Internet, Wi-Fi, POS Networks and CCTV for Cafés, Restaurants and Venues in Melbourne

The communications side of a venue

A café or restaurant runs more connected systems than it looks. The POS, EFTPOS terminals, kitchen printers or screens, delivery-platform tablets, online bookings, the music, the screens over the bar, the cameras and the phone all depend on the internet or the local network. Most of them matter most at the same moment: a full Friday night.

We plan and install that side of a venue:

• Internet with failover. A fixed service plus 5G, so payments and orders keep working when the fixed line drops.
• Separate networks. POS and payments, staff devices, venue devices and guest Wi-Fi each on their own network.
• Wi-Fi for the whole venue. Dining room, bar, kitchen and outdoor areas, sized for a full house.
• Cabling. The counter, bar, kitchen printers and screens, the office and the access points.
• Cameras and phones. CCTV over entries, registers, the bar and deliveries, and a bookings line that rings the right place.

For a shop fit-out or a franchise store opening, retail fit-outs covers the shop side of the same work.

Which broadband gives a venue the best POS uptime?

No provider guarantees uptime on its own. What keeps a venue trading is two internet services that fail for different reasons, and a gateway that switches between them automatically. For most cafés and restaurants that’s a business NBN or fibre service as the primary and a business 5G service as the backup.

During an outage, the backup should carry what earns money: card payments, the POS, online and delivery orders, and the phones. Guest Wi-Fi gets limited or switched off while the backup is running, so customers’ phones can’t use up the 5G capacity or data allowance. Some EFTPOS terminals have their own mobile fallback, so ask your payment provider how yours behaves. The POS, kitchen printers and order tablets still need the venue’s internet.

Before relying on it, test the 5G signal where the router will sit, at a busy time, and run a real card payment with the fixed service unplugged. Business internet failover covers the design, and 5G failover testing covers testing it outside trading hours.

Can a café run on 5G alone?

Sometimes. A business 5G service can be in place faster than a fixed connection, which helps a new venue open on time or a seasonal site that only trades part of the year. The risk is guest Wi-Fi. Customers streaming on a busy afternoon can use far more data than the POS ever will, and mobile performance changes with how busy the local tower is. If 5G is the only connection, cap guest Wi-Fi hard, check the plan’s data policy, and plan to add a fixed service if the venue is staying. Business 5G internet covers when it works as the primary.

Guest Wi-Fi kept apart from the POS

Guest Wi-Fi is a service to customers. It shouldn’t be a path to the payment systems. We separate the networks on the gateway and switches:

PCI DSS in plain English. PCI DSS is the card industry’s security standard, and it applies to businesses that take card payments. The PCI Security Standards Council has said that network segmentation isn’t a PCI DSS requirement, but it encourages keeping the number of systems that can reach payment data to a minimum. Systems that can reach the payment network can be drawn into scope, and poorly separated systems are a common way in. So the guest network, the music player and the cameras should have no route to the payment devices. Your payment provider or acquirer can tell you what applies to the venue.

Kitchen printers, ordering tablets and the whole floor

Kitchens are hard on Wi-Fi. Stainless steel benches, coolrooms and brick walls block the signal, and a printer that drops off mid-service means lost dockets. We cable kitchen printers, kitchen screens and fixed terminals wherever we can, and keep Wi-Fi for the devices that move.

Ordering tablets and portable EFTPOS terminals move with the staff, from the counter to the back tables to the courtyard. Access points are placed for where staff actually carry them, with roaming set so devices hand over cleanly. Outdoor dining gets an outdoor-rated access point cabled from inside or mounted under cover facing the area. An access point in the dining room rarely reaches through brick and glass to the courtyard. Capacity is sized for a full house, when every table has phones on the guest network.

Music, screens and events

Music players, screens for sport, menu boards and the AV for functions all need the network, and they don’t belong on the staff or payment networks. They go on a venue devices network, which keeps them working without giving them a route to anything sensitive. For events, a temporary Wi-Fi name can be added for the night and removed afterwards, without touching the rest of the network.

Cameras over the bar, registers and back door

Cameras go over entries, registers and the bar, cash handling, the back door and deliveries, stock and coolrooms, and the courtyard. Entry cameras are positioned to identify people, others give an overview. Retention is set from how long it usually takes to notice an incident. Businesses covered by the Privacy Act need to tell people they may be recorded and keep footage secure, as the OAIC explains in its guidance on security cameras. Licensed venues may also have camera conditions on their liquor licence, and we design to the conditions you’ve been given.

Phones for bookings

For most venues the phone is the bookings line. On 8x8, calls ring the front desk during trading, overflow to a manager’s mobile when nobody can answer mid-service, and get a message pointing to online bookings after close. Hours are set once and changed for public holidays or private events. The existing number is ported across on a scheduled date.

Working around trading

Venues can’t close for an install. We schedule cabling and cutovers before opening, between services or after close, and test payments, orders and the phones before the next service starts. Because the network is cloud-managed, most later changes, such as a new staff device, an event network or a check on a payment drop-out, are done remotely. To get started, send us the address and a rough layout, and we’ll check what internet the venue can get and what signal the 5G backup will have.