Case study: a Dubai ghost kitchen tests Nexara

What did the Dubai kitchen need to prove?

The fictional business, called Creekside Kitchen for this evaluation, prepares delivery meals from one Dubai site. Its team wanted one practical answer: could Nexara handle the work around the till without forcing staff to retype orders or replace the kitchen's ordinary thermal printers?

The test used Arabic and English because a kitchen ticket must be readable by the person cooking it. Nexara supports Arabic thermal printing with English on the same ticket, using standard ESC/POS printers over USB or a network. A year went into the printing engine.

• Receive an order through the branded website and installable app.
• Place a phone order while seeing the caller's saved addresses and past orders.
• Give staff separate permissions for branch management, cashier work and call-center work.
• Print Arabic and English kitchen tickets and receipts.
• Check order history, customer records, reports, menu availability and inventory in one dashboard.

Nexara was evaluated as the order and operations layer beside the till, not as a cash register. The cashier still records the day's net sale and handles closeout reconciliation.

How did the 14-day trial run?

The team treated the evaluation as a shift test. A manager prepared a small menu with modifiers, prices and branch availability. One Arabic item, one English item, a combo and a delivery zone were enough to expose mistakes.

1. Create the menu in Arabic and English, including modifiers and availability.
2. Add the manager, cashier and call-center users with branch-specific permissions.
3. Place website, pickup and phone orders using test customer details.
4. Check the printed item names, modifiers, order type and customer information.
5. Review the order history, customer record and available report tabs.
6. Write down anything that requires partner approval or a separate local service.

The fictional kitchen used an illustrative example of 120 orders on a busy day and an average ticket of 8 JOD only to size the test. Those figures do not describe Nexara's results or a real Dubai restaurant. The test focused on whether a ticket reached the right printer once and whether the order taker could see the details needed to act.

How did website and phone work compare?

The website was the easier part of the UAE trial. A restaurant receives its own branded ordering site on a Nexara subdomain or custom domain, and customers can install it from the browser as an app. The menu generates the storefront, so the team could change availability and check the public result without building an app-store product.

The website supports cash on delivery or pickup, card payment online when HyperPay is enabled, and pay at the counter for dine-in. The restaurant's own website, app and call-center orders carry 0% commission. Talabat and Careem keep their own commission on orders they bring.

The call-center test used a phone number as the starting point. The agent could see saved addresses and past orders, then place a delivery or pickup order. The call center is a Pro-plan feature. The branded website is available on paid plans from Starter, with a free plan that caps website orders at 30 a month. Current rates are available on request.

The manager also checked the Nexara feature catalogue (/features/) and the 14-day restaurant trial checklist (/blog/14-day-trial-checklist/) before deciding which staff members needed to repeat the test.

What worked for Arabic and English service?

Creekside Kitchen first printed an Arabic ticket with an item, modifier and customer note. It then printed the same order in English. The kitchen should receive readable Arabic characters and the selected menu language.

Nexara drives ordinary ESC/POS thermal printers, including common Epson, Star and Bixolon models. Tickets wait in the branch print queue if a printer is unavailable and can be re-routed from the dashboard, or sent through automatic failover to a backup printer where one is configured. The kitchen receives printed tickets rather than kitchen display screens.

The manager also checked printer categories. A kitchen printer can receive food categories while another printer handles a configured group such as drinks or cashier receipts. The test result to record is the physical printout: correct language, correct modifier, correct branch and a ticket that does not appear twice.

The dashboard and storefront are available in Arabic and English. An Arabic-speaking cook and an English-speaking manager can use the same menu and order records.

What could the UAE kitchen not get?

The hard limit was aggregator coverage in the UAE. Nexara has verified Talabat and Careem order intake in its Jordan deployments, but activation is per market and depends on partner approval. A Dubai kitchen should ask about activation in its market before treating either connection as part of the launch plan.

Nexara does not offer Jahez or DHUB today. Local UAE e-invoicing certification is not part of Nexara today; your operator must confirm tax obligations with a local adviser. Nexara does not provide ZATCA certification.

Nexara is built in Amman, Jordan, pricing is in Jordanian dinar, and support is through WhatsApp and email on Amman hours. The founder answers support. The platform can run anywhere with a browser and the Windows print agent, but the live deployment base is Jordan.

For a restaurant whose first requirement is a UAE-specific aggregator connection or local invoicing certification, a UAE-focused provider may be the better pick.

Read the Nexara integration page (/integrations/) before any commitment. It separates order intake, own-delivery dispatch and market-dependent partner activation.

What was the decision?

The fictional kitchen chose a limited evaluation path rather than a blanket rollout. It would test Nexara for its branded ordering site, phone ordering, bilingual printing, menu control, customer records and branch permissions. It would keep its UAE aggregator plan separate until activation was confirmed.

Live deployments are in Jordan, so what is verified today sits inside that market. A trial can test the parts the kitchen controls: its menu, its staff, its printer, its own order path and its operating reports.

The fictional example used 3 test staff members and 2 printers. Your branch should replace those figures with its own people, devices and busiest service window.

• Ask which UAE aggregator connections can be activated for your legal entity and branch.
• Print real Arabic item names, modifiers and customer notes before service.
• Test a website order, a pickup order and a phone order from start to finish.
• Confirm who owns each role and who handles cashier reconciliation.
• Write down any local invoicing or tax requirement Nexara does not cover.