Are you a hard-working owner who is eager to learn the ways to fully automate your restaurants? Looking for a system that simplifies billing or menu viewing while giving your customers a flexible experience?
If yes, then you’ve reached the right page as we’ll be talking about what a POS system is, the best POS systems for restaurant owners or managers and the key feature to keep in mind while selecting POS systems for your restaurant.
So, let’s quickly begin with our article without any further delay.
What are POS Systems?
POS (Point-of-sale) systems in restaurants simplify operations such as billing, keeping customer records (for example, their favorites or allergies), ordering (as it promotes contact-less ordering), reducing manual labor and errors while increasing efficiency and accuracy.
POS systems can be in the form of hardware or software that is specially designed to run a restaurant quickly and more conveniently.
Customizable menus, tracking features, seating plans, one-touch access for customer needs like menu items, add-ons, and more, planning discounts to display, and so on and so forth are the various features offered by POS software for an efficient and easy workflow of your restaurants.
Short of time? No worries! Here are the 5 best POS systems for restaurants presented in a tabular form for you.
Best POS Systems for Restaurants | About (Specifications) | Plan and Price |
Square | End-to-end encrypted payments, active fraud prevention, payroll, email marketing, gift cards, and invoices. | $0/month |
Toast | Scheduling and team communication, marketing, gift cards and loyalty, digital menus, delivery services, order and table management. | $0/month |
Lightspeed | Customizable POS, floor plans, takeout, delivery, CRM, multi-location management, live app, advanced insights. | Starts at $69/month |
TouchBistro | Staff management, tableside ordering, reporting and analytics, kitchen display system, marketing, online ordering. | Starts at $69/month |
SkyTab | Free online ordering, marketing, loyalty, reservations and waitlists, contactless solutions, Skytab mobile. | Starts at $29.99/month |
9 Best POS Systems for Restaurants
Now that we already know how beneficial a POS software is for your restaurants, let’s quickly look into the best POS systems for restaurants, their features, plans and pricing.
1. Square
Do you wish to eliminate manual errors, irritated customers, stressed out staff and mountains of paperwork?
If yes, then Square is the free POS software for restaurants as it offers a number of tools and features such as faster order entry, flexible payments, kitchen management, cash flow management, live reporting updates and more.
Features
Enables you to boost the customer engagement to build custom profiles in order to store preferences and send discounts and updates for promotion.
With the help of a kitchen display system, you can easily track food preparation time, tracking movement of food items to the current table and ticket timers.
Whether a swipe, tap or dip, develop an ability to accept all kinds of payments from the customers allowing them the comfort and convenience.
Plans and Price
The initial plan offered by Square lets you enjoy all the day-to-day POS services for free at $0/month. Other plans offer everything with advanced features.
2. Toast
With Toast, you can experience one of the best POS systems for your restaurant with the help of which you can manage sales, orders, payments and everything from a single platform.
It offers features like tableside services, online ordering or delivery, menu management and so forth together with restaurant-grade hardware built specifically for your restaurants.
Features
Offer simple team management tools such as Toast Payroll and Team management to save your time in pay period, Sling for employee scheduling or communication and more.
With the Employee Handbook, your new hires can set up their profiles even from their mobiles and select the payment option and more.
This contactless payment method helps in accepting all forms of payments like cards or mobile payments with NFC (Near field communication) technology.
Plans and Price
The 3 plans offered by Toast are Starter Kits (for small restaurants) at $0/month, Essentials (large restaurants) at $165/month and Custom (for customizable solutions).
3. Lightspeed
Lightspeed claims to be 40% faster than an average POS system as it is highly-customizable, makes your decision quicker and serves customers even faster while being more efficient at the same time.
With a number of integrations, it allows you to use tools such as employee management tools, loyalty programs or hotel PMS software.
Features
With tools like scan and pay, unique QR codes for quicker ordering, pickup time schedule for takeout, professional digital layout and more, you can serve customers with better experience.
With Lightspeed, you can create unique guest profiles, track their preferences and favorites, understand which food item is most preferred and promote accordingly.
Enables you to make new menus for each restaurant location and give your customers an effortless experience with shared customer data across locations.
Plans and Price
With Lightspeed, you can have 3 plans, Starter at $69/month, Essentials at $189/month, Premium at $399/month and Enterprise (for pricing, contact Sales).
4. Clover
Looking for a POS system for your small businesses?
Clover is the best POS system for small restaurants as it serves both large and small businesses with the help of which you can easily access payments, take or modify orders, map your table, speed up your service and create menu categories. It reduces customer wait time, makes quicker payments and more.
Features
Customized restaurant tools such as Station Solo, Station Duo, Mini, Flex and Go, you can easily have the best POS system hardware devices for convenient restaurant handling.
Can easily let you set up, prepare your menus, receive and manage your web orders and add rewards or feedback programs for your customers to build a connection with them.
Design your restaurant website with tools that automatically increase search rankings, interact with more audience and easy accessibility to anyone from any device for online experience.
Plans and Price
Clover offers different plans and pricing for different types of services such as the Full service dining plan starts at $160/month for 36 months.
The Quick service dining plan starts at $100/month for 36 months.
5. Revel
Looking for a POS system that is capable of creating memorable end-to-end customer experience?
Revel is the system for you, as it gives your customers effortless transactions, refund, exchanges and gift cards. Besides, you can also have inventory management tools, Revel’s iPad POS software, menu management tools and more.
Features
With Revel, you can have a platform which is scalable, quick to set up and manage, and regularly updated in order to smoothen your workflow and keep you up-to-date.
Enables you to have features like Tableside ordering with mobile accessibility for tableside ordering and floor plan and table management, manage multiple sections like dining rooms and more.
Revel Advantage is an EMV-ready Revel’s in-house payment solution to provide flexible payments with software, hardware and credit card processing.
