I built an open-source alternative to Toast and Square for restaurant management

Source: Dev.to

The Problem

If you run a small restaurant, your options for online ordering and management are:

• SaaS platforms like Toast, Square, or ChowNow — $100‑300+/month with vendor lock‑in
• Old open‑source projects — mostly PHP/Laravel, hard to extend, dated UIs
• Build it yourself — months of work before you can take a single order

I wanted a fourth option: a modern, self‑hosted, open‑source platform that a developer could deploy in an afternoon.

Introducing KitchenAsty

KitchenAsty is an MIT‑licensed restaurant ordering, reservation, and management system built as a TypeScript monorepo.

What it covers

For customers

• Browse the menu, add to cart, and place orders for delivery or pickup
• Schedule orders for later or order ASAP
• Pay with Stripe or cash on delivery
• Track orders in real‑time
• Book table reservations
• Leave reviews
• React Native mobile app

For restaurant staff

• Manage menus with categories, options, allergens, and images
• Kitchen display — a live Kanban board showing incoming orders
• Process orders with one‑click status progression
• Manage reservations with table assignment
• Create and track coupons
• Moderate customer reviews
• Staff management with role‑based access

For the owner

• Dashboard with revenue trends, order analytics, and top‑selling items
• Multi‑language support (6 languages)
• Full settings panel for payments, email, orders, and more

Tech Stack

Architecture Decisions

• Monorepo with npm workspaces — Admin, storefront, server, and shared types all live in one repo. Changes to shared types are immediately visible everywhere. No publishing packages, no version mismatches.
• Prisma over raw SQL — Type‑safe database queries that catch errors at build time. The schema is self‑documenting with 30 models and clear relationships.
• Socket.IO for real‑time — The kitchen display and order tracking need instant updates. Socket.IO made this straightforward with room‑based broadcasting.
• Separate admin and storefront apps — Different audiences, different concerns. The admin is a dense data‑management tool. The storefront is a consumer‑facing ordering experience. Sharing a single React app would have meant too many compromises.

Self‑Hosting

The project is designed to be self‑hosted with Docker. The docs site has a complete guide covering:

• Server setup (Ubuntu/Debian)
• Docker Compose deployment
• Domain and DNS configuration
• Reverse proxy with SSL (Nginx or Caddy)
• Backups and maintenance

For local development:

docker compose up -d   # PostgreSQL
npm run dev:server
npm run dev:admin
npm run dev:storefront

By the Numbers

• 27,000 lines of TypeScript
• 30 database models
• 118 API endpoints
• 330+ tests (unit, integration, E2E)
• 6 supported languages
• Full CI/CD with GitHub Actions

Contributing

The project is set up for contributors:

• Contributing guide
• Good first issues — small, well‑scoped tasks with clear instructions
• Help wanted issues — bigger features where input is welcome
• Discussions — feature ideas, RFCs, and community chat

Areas where help is most needed: accessibility, i18n coverage, test coverage, and structured logging.

Links

• GitHub:
• Docs:
• License: MIT

If you’ve ever worked on restaurant tech, run a food business, or just want to contribute to a well‑documented TypeScript project, I’d love to hear from you.