--- title: "Running a whole restaurant on one PC, with the internet unplugged | GoSufra" description: "The cashier machine becomes the server, the tablets become browsers, and the router stops mattering. What that shape needs, the firewall trap that breaks it, and what you give up." url: "https://gosufra.com/en/blog/run-a-restaurant-with-no-internet/" language: "en" source: "https://gosufra.com" --- # Running a whole restaurant on one PC, with the internet unplugged The cashier machine becomes the server, the tablets become browsers, and the router stops mattering. What that shape needs, the firewall trap that breaks it, and what you give up. 2026-09-10 · 9 min read ![Illustration of a till serving a kitchen screen and a phone over WiFi, with an unplugged cable](https://gosufra.com/blog/run-a-restaurant-with-no-internet.svg) ## Key points - The till is the server. Tablets open a page; nothing is installed on them. - The single most common failure is a firewall rule that exists and applies to nothing, because Windows filed the shop WiFi as a Public network. - Reserve the PC's address on the router before anyone bookmarks anything. - Plain HTTP over a LAN costs camera scanning and install-to-homescreen. A USB barcode scanner needs neither. “Works offline” usually means a queue. The app keeps taking orders into local storage, and the moment the connection comes back it sends them somewhere else. That is a real feature and it is not this one. The Local Edition has nothing to sync. The database is on the machine in front of you, the orders never leave the building, and the internet is not a component of the system at all. Unplug the router’s uplink and the only thing that changes is that you cannot read the news. Here is what that actually looks like on a premises. ## The shape One Windows PC — normally the cashier machine — acts as the server. Everything else in the shop is a screen pointed at it over the WiFi. ``` Windows PC (the "server") ├── the application, on port 8080 ├── PostgreSQL, bound to this machine only └── serves /admin /pos /kitchen /waiter │ shop WiFi (LAN only — no internet needed) ┌────────────┼────────────┐ POS tablet Kitchen screen Waiter phone ``` Two things follow from this that are worth stating plainly. **Nothing is installed on the tablets.** The kitchen screen and the waiter phone are browsers opening an address. There is no app store, no version to keep in step, no device that has to be re-provisioned when it is replaced. A tablet that dies is replaced by any tablet. **The address is not configured anywhere.** Whatever address a tablet was pointed at is where its requests go. That is why the same install works at any address and on any machine: nothing is compiled in, so nothing has to be rebuilt when the network changes. ## What you need - **One Windows PC that stays on.** The one behind the counter, not the laptop somebody takes home at night. - **A router** — any router. It does not need an internet connection for the tablets to reach the till. - **A screen for the kitchen.** An Android tablet on the WiFi with nothing installed is the default. A small Windows PC running the kitchen app in kiosk mode is better if you want sound and a display that never sleeps. - **A thermal printer**, the ordinary kind, and a **USB barcode scanner** if you scan. That is the whole bill of materials. There is no server cabinet and no Docker. ## The two things that actually go wrong Everything else is ordinary setup. These two are what break on real premises, and both are worth doing before the first service rather than during it. ### The firewall rule that applies to nothing The single most common failure is “works on the PC, not on the tablet”. The dashboard opens perfectly on the till, every tablet times out, and nothing on any screen connects the two facts. It is almost always this: Windows classifies a network it has not been told about as **Public**, and the shop WiFi on a computer set up that morning is a network it has not been told about. A firewall rule scoped to Private networks then exists, reads correctly in the firewall list, and applies to nothing at all. The installer adds the inbound rule to **both the Private and Public profiles** for exactly this reason. The first-run wizard then refuses to finish until you have opened the address from a phone on the shop WiFi — a step that costs a minute at setup and saves a service. ### The address that moves Routers hand out addresses on a lease. When the router restarts, the PC can come back on a different one, and every bookmark every tablet saved now points at nothing. Reserve it. A DHCP reservation on the router, or a static address on the PC — either is fine, and one of them has to be done before anybody bookmarks anything. Every other tip about pointing tablets at the till is a workaround for an address that moves. ## Pointing the tablets at it The setup wizard shows a QR code per screen. Open the tablet’s camera, scan, and the kitchen display or the waiter app opens at the right address. Typing http://192.168.1.x:8080/kitchen into a tablet keyboard is possible and is the fallback, not the plan. Bookmark it, then add it to the home screen if the tablet offers to. ## What you give up http://192.168.1.x:8080 is not a secure browser context, and browsers withhold a specific list of features from pages that are not. On a LAN install that costs: - **Camera barcode scanning.** A USB scanner types like a keyboard and is unaffected — and in a kitchen it is the better tool anyway. - **Install-to-homescreen and service workers.** A bookmark still works; it just opens in the browser rather than as its own app. - **Wake Lock**, which is what keeps a kitchen screen awake. Set the tablet’s own screen timeout to never instead, or use the Windows kitchen build, which sidesteps all of this. What it does *not* cost: the live connection between the till and the kitchen. An order rung up on the POS lands on the kitchen screen in the same second, over the LAN, with the router’s internet cable on the floor. ## Two internet connections, ever You need to be online exactly twice, and neither is during service: once to buy and download the installer, and once to activate the machine. After that the licence is checked on the machine itself — nothing phones home to serve a customer. For premises where even that is unreliable, there is an offline activation route that works over a messaging app. Everything after those two moments happens on your own wire. - offline restaurant POS - restaurant software without internet - on-premise restaurant system - local network POS setup ## Run all of this from one system POS, kitchen, inventory, recipe costing, staff and accounting — connected, and free to start. [Create your free account](https://app.gosufra.com/register?lang=en) ## Related articles ![Illustration of a till, a licence key and a calendar with no renewal date](https://gosufra.com/blog/restaurant-pos-one-time-payment.svg) How it works 2026-09-10 · 8 min read ### [Buying a till outright: what a one-time payment actually buys](https://gosufra.com/en/blog/restaurant-pos-one-time-payment/) A perpetual licence for one branch, what it includes, what it deliberately does not, the month the arithmetic turns, and the three jobs you take on the day you stop renting your software. Read article ![Illustration of a till still selling while the cloud link is cut](https://gosufra.com/blog/how-offline-mode-works.svg) How it works 2026-08-30 · 7 min read ### [What "works offline" actually means for a restaurant POS](https://gosufra.com/en/blog/how-offline-mode-works/) Offline mode is easy to claim and hard to build. Here is what a till must keep doing without internet, what it cannot do, and how the queue catches up safely afterwards. Read article ![Illustration of a thermal printer pushing out a ticket](https://gosufra.com/blog/thermal-printers-and-hardware.svg) Setup & hardware 2026-08-14 · 7 min read ### [Thermal printers and the hardware you actually need](https://gosufra.com/en/blog/thermal-printers-and-hardware/) What ESC/POS means, the difference between Bluetooth, network and USB printing, which screens you need for which job, and the shopping list for a restaurant going live this week. Read article [← All articles](https://gosufra.com/en/blog/) [Contact us](https://t.me/GoSufraSupport)