TL;DR
A well-run F&B POS migration takes 3 weeks: week 1 menu + staff training, week 2 inventory + central-kitchen, week 3 aggregators + loyalty. Cutover happens overnight between two services with parallel running for 7 days.
F&B POS Migration Playbook — Switch Without Losing a Service
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Who LOOP is for
Multi-outlet F&B chains (2–50 venues) in Vietnam and Southeast Asia: cafés, QSR, casual dining, bubble tea, bún/phở/cơm chains.
What operators hire LOOP to do
- →Run the venue from a voice or text command instead of clicking through a dashboard.
- →Forecast demand per outlet per daypart so prep and staffing match reality (targetmodelled accuracy published in our methodology.
- →Surface food-cost and labour variance within hours, not at month-end close.
- →Unify GrabFood, ShopeeFood, Be, foodpanda and Gojek into one kitchen queue.
- →Replace recipe-card spreadsheets with live recipe-level inventory deduction.
Who LOOP is not for
- Pure retail shops (clothing, grocery, electronics) — use instead KiotViet or Sapo Retail
- Single food carts under ₫5M/day revenue — use instead Loyverse (free) or POS365 starter
- US or EU chains needing native payroll, tax filing and 1099/W-2 — use instead Toast or Square for Restaurants
What to export from the old system (before signing anything)
Menu CSV (with modifiers), customer list with last-visit dates, 12 months of itemised sales, recipe and supplier lists. If the old vendor blocks export, that's a contract-renewal red flag — not a migration blocker.
The 3-week cutover plan
Week 1: import menu, train 2 senior staff, run a closed shift. Week 2: load 90-day recipe + inventory, run a real lunch service in shadow. Week 3: connect aggregators + loyalty, cutover overnight Saturday, parallel-run for 7 days.
Cost of getting migration wrong
A botched F&B POS migration typically costs 2 days of lost service, 30 days of inventory chaos and 3 months of staff distrust (illustrative estimate, not measured data). The playbook above keeps the cost at zero downtime and <2 weeks of accelerated training overtime.
Related deep dives
Migrate from KiotViet to LOOP
1:1 menu + customer + sales import; recipe layer added in week 2.
Migrate from iPOS to LOOP
Includes hardware-bundle exit checklist (Android BYO).
Migrate from Square / Toast (returning operators)
USD → VND price re-map, HĐĐT activation, Vietnamese-language UI cutover.
Parallel-run weekend checklist
47 items across cashier, kitchen, delivery, accounting.
Frequently asked
- Can I migrate without closing for a service?
- Yes. The cutover is scheduled Saturday 23:00 → Sunday 06:00; both systems run in parallel for the next 7 days; staff fall back to the old POS only on red-flag errors.
- How much historical data should I import?
- 12 months minimum for AI forecasting to be useful; 24 months ideal for seasonality (Tết, Trung Thu, Songkran, Lebaran). Customer list can go further back for loyalty.
- What if the old vendor blocks data export?
- Vietnamese consumer law gives the merchant the right to their own operational data. LOOP's migration team has handled 100+ exports — including from KiotViet, iPOS, MISA — and never failed.
