Hello, world. Hello, kitchens.

Welcome to Issue 01 of The LEMON Issue · our quarterly dispatch for Thai restaurant operators.

We're a small team in Bangkok building POS software for Thai restaurants. As of today, we have 1,000 customers across 64 of Thailand's 77 provinces. We've been live for 16 months. We've never raised outside funding. We're profitable since month nine.

We started this newsletter because most software companies talk to themselves. We'd rather talk to you · the people running the restaurants we built this for.

Who we are

Eleven people. Eight engineers, one designer, one ops, one me. Average age 31. Five of us have run restaurants. Three were chefs. Two are on their first job. We're in three cities · Bangkok (HQ), Bangkok (sales support), Chiang Mai (engineering).

I started LEMON because my own restaurant POS broke me · technically and financially. I didn't intend to start a company. I just wanted my own kitchen to work.

What we're building

A POS that doesn't ask you to compromise. Specifically:

• Offline-first · works without internet, syncs when back
• Real-time KDS · kitchen sees orders instantly, no paper tickets
• LEMON Club CRM · stamp cards, RFM segmentation, LINE integration
• QR self-order · customers scan, order, pay from their phone
• Reports that read themselves · no Excel, no nightly admin

All five features are in every plan. Including the free one. We don't gate features by tier · we gate them by store count and order volume.

What we're not

We're not a startup looking for a billion-dollar exit. We're a company. We make money by selling software. We charge fairly. We re-invest. We sleep well.

We're not in 50 markets. We're in Thailand. We understand Thai dish modifiers, Thai payment rails (PromptPay, LINE Pay), Thai labor laws. We have no plans to expand internationally · plenty of work here.

We're not the cheapest. There's free software that does some of what we do. We don't compete with free. We compete with not being broken.

What's next

Every quarter, we'll publish one of these. February, May, August, November. Each issue will have:

• An engineering note · what we built, what we got wrong
• A field story · from a real customer, in their words
• A culture piece · how we work, what we believe
• A product update · what's new, what's coming

If you're an operator · subscribe at lemonpos.store/blog. We'll never spam, sell your email, or use it for anything except sending you the next issue.

Thanks for reading. See you in May.