It’s a dream of every restaurant owner, that their restaurant table is fully booked, but imagine a situation where your restaurant is crowded, and you and your employee are unable to manage the crowd properly. Waiters are taking the wrong orders and delivering them to the wrong table, even the cashier is facing difficulties billing the customers.
This type of situation may arise in your restaurant at any time, so you need a proper system that will take care of all your billing, order management, and even inventory management. In simple words, you need a restaurant POS that will help you manage your restaurant more efficiently.
Since there are a lot of restaurant POS available, which are eagerly waiting to serve you, it totally depends on you, which POS you choose. So to help you search for the best POS, here we are with the list of best restaurant POS available in the market.
What is POS?
Top 10 POS for Restaurants
- Lavu
- Toast
- Square Pos
- Nobly POS
- Upserve POS by Lightspeed
- Clover POS
- TouchBistro
- Cake POS
- Harbortouch
- Linga POS
What is POS?
Point of sale (POS) is a combination of software and hardware that helps to organize bills into sections, make payments, and much more. POS is one of the most important aspects of running a successful business. It consists of software, hardware, a barcode scanner, payment processing, a cash drawer, a printer, and a payment terminal. When all these tools are combined together and give services to businesses, then it is called POS.
The primary function of the software is to process transactions, store data, and manage inventory. This software is well capable of sales management, inventory management, payment, and employee management. Every POS company provides the hardware on which the software runs, this could be a computer, tablet, or smartphone, which depends on the POS provider.
Scanners help to scan the barcode for accurate billing and managing inventory. The payment terminal is the hardware that ensures secure payments. Since as a restaurant owner you might not need a scanner but the POS will definitely ensure the steady growth of your business.
According to the study by toast, around 71% of restaurant owners are already using POS to run their business efficiently, and around 21% are still using pen and paper. It is clear that today’s restaurant owners are showing their interest in POS for their business management. Now it’s your turn to leverage the benefits of POS for your business growth.
Top 10 POS for Restaurants
Lavu
| Rating | 3.8/5 |
|---|---|
| Best For | Remotely Reporting and Tracking |
Lavu is a POS platform that is purposefully built for restaurants to manage billings and orders. It is on a mission to empower restaurants to do more with what they love, with solutions that work for them. Since Lavu is a restaurant-oriented POS, it provides all the hardware and software that is essential to manage the restaurant effectively.
The iPad-based POS offers a self-service kiosk that enables customers to order their meals on their own with plenty of customization of food items. Customers can order, book their table and make payment without the interference of any staff. You only need to fulfil the order given by the customer, this will reduce your labor cost significantly.
Also, utilize the benefit of the cash discount program and encourage your customer to make payments through cash. This will significantly reduce credit card fees which are around 4 to 5 % of the total transaction value. Easy integration with App8, Agilence, 7shifts, and so on. This integration will help to expand the existing functionality of Lavu POS.
Features of Lavu
- Cloud-based reliable and secure network
- iPad POS system
- Inventory tracking
- Helps to identify the bestseller item in the menu
- Detailed reporting and analytic
- Self-ordering kiosk
- Cash discount program with dual pricing
Toast
| Rating | 4.3/5 |
|---|---|
| Best For | Contactless Ordering and Inventory Management |
Toast is an all-in-one POS that is trusted by more than 74,000 restaurants worldwide. The toast POS products are sufficient enough to make your restaurant advanced in every manner. It caters to the demand of almost every type of restaurant, with innovative technology and an easy-to-use interface, it empowers your waiters to take orders and payments efficiently using handheld POS i.e toast go.
The unique feature of toast is that customers can even make an order using their smartphone just by scanning a QR code. This feature ensures contactless ordering, customers can choose their desired dish from the menu which pop-ups after scanning the QR, and once they select the dish they can easily make payment using apple pay within 10 seconds.
Every order is directly sent to the kitchen for fulfilment. With real-time access to reporting and analytics, you can monitor your business effectively and efficiently from anywhere.
