17 POS Demo Questions Vendors Hope You Won't Ask

A POS demo is a performance. It is run by someone who does it every day, on a menu built to make the software look effortless, on a connection that never drops, in a room with no queue. None of that is dishonest — it is just not your café. The questions below are the ones that separate a system that demos well from one that survives a Friday night, and most of them take thirty seconds to ask.

First: make them run the demo on your menu

Before any of the questions, change the terms of the meeting. Send your actual menu ahead — the one with the modifiers, the Arabic item names and the awkward half-portion — and ask them to build ten of your real items during the call. What you learn from watching someone set up your menu is worth more than anything they tell you about setup, because you find out whether your café fits the software's assumptions or has to be bent to fit them. If they will not do it, that is an answer too.

Five questions about the money

Pricing in this category is deliberately layered — a headline number, then modules, then devices, then setup. The only figure that means anything is the twelve-month total for your specific café.

1. What is my total for the first 12 months — licence, setup, training, support and hardware included? Ask for it in writing. A number spoken on a call has a way of changing shape by the time it reaches the invoice.
2. Which of the things you just showed me are in that number, and which are extra? Inventory, accounting, loyalty and a customer-facing menu are commonly demoed as part of the product and billed as add-ons. Get the line-by-line.
3. What does a second till cost? What does a second branch cost? Per-device and per-branch pricing punishes exactly the thing you are hoping to do. Our breakdown of POS pricing in the UAE covers how much the models diverge over a year.
4. What happens to this price at renewal? An introductory rate that resets in year two is not a price, it is a trial with an invoice attached.
5. Is there a minimum term, and what notice do I have to give to leave? Ask before you like them. It is a much harder question to ask after you have decided.

Four questions about what happens when something breaks

Every POS works when everything works. What you are buying is the behaviour on the bad day, and demos never show you the bad day.

1. Turn the Wi-Fi off. Can I still take this order and print this receipt? Do not accept a description — ask them to do it live. What happens to your POS when the internet drops covers the difference between genuinely offline-capable and merely cached.
2. When it comes back, what syncs, and what do I have to re-enter? Offline mode that queues sales is useful. Offline mode that loses the modifiers on those sales is a data-entry job waiting for you at closing.
3. It is 9pm on a Friday and the till will not open a shift. Who do I contact, and what do you commit to? A WhatsApp number answered by a person beats a ticket portal with a business-hours SLA, and neither is a bad answer — but you should know which one you are getting.
4. When you push an update, do I get any say in when it lands? Finding out that the payment screen moved, mid-rush, from a release note you did not read is a genuinely bad afternoon.

Three questions about your data

This is the section vendors are least prepared for, which is precisely why it is worth asking. Your sales history, your menu and your customer list are the assets a POS accumulates on your behalf, and how easily you can get them out determines what your options look like in three years.

1. Can I export my own sales history, myself, without submitting a request? "Contact support and we will arrange it" is a soft no with a friendly face.
2. In what format, and how far back? A PDF report is not an export. A spreadsheet you can open, filter and hand to an accountant is.
3. Can I take my customer and loyalty list with me? Often the answer here is different from the sales answer, and it is the one that matters most if you ever move. POS data export and lock-in goes through what to check and what to do if you are already stuck.

Four questions about Arabic and the rest of the UAE reality

This is where systems built elsewhere and localised afterwards tend to come apart, and none of it shows up on a slide.

1. Produce a VAT return from the data we just entered. Not the screenshot in the deck — the actual output, from the ten items they built with you. 5% applied per sale is the easy part; a return you can file is the point.
2. Print a receipt with Arabic item names on a standard 80mm thermal printer. Bring your own printer to the meeting if you can. Reversed letters and disconnected characters are common and are not fixable by you later; printing Arabic receipts that actually read correctly explains why it goes wrong.
3. Is Arabic across the whole product, or only the till screen? Check the customer-facing menu and the receipt as well as the buttons your staff press.
4. Does this run on the devices I already own? If the answer involves buying a proprietary terminal per counter, that is a hardware bill you were not comparing when you compared subscriptions.

And the question that settles it

Can I run one full trading day on this before I commit to anything? Not a guided demo — your café, your menu, your staff, a real Saturday. Everything above is a proxy for what you learn in a single day of actual service, and a vendor confident in their product will encourage it. Our wider guide to choosing a café POS in the UAE covers how to run two systems side by side in a single week without disrupting service.

Where MidaOne fits

In the spirit of the list, here are the answers you would get from us. The price is AED 200 a month, or AED 2,000 a year paid once, flat — every feature and unlimited devices included, with additional branches at AED 730 a year each. Point of sale, inventory, accounting with 5% VAT, loyalty and the QR menu are the product, not modules. It runs in a browser and as an Android and iPhone app on hardware you already own, prints to standard 80mm thermal printers over Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or USB with Arabic rendered right to left, keeps selling with the internet down and syncs when it returns, and the accounting period exports to CSV from the accounting screen whenever you want it. The trial is 14 days with no card, which is the honest version of question 17 — you do not have to take any of this on trust. MidaOne has the same answer to the questions we cannot answer here as any other vendor should: ask, and get it in writing.

Frequently asked questions

None of these questions are hostile, and a good vendor will answer all of them without flinching. The value is not in catching anyone out — it is that asking them forces the conversation away from the feature tour and onto the four things that will actually shape your next three years: what it costs, what it does when it fails, whether your data is yours, and whether it works in the language half your customers read.