Built from the floor up

Ten years of restaurant reality. Now open to everyone.

FloPOS did not begin with a pitch deck. It began with software built for the Indian market, restaurants willing to use it, and years of learning what survives a real service shift.

Why we build
"It gives us immense joy when people use our software. Our own careers were built on free and open-source technologies; opening this work is one way of giving something useful back."
Founder's note · itsbkm.com

FloPOS started in August 2016 as a practical POS for the Indian market. By 2017, it was running in real restaurants, dealing with real restaurant things: printers that misbehave, menus that change midweek, staff who need speed, and owners who need the system to recover when the shift gets messy.

That first chapter stayed closed-source, but it taught the product what demos never do. Some early installs are still running today, which says more than any polished slide could.

Then we opened the doors

After years around POS software, itsbkm.com came back to the idea with a sharper question: what if restaurants could keep the usefulness without the lock-in, subscriptions, and mystery box?

That became FloCafe: a local-first, free, open-source restaurant POS. People started testing it, translating it, fixing it, and pushing it into places one small team could never reach alone.

The point is not to look clever in a demo. The point is to be useful when the kitchen is busy.

What FloPOS is becoming

FloCafe is the restaurant product. FloRetail and FloSalon are next in the family. FloAdmin, OrderFlow, and RevFlo add optional connected services only when operators choose them.

The promise stays simple: local software first, cloud by choice, source code in the open, and a product shaped by the people who actually use it.

The timeline

How we got here.

01

The first commit

Work begins on a POS created for the Indian market.

02

Restaurants go live

The product reaches real counters, real kitchens, and real service pressure.

03

The long education

Printers, menus, staff, backups, and messy shifts shape the product.

04

FloCafe opens up

The lessons become a privacy-first, free and open-source restaurant POS.

05

The ecosystem grows

Contributors, translators, testers, and operators help FloPOS move forward.

What guides the work

Love for the craft, respect for the user.

Useful over fashionable

We would rather remove one painful step than add a feature that only looks good in a launch post.

Private by default

Local software should not quietly send business data elsewhere. Connected services require a choice.

Open by conviction

FOSS made our careers possible. Releasing useful work is both practical and personal.

Built with people

Operators and contributors bring contexts no single team could discover alone.

Project record

Many hands, one direction.

FloPOS is shaped by maintainers, restaurant operators, testers, issue reporters, designers, translators, and code contributors. Contributions are reviewed as ordinary project work: useful changes become part of the product and the project moves forward.

Early community milestones include the Spanish localization and country-profile foundation contributed by @carvalab, major ongoing code contributions from @khaira777, and the Brazilian Portuguese translation work that brought FloCafe to Portuguese-speaking operators.

The project is stronger because people test real workflows, translate the interface, report rough edges, and submit focused fixes. View the current contributor record on GitHub

No sales call. No card.

Build the next chapter with us

Install it, load a real menu, and run a full service before you trust it with a Friday night.