The reason POS systems win over is because the waitstaff UX is not the primary factor in the pros/cons list.
Consider things that are easy to do with a POS that are hard to do with handwritten notes:
* Generate a list of how many of each dish sell each night/week/month to decide what dishes to add/cut.
* Reconcile sales figures with purchasing to identify abnormal food waste/shrink.
* Identify waitstaff who are unusually good/bad at up-selling on wine/desserts.
* Automatically reconcile the till at the end of the night to notice any discrepancies.
Whenever you have data be converted from an unstructured format to a structured format and then back into the identical unstructured format, the detour in the middle is always going to seem like a pain in the ass because data entry is always a pain in the ass. But the justification for doing so is that other people need the data in that structured format so they can aggregate and analyze that data more easily and you happen to have just shouldered the shitty task of data entry on top of all of your other duties. It doesn't make the system overall a bad one though.
> Whenever you have data be converted from an unstructured format to a structured format and then back into the identical unstructured format, the detour in the middle is always going to seem like a pain in the ass because data entry is always a pain in the ass. But the justification for doing so is that other people need the data in that structured format so they can aggregate and analyze that data more easily and you happen to have just shouldered the shitty task of data entry on top of all of your other duties. It doesn't make the system overall a bad one though.
This is how the lowest paid get undervalued. Their job has been made harder but it is their work that has allowed "some big-shot restaurant exec" to claim he has added $n in extra value with his changes. BigShot gets a pay rise while the poor sod who struggles to cope with the new system gets fired.
Consider things that are easy to do with a POS that are hard to do with handwritten notes:
* Generate a list of how many of each dish sell each night/week/month to decide what dishes to add/cut.
* Reconcile sales figures with purchasing to identify abnormal food waste/shrink.
* Identify waitstaff who are unusually good/bad at up-selling on wine/desserts.
* Automatically reconcile the till at the end of the night to notice any discrepancies.
Whenever you have data be converted from an unstructured format to a structured format and then back into the identical unstructured format, the detour in the middle is always going to seem like a pain in the ass because data entry is always a pain in the ass. But the justification for doing so is that other people need the data in that structured format so they can aggregate and analyze that data more easily and you happen to have just shouldered the shitty task of data entry on top of all of your other duties. It doesn't make the system overall a bad one though.