Akru POS System
Zonal, the UK’s leading EPOS provider, partnered with the team to design Akru, a streamlined touchscreen point of sale platform created for small to medium sized hospitality businesses. Aimed at food trucks, cafés, bars and multi site independents, Akru was designed to feel lean, modern and scalable. The design process began from the ground up, starting with interviews and persona development to define user needs. The team then created the core POS experience used front of house to take orders, send them to the kitchen and handle payments. The interface is fast, brand flexible and fully themeable, supporting light and dark modes across multiple venue types.
Alongside the front of house POS, the team designed Akru’s back office platform, a robust web based system for managing everything behind the scenes. From menu creation and pricing control to staff roles and real time reporting, this platform serves as the operational engine for hospitality teams. Intuitive configuration tools, a modular recipe builder and an analytics dashboard were introduced to offer insights on peak times, sales margins and bestsellers. Inventory tracking features were also explored, connecting live sales data to stock levels. The system was designed to support rapid onboarding and scale across venues of varying size and complexity.
Akru’s brand was developed in partnership with a branding agency, with close collaboration to adapt the identity across the digital product suite. Brand principles were translated into scalable UI patterns, defining a flexible visual system for both POS and back office applications. To bring additional warmth and character to the brand, a set of custom illustrations was commissioned and integrated throughout the platform, helping to humanise the product experience.