Plans and Price
Contact Sales team as Revel allows you to try a free demo and discuss your POS requirements as soon as you fill-in all the details.
6. Talech
Want to attract your customers with product bundles in your restaurant? Talech is the system for you as it enables you to bundle your food items into one and sell them as one item.
You can also set up a BOGO discount (for example, buy 2 pizzas, get one free), keep getting alerts whenever you need to add an ingredient to your stock and more.
Features
Lets you create and assign printable QR codes with the table numbers that helps your customers order more comfortably.
Enables you to assign courses and send tickets to the multiple printers with just a few taps, and apply taxes according to the rules.
Helps you to set the seating or table positions to smoothen the ordering processes and set up floor plan easily.
Plans and Price
The offered plans are: Mobile (for part-time business) with no fee, Starter (best for cafe) at $29/month, Standard (medium-sized restaurants) at $69/month and Premium (multi-location business) at $99/month.
7. TouchBistro
With TouchBistro, you can work on all the aspects of handling your restaurant including front of house (payments), back of house (profit management, kitchen display system) or guest engagement (online ordering, gift cards, reservations and so on).
Overall, it lets you have a single platform to manage your staff, sales and menu easily.
Features
Increases sales with the help of data like giving you an insight on customer preferences, behavior and spending, reports to monitor your staff better and more.
Improves customer experience with personalization features, sets up creative, color-coded menus and handles multiple menus comfortably. Also, add branded merchandise or packaged goods to your menu.
Can easily access real-time data like overtime hours, labor costs, or staff performance, enables individual staff logins for better security and customizable settings for payroll.
Plans and Price
TouchBistro offers you the starting plan at $69/month with all the required features to handle your restaurant operations quickly.
8. Aloha POS [ncr.com]
Want to create modern guest experiences through contactless technology?
Aloha POS lets you enjoy the latest technology with multiple kitchen solutions, real-time reporting and analytics, management tools and digital ordering. It even lets you update menu items or pricing on menu with real-time mobile alerts to know the status of your business.
Features
Give your customers modern guest experiences with the help of digital, contactless ordering and payment or marketing programs in order to make connections with guests.
Helps you to perform different operations like takeout, in-store, delivery and curbside pickup all with mobile facilities in order to reach out and serve the customers more effectively.
Can easily update menu items or pricing, get real-time mobile alerts so that you are aware of the status of your business and track employee productivity for quick decisions.
Plans and Price
The 2 plans offered by Aloha are Aloha Cloud (simple cloud-based solution) and Aloha Essentials (with more capabilities). For pricing, you need to try a free demo and explore yourself.
9. SkyTab
Whether you have pizza shops, nightclubs or bars, full service restaurants, coffee shops or quick service restaurants, with SkyTab, you can get all the features like reservations and waitlists, contactless order and pay, mobile ordering, marketing and loyalty and third-party integrations.
Features
Enhance your customer experience by displaying unique QR code at every table which allows customers to scan, view the menu, order and submit.
Allow your customers to book reservations anytime while eliminating third-party fees, getting a sharing link and getting a custom reservation button on the website for real-time availability.
Build the weekly schedule with just a few clicks, communicate with employees and work instantly on the changes required.
Plans and Price
SkyTab offers you the most affordable plan at $29.99/month without compromising on any features.
Key Features to Consider
Now that we know the best POS systems for restaurants, their features and plans, let’s quickly go further and discuss the major features that have to be considered before choosing such a system for you.
Before choosing a POS system for you, you need to make sure that it has a user-friendly interface so that it is easily operated by staff members and customers.
Make sure that the POS system is capable of managing orders with multiple tools such as digital ordering, QR scans and more for faster acceptance of orders.
Ensure that your POS system has the capability of inventory tracking by smarter business decisions and plans in order to save time and food.
Make sure that your POS system has the reporting and analytics feature to track customers’ preferences, employee performance or most preference food item to increase sales.
Integration capabilities help you to have a better POS experience. For example, Clover has a partnership with Bentobox for better website design and performance.
Ensure that your POS system has the customer relationship management (CRM) features as they allow you to maintain connections and interaction strategies for marketing.
How does a restaurant POS system work?
Let’s now go through an entire step-by-step process to understand how exactly a restaurant POS system works.
First, the orders are visible on the touch-screen POS monitor and you just need to select the item, customer name, table number and the food server’s name. You can also view the status of the orders.
Here, you will get two options: Due invoice and POS invoice (for the completion of entire payment) which means you are saving your time and labor by simple digital billing method.
For this, you need to go to the POS invoice option and the entire calculation will be done automatically. You just need to click on Pay now and print the bill. It also has the split billing option for customers.
A smooth virtual connection between counter and kitchen. It will also allow your staff to prepare the food according to the customer’s requirements and preferences.
The automated feature of POS allows you to keep or maintain a record of your stock and kitchen requirements. You can always check your stock at the time of an order to make sure the food is served without delay.
Counter dashboard in the POS system helps to notify the customers that their order is ready while displaying the details like table number or customer name.
Other than the following steps, POS systems also create overall reports like sales reports, stock reports, purchase reports and more for better and smarter decisions for the future.
FAQs:
Conclusion
We know that the POS Systems are quite beneficial and time-saving for our day-to-day operations of our restaurants as it smoothens the entire management of the restaurant like maintaining records of customers’ preferences, stock, easy management of orders and more.
For such an effective and interactive management of orders, we have multiple POS Systems for restaurant owners like TouchBistro, Talech, Square and more that offer features like reporting, mobile technology, staff management, digital hiring, multi-location management and so forth.
We have also gone through the various key features that have to be kept in mind before choosing a POS System for your restaurant such as user-friendly interface, integration capabilities, inventory tracking and many more.