Features of Toast
- Order using your mobile and pay using apple pay in less than 10 seconds
- Intuitive and easy to use
- Easy table management
- Toast kiosk for self-order and real-time guest feedback
- Payroll and team management
- Online ordering systems for restaurants
Square Pos
| Rating | 4.6/5 |
|---|---|
| Best For | All-round service |
Square is a POS provider which serves businesses of all sizes and types including Retail, Beauty, services, and most importantly restaurants. The design of the products is sleek that looks and feels good. We are going to focus on the POS which is specifically designed for restaurants.
Its restaurant POS is designed for every restaurant type including quick commerce, full service, fast casual, bars and breweries, and ghost kitchen. So whatever the type of your restaurant, it will definitely going to serve you better. There is an immersive list of POS products available to help your business run smoothly, you can choose the products and software plan and you are good to go.
Reduce the heavy line at your counter POS with handheld devices like square terminal and mobile POS kit, this will help in ordering as well as for payment at the table. The kitchen display system KDS fetches all the orders from any POS devices in the kitchen and integrates them into the screen in real-time.
Features of Square POS
- Tap to pay on iPhone
- Third-party integration
- The free version of the Square is available in addition to a paid plan
- Multi-location management
- Advanced Reporting with live sales report
- Square loyalty, payroll, and marketing
- Tableside order and payments
Nobly POS
| Rating | 4/5 |
|---|---|
| Best For | Table management and Reporting |
Nobly is an iPad POS system that simplifies the hectic and time-consuming tasks of the restaurant business seamlessly and hassle-free. Its POS is best suited for cafes, bars, Restaurants, and QSR. Since hardware is more or less the same, you need to give your effort into analyzing the features of the software.
Its advanced inventory management system ensures that you never go out of stock, you can edit and update the stock anytime when the new stock arrives. The table service feature is just amazing, you can create a virtual layout of every table in your restaurant according to their size and dimensions, also you can set the location and numbering so that waiters can find the table more easily.
Use the iPad to take orders at the table and it will automatically send the order to the kitchen. Your employee can quickly check the status of the table about whether payment has been done or not. Provide your customer with full flexibility to make payment, you can even take split charge and enhance your customer experience.
Features of Nobly POS
- Ingredient tracking feature
- Tableside ordering
- Intelligent reporting
- Loyalty program to make loyal customers
- Inventory management
- Offline mode
Upserve POS by Lightspeed
| Rating | 4.1/5 |
|---|---|
| Best For | Online Ordering and Delivery |
Upserve is a POS solution for restaurant management. In late 2020, Upserve was acquired by lightspeed, a leading provider of cloud-based omnichannel commerce platforms. The total transaction value of the deal was $430 million. Now Upserve is still working in the POS industry with a new look and feel of lightspeed. Upserve is still providing its customer support.
Upserve offers all the essential POS hardware for restaurants, like terminals, handheld devices, kitchen display systems, printers, and wireless technology. It also offers its mobile app called Upserve live which empowers restaurants to see all the analytical data about sales, labor costs, discounts, and track live guests.
Other great features of Upserve are table-side ordering, online ordering, and a loyalty program. Online ordering comes with simple and innovative designs that easily integrate the orders in Front of the house and back of the house.
Features of Upserve
- Tableside ordering and payments
- Offline mode
- menu intelligence
- Training mode to train your workers
- Restaurant analytics and reporting
- Easy to split checks and items
- 24/7 US-based customer support
Clover POS
| Rating | 3.8/5 |
|---|---|
| Best For | Quick Service Restaurants |
Clover is an all-in-one POS that offers its hardware and software for quick-service and full-service restaurants. Awarded with the restaurant smart terminal award for the second time in the year 2021, clover is delivering flexibility and a great customer experience.
It helps to sync front of the house and back of the house to ensure there is no delay to fulfill the orders. Protect your business from sudden internet connectivity loss, because POS still accepts the payments when you are offline and process those transactions when connectivity returns.
