Design
Restaurant Management System
Design a comprehensive restaurant management system that covers menu and inventory management, table assignments, order processing with kitchen workflow, billing with tax and discount support, and table reservations.
This is a Low-Level Design (LLD) problem. New to LLD vs HLD? Start here.
01 - Why interviewers ask this
Restaurant Management is a favourite because it naturally exercises multiple design patterns together (Observer for kitchen events, Decorator for billing, State Machine for order lifecycle) while requiring careful entity modelling across a multi-role domain — staff, kitchen, inventory, and customer-facing flows all in one system.
02 - Where this system exists in the real world
You interact with this design every day.
Core engine behind restaurant POS systems like Toast, Square for Restaurants, and Olo
Zomato and Swiggy restaurant-side dashboards use similar order lifecycle management
Kitchen Display Systems (KDS) in fast-food chains (McDonald's, Domino's) follow this order-routing model
Hotel F&B management in property management systems (PMS) like Oracle OPERA
03 - What you'll master
Solve this once. Know it forever.
Orchestrate a multi-actor workflow (customer → waiter → kitchen → billing)
Apply the Observer pattern to propagate order status changes across departments
Use the Decorator pattern to compose billing rules without modifying core models
Handle concurrent table and inventory operations safely
04 - What you'll design
8 functional · 3 non-functional requirements.
Manage menu with categories, items, prices, and real-time availability toggles
7 more requirements inside
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05 - Companies that ask this
You may face this exact question in your next interview.
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