Why Your POS Can’t (and Won’t) Do What Curbit Does

TL;DR: Your POS is great at recording what happened. But it was never built to control what’s happening in your kitchen. That’s where Curbit comes in.

The Kitchen Problem No POS Can Solve

Every restaurant running digital ordering has faced the same operational pain:

• Order surges crash into the kitchen all at once
• Guests show up before food is ready, or long after it’s gone cold
• Staff are forced to make split-second timing calls with no visibility

It’s chaos. And while the POS knows when an order was placed and paid for, it has zero understanding of how or when that order should be made.  We call this, finding the Goldilocks Zone.

Why? Because point-of-sale systems are systems of record, not systems of control.

POS Systems Were Never Built for Real-Time Kitchen Control

Here’s what POS systems like Toast, PAR, and Square were designed to do:

Their architecture is optimized for historical reporting, batch updates, and financial compliance—not millisecond-level decision-making during a rush.

They are essential. But they are not sufficient for digital-era kitchen operations.

Orders ≠ Execution

Your POS is blind to kitchen state, timing dependencies, and execution sequencing. It doesn’t know how long things take—or how they should be staggered to hit a ready time target.

No amount of reporting, dashboarding, or order batching inside the POS will fix kitchen chaos.

A POS sees:

• “You sold a burger at 12:03 PM.”

Curbit sees:

• “The grill station is 3 tickets deep.”
• “Fries take 2 minutes longer right now because the fryer’s overloaded.”
• “The delivery driver is 9 minutes away.”
• “Start the burger now. Fire the fries in 90 seconds.”

That difference is everything.

Why POS Vendors Can’t Pivot to Real-Time Control

Even if a POS vendor wanted to build kitchen orchestration, they’d run into hard structural limits:

1. Wrong Data Model

POS databases are built to log what happened—not to predict or control what will happen next.

2. No Kitchen Visibility

POS systems don’t track prep progress, staff behavior, station capacity, or actual item readiness.

3. Batch Architectures

Designed for hourly reports and exports, not event-driven decision loops operating in milliseconds.

4. Misaligned Business Model

POS vendors make money on hardware and transaction volume—not operational outcomes.

5. Different Buyer Relationship

POS is owned by IT or Finance. Curbit is used and valued by Operations.

The result: POS systems remain vital, but they simply aren’t built to solve real-time kitchen problems.

Curbit: The Missing Infrastructure Layer

Curbit is not another application competing with your POS.

We’re the infrastructure layer that sits beneath your existing systems, connecting your POS, ordering, and back-of-house tech to orchestrate real-time kitchen operations.

We provide:

• Real-time routing and prep timing decisions

• Sequencing across stations based on actual kitchen state

• Guest and driver notifications based on when food will really be ready

• Closed-loop feedback to constantly improve outcomes

Think of us like Stripe for kitchens... not replacing your platforms, but making them work together to control what was previously uncontrollable.

Why It’s a Win for Your POS Vendor, Too

We don’t threaten your POS vendor, we make them more valuable.

When Curbit is deployed:

• The POS gains visibility into how its orders are executed
• Guests get a better experience, boosting loyalty and repeat sales
• Operations gain efficiency and control—without replacing core systems
  
  

It’s a win-win-win for operators, guests, and the tech stack they’ve already invested in.

You Don’t Need to Rip and Replace ... You Need to Orchestrate

POS systems will always be essential for transactions and reporting.

But if you want to:

• Prevent order collisions during peak hours
• Ensure food is fresh and ready at the right time
• Make your kitchen feel less like a fire drill

…your POS isn’t enough.

You need Curbit, the infrastructure layer for orchestrating modern kitchen operations.