Code Story episode
S12 Bonus: The Death of the Black Box POS: Solving the Menu API Nightmare and Scaling Unified Commerce Across 2,000+ Locations with Niko Papademetriou, Co-Founder & EVP of Qu
Jan 14, 2026 · Season 12 · 34 min
Connecting POS systems to the rest of the world digitally
Niko Papademetriou lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and son. He has had an interesting background professionally. He got into finance, and experienced all the downside that 2008 had to offer. Post all of that, he started a restaurant at the age of 26 with some folks, and quickly realized how difficult it was. After 4 years, he met some guys and wanted to start a new thing. Outside of tech, he and his wife spends a lot of time watching his son play hockey, and engaging with the team at the hockey rink.
Niko has observed the restaurant business change, moving towards many different ordering methods - mobile, web, in person, etc. At the end of whatever method, the order needed to land inside the black box of the POS system. He wanted to create the plumbing, better yet the ultimate system to connect it all.
This is the creation story of Qu.
Sponsors
Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Alcor (https://alcor.com/podcast)Equitybee (http://codestory.co/equitybee)Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA.
LInks
https://www.qubeyond.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikopapademetriou
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