Serve

Serve is designed for cinemas and entertainment venues that offer food and beverage service beyond a traditional concessions counter, by enabling staff to take orders wherever guests are located.

It's particularly well suited to:

• In-seat cinema dining
• Table-service cinemas and premium dining experiences
• Lounges, bars, and restaurant-style cinema environments
• Entertainment venues such as bowling centres where staff take orders directly at tables or lanes

Yes, Serve is integrated with your cinema seat maps and sessions, and automatically uses the seat map associated with the session your staff are working in. Therefore, if your seat configurations differ between sessions, Serve automatically reflects the correct layout for that session. This helps your staff work with an accurate view of available seats without requiring manual updates.

This cinema-specific approach helps ensure smooth order taking and service delivery, even in venues with changing seating configurations.

Serve is available on both iOS and Android devices, giving you the flexibility to choose the hardware that best suits your operation. For payment-enabled Android setups, our payment partners offer a range of integrated payment hardware, giving you more choice when selecting the right setup for your venue. Speak with the Vista team to explore the supported payment hardware and configuration options available for your environment.

Serve can be used as either an order-taking solution or a complete order-and-payment workflow.

Some cinema operations choose to use Serve solely for taking orders while payments are processed outside Serve and confirmed in-app. Others use Serve to both take orders and process payments directly through connected terminals or payment connectors.

When used as a complete order-and-payment solution, Serve supports a range of payment methods, including card payments, cash, gift cards and loyalty points, giving cinemas the flexibility to match their preferred operational model.

Yes. Serve is designed to work alongside your POS environment and is not intended to replace it entirely.

While Serve allows staff to take orders and has payment processing capabilities, a POS is still required as part of your overall food and beverage operation. Functions such as ticket sales, refunds, manager-authorised actions, and other advanced operational workflows are still handled directly through your POS.

Serve is designed around a check-based service model, making it ideal for environments where guests may place multiple orders throughout their visit. Staff can open a check, continue adding items as guests order additional food or drinks, and then settle the check when service is complete. This supports the natural flow of in-seat dining and table service operations.

When used with Vista’s Checks API, Serve allows staff to view and update checks created through an integrated digital channel, bringing staff-assisted and self-service ordering together on the same check.

Serve can be used to support quick-service workflows by opening a check, processing payment immediately, and closing it straight away.

Because Serve is fully connected to your Vista ecosystem, it also relies on foundational configurations already managed within Vista, including:

• Menu items and modifiers
• Pricing
• Payment methods (e.g. cash, card, gift card)
• POS profiles and service areas
  

If you are looking for a solution that supports quick-sale items that are ordered and paid for immediately, Vista Rove may be a better fit. Rove is specifically designed around on-the-spot and on-the-go sales transactions rather than ongoing check management.