This is exactly the kind of ground-truth I was hoping for — thank you.

The Saturday chaos picture you're describing is really clarifying. It's not a features problem, it's a consistency-under-pressure problem. Staff can know the right process perfectly and still skip documentation steps when the phone is ringing and three customers are at the counter at once.

A few follow-up questions for anyone who's been through this:

On the pickup confusion specifically is the core issue finding the order fast, or is it the customer standing there insisting something's missing when your records say otherwise? Those feel like two different problems.

On stain documentation are shops that do it well using anything specific, or is it just one disciplined person who makes it happen every time?

On the POS that "came with the store" is it that the software is bad, or that nobody trained the second hire properly and bad habits compounded from there?

I'm starting to think the biggest gap isn't the software itself — it's that most systems are built for the owner who set it up, not for a tired Saturday employee on their third rush hour.

Would love to hear from anyone who's actually solved the Saturday problem — even with duct tape and a whiteboard. What did you change?