and Human Experience

Restaurants experiment with new ways to order — from QR codes that open menus to self-service kiosks that suggest what to add next. These tools ease staffing pressures and make quick transactions smoother, but they also raise an important question: what happens to the human side of dining when technology takes over the interaction?

That question extends beyond restaurants. Social media feeds tuned to every scroll show how technology can adapt to our impulses while draining attention in return. The task for point-of-sale and restaurant systems is to improve convenience without stripping away the parts of the experience that make people want to come back.

Faster Expansion via Localization with AI

Translating products into new languages no longer has to drag out expansion timelines. With AI, localized versions can be produced much faster, using custom models that keep product vocabulary consistent. Developers can feed in structured data and get translations ready for release, skipping what used to require weeks of manual work.

The same approach is finding its way into other areas of development. AI agents can generate interface keys during code commits, suggest edits in pull requests, and handle small but constant tasks that add up over time. Not every engineer is ready to rely on these tools, and some coding environments still lag behind, but the trend is clear: routine work is shifting toward automation, leaving people more space for complex problem-solving.

In a Nutshell

Point-of-sale and restaurant systems are never just about technology. It’s about the flow that keeps orders moving, the resilience that helps restaurants survive shocks, and the steady evolution from simple tools to complete systems. Along the way, priorities inevitably shift — from adding features to refining them, from speeding up existing processes to imagining entirely new ones.

AI and automation bring both promise and questions. They can cut routine work to a fraction of the time, open doors to new markets through faster localization, and lighten the load for staff. However, they also force a balance: how to embrace efficiency without losing the human touch that makes dining more than just a transaction.

Ultimately, the best technology is invisible — the kind that makes space for people to enjoy their meals without thinking about the system powering the experience.