One system, not ten
Point of sale, reservations and table management, memberships and loyalty, inventory, back office, staff and HR, and the public storefront run on a single spine — one login, one vendor, one bill. Everything is native, not assembled from app marketplaces or third-party subscriptions. The stack lives on-site in the venue, on a hardened Linux operating system, and keeps ringing through an internet outage.
cipher is the point of sale — not an overlay, integration layer, or bolt-on. It replaces the register stack (Toast, Square, Shift4 class) rather than connecting to it: no integration API, no webhook bridge, no app-store add-on.
The seven surfaces
- Point of sale — tabs, orders, and integrated card payments on hardened Linux terminals; cash, orders, and printing keep working through an internet outage.
- Reservations & tables — bookings, floor plan, covers, deposits and minimums, ticketed events, and rotating-QR door check-in.
- Memberships & loyalty — membership tiers, a points ledger, a member wallet, and rotating QR check-in that can't be saved or reused.
- Inventory & the cellar — scan-and-weigh counts at the terminal, receiving with invoice OCR, purchase orders, recipes, variance, waste, and food-safety logs.
- Back office — daily payouts, a real P&L on a cost basis, Close Day and Close Week, and an append-only audit trail on every money-touching action.
- Staff & HR — scheduling, onboarding with e-signed documents, a live handbook with acknowledgement tracking, and PIN / QR clock-in.
- Public storefront — the venue website, event pages that update themselves, ticket sales, and member sign-up on the same system as the register.
Looking for a self-hosted POS?
If you searched for a self-hosted, on-premise, or offline POS, that page names what cipher shares with self-hosting — the system of record on a Linux server inside your venue, a floor that keeps ringing through an outage — and the one thing it drops: the codebase and server you'd otherwise maintain yourself. cipher runs like a self-hosted system and is maintained like a managed vendor.
Do you handle card processing?
Yes — card readers and processing are integrated, run through a partner merchant processor; cipherφ7 is software only and never holds funds. Cards ring at the terminal by chip, tap, swipe, or manual entry, and the card line resumes when an internet outage clears while the floor keeps taking orders and cash. 0%-processing options are available — ask when you apply.
Architecture
The architecture page covers the parts under the surfaces: a local-first database that survives a WAN outage, a hardened Linux kiosk build that boots into the point of sale and nothing else, one-command venue provisioning, first-class in-venue locations (bars, kitchen stations, storage zones), and full-disk encryption with a venue-network-bound unlock — a stolen terminal is a brick off-premises.
What it costs
Point of sale (front and back of house) starts at $199/month — one server license and two terminals; additional terminals are $50/month. Full-platform pricing is quoted after a site visit. Apply for a walkthrough and we'll walk your floor.