Hi Joel, I’m Dan and I’m on the IT team at Unicorn Grocery. I read about CORE-POS (or its predecessor) about 7 years ago on the US grocery co-op email list. Sounded interesting but not particularly suitable for our needs then as far as I remember. Fantastic that its still going and looks to be hugely improved.
I wasn’t at the Worker Co-op Weekend this year so I missed the fascinating-sounding discussion around food coops, and open source tech, two of my big interests.
We are looking at getting a new EPOS system in the next 12 months and would certainly consider an open-source co-op developed one if suitable. I would assume that the card payment system would be the biggest hurdle, our current EPOS system is based on Microsoft Retail Managment System, and integrated card payments are handled by PayWare OCIUS from Verifone. There are many dozens of merchant account providers in the UK though, WorldPay is very popular too.
Regarding scannerscales, by far the two most common (if not only) ones I’ve seen in the UK are from Avery Berkel and Bizerba