For independent bars & restaurants
Crowbar is the operations platform for one venue: bookings and the walk-in queue at the door, QR ordering and ticket boards through service, stock counted down to the pour, and a straight answer at the end of the night.
Your register stays exactly where it is.
Covers expected
84
In the queue
3
It replaces
The clipboard at the door
And
The notebook behind the bar
And
The back-office spreadsheet
But not
Your register
One connected record
Six moments, one record. Not five products that integrate — one workspace where the booking, the order, the pour and the total are the same row in the same book.
18:40
Booked last Tuesday, or scanned the code by the door two minutes ago.
Booking page · Queue
18:42
The host taps T7 on the floor map. The table turns live and the queue moves up.
Floor map
18:51
From the QR menu at the table, or from a server's tablet. Same tab either way.
QR menu · Tab
19:04
The bartender clears the ticket. The pour comes out of stock in the same motion.
Bar board · Inventory
20:28
Your own register takes the money. A server marks the tab settled externally; Crowbar records who did it and at what time.
Tab · Staff log
20:30
The tab closes, the table opens again, and the night's numbers are already written.
Floor map · Reports
Crowbar never takes the money. Your register stays the payment and fiscal authority. Crowbar records the staff assertion that settlement completed, with a name and a timestamp against it.
How that works with my register →Each one is useful on its own. Together they mean a table's booking, its order, its stock draw and its total are the same record.
Guests book against your real availability. The same book you kept by hand, kept by everyone at once.
Friday, on the clipboard
One copy. One person can read it. Gone by Sunday.
Friday, in Crowbar
Every device, every shift, and still there in March.
Three steps, no clipboard, and nobody's name shouted across the room.
Step 1 · 21:04
Scans the code by the door
Party of 2 · mobile
••• ••• 4102
Step 2 · 21:04
In the queue, position 3
25
Min quoted
from your real turn times
Step 3 · 21:26
Table ready — text sent
“Volt & Vine: your table is ready. Come to the bar and ask for Theo.”
The guest orders from the table. The kitchen and the bar each get only their own tickets, in the order they arrived, ageing as they wait. The tab stays open until the party closes out.
2 × Negroni
1 × Gimlet, no sugar
4 × Pils, 0.3 l
1 × Old Fashioned
One Negroni leaves the bar at 19:04. Nobody types anything.
Ticket cleared
1 × Negroni
Theo · Bar · 19:04
Recipe deducts
Monkey 47 Gin
−30 ml
Campari
−30 ml
Cocchi Vermouth
−30 ml
Stock, immediately
Every drink has a recipe, so serving is the only data entry. Sunday's count becomes a check rather than a reconstruction, and the variance between poured and counted is a number you can actually act on.
Par levels sit in the background: Campari falls below par on Saturday at this rate, which is a note for Tuesday's order — not an alarm during service.
Crowbar reads your own history — the same weekday, the weather, what's on nearby — and puts a number on the next seven nights. You order and roster against something better than a hunch.
Anything else, ask a person: crowbar@merulio.com
No. Crowbar does not take money, run a till, or produce any fiscal document. Your register stays the payment and fiscal authority, exactly as it is today.
What Crowbar does is keep the tab — what the table ordered and what it comes to — and record that a member of staff marked it settled externally, with their name and the time. Your register does the settling; Crowbar knows the table is done and free.
Every live board that loses contact says so in a way you cannot miss — a board that quietly stops updating is worse than no board. Staff keep serving from what is on screen, and the boards catch up the moment the connection returns. Taking orders on a device with no connection is not something Crowbar does yet.
No. Booking, the queue and the menu are ordinary web pages behind a QR code.
An afternoon. Set your hours, draw your floor, enter the menu and give your drinks their recipes. We'll sit with you for the first one.
A laptop behind the bar and a tablet in the room — whatever you already own. Nothing to buy, and nothing to install on either.
Then you'll live in the menu editor. 86 an item in two taps; the QR menu updates before the next guest scans it.
Five roles — owner, manager, host / server, bar / kitchen, and inventory operator. Each opens the screens that job needs: a bar / kitchen workspace runs the boards, the tabs and the stock, and never shows what an item costs. Cost prices and the money reports stay with owners and managers.
One evening at a sample bar, already under way. Pick a role and work the night.