Restaurant technology in Ireland, priced in euro.

The small things that grind on you daily. Prices in euro with no conversion shown to your customer at checkout. VAT set per item and per order type, which matters here more than most places because the rate on food service has moved more than once in recent years and gets argued over at every budget. Reports your accountant can work from without reformatting. And a support line that is awake when your service is, rather than one that opens as you are cashing up.

The year is a different shape. A room in Dingle, Westport or Killarney can do most of its trade between June and September and shut for the winter, which makes the rota, the stock and the cash flow a completely different problem from a city site that trades evenly all year. Marketplace coverage is thinner outside the cities too, so more restaurants in Cork, Galway, Limerick and the towns run their own drivers because nobody else will. And rural broadband is what it is, which is why the till has to keep working when the line goes.

Commission commonly runs 25 to 30 percent per order when the platform delivers, less if you deliver yourself, and the rate on your own contract is the only one that counts. On a €25 order that is €6 to €7.50 before you have paid for the food. The apps genuinely do find you customers, so the argument is not about leaving them. It is about whether the regular who has ordered the same thing from you every fortnight for two years should still be costing you a quarter of the order.

Eclyde is built in Dublin by people who have worked restaurant floors, which is the reason the kitchen display behaves the way it does and the cash up matches what the till actually took. We are early, we have no published case studies, and we are not going to invent any. Ireland is the home market and the UK is next. If you want a supplier with a long track record, that is a fair thing to want, and we will say so rather than talk you round.