Clover online ordering comes free with a table service plan. Now only one POS is capable enough to manage your dine-out, online orders, takeout, and 3rd party orders.
Features of Clover
- Tracking and reporting
- Tableside ordering
- Online ordering
- Handheld device with faster payments
- Software integration for payroll and hiring
- Physical and Digital gift card
- Built-in tool for promo and loyalty program
- Virtual payment terminal
TouchBistro
| Rating | 4.4/5 |
|---|---|
| Best For | Newly setup Restaurants |
TouchBistro is a POS provider for restaurant management that makes the task of managing the restaurant easier and more efficient. It is the winner of the best app of the year in the food and beverage category at the international business award. Founded in 2010, Touchbistro is trusted by more than 29,000 restaurants worldwide because of its innovative approach to solving restaurant problems.
Allow your customers to make payments using their desired payment option because you can take payments via debit card, credit card, cash, or digital wallet of Apple pay, Samsung pay, and google pay. You can easily split the bill for your customer based on the items they have ordered. Leverage the benefit of mobile POS to take orders on the table and eliminate the huge lines at the counter.
The advanced table management system of Touchbistro offers you the flexibility to rearrange the tables, change the table for the customer without interrupting the orders, and manage capacity. Provide your customer with a great experience in your restaurant with Touchbistro.
Features of TouchBistro
- Floor plan and table management
- Menu and staff management
- Tableside and online ordering
- Customer facing display
- Reporting and analytics
- Offline mode
- Inventory management
Cake POS
| Rating | 4.8/5 |
|---|---|
| Best For | Reporting and Overall Restuarant Management |
The Cake is an all-rounder POS offered by mad mobile. It caters to every aspect of your restaurant business and frees you from most of the hectic tasks of restaurant management. When this technology makes your day-to-day business task easy, you get more time to invest in business growth.
Mad mobile self-ordering kiosk reduces labor costs and time significantly, customers can order using a tab and make contactless payments just by scanning a QR code. Since everything is cloud-based, each order which is placed, no matter from where, is updated in the kitchen display system in real time.
Loaded with all the hardware and software features including online ordering, contactless payment, staff, and menu management, this POS is sufficient enough to accelerate your restaurant business growth.
Features of Cake
- Self-service kiosk
- Payment using a QR code on the bill
- Tableside ordering
- Menu and staff management
- Online ordering and curbside pick up
- Integration with accounting, loyalty, and scheduling services
- PCI-DSS certified
- Advanced restaurant analytics
Harbortouch
| Rating | 3.1/5 |
|---|---|
| Best For | Small and Mid Sized Restaurants |
The Restaurant POS system by Harbortouch is a robust and powerful restaurant management system that helps to streamline your restaurant business operation. Trusted by more than 1,00,000 restaurants, this platform is dedicated to serving small businesses by reducing the cost of operation.
Tableside ordering and payment is the game changer in this industry which reduces the chaos at the counter and facilitates a smooth workflow. Take payment anywhere in the restaurant whether it is at the table, counter, or curbside, everything is connected to your existing POS. It means everything is updated in real-time.
Customers can easily access your menu by scanning the QR. They can make orders and payments which are directly sent to the kitchen display system, with no involvement of any staff in taking orders. These kinds of amazing features of Harbortouch make your business run smoothly.
Features of Harbortouch
- Pay-at-the-table + tableside ordering
- Accessibility of menu and making payments via QR code
- Contactless payment and acceptance of Google pay, Apple pay, and Samsung pay
- Online ordering
- Third-party integration with apps like Uber eats, doordash, Mailchimp, and more
- Online reservation
- Reports and analytics
Linga POS
| Rating | 3/5 |
|---|---|
| Best For | Secure and Fast Operations |
Modernize the dining experience of your customer with the Linga restaurant operating system. This POS provides full-fledged features and functionality to restaurants to carry out their business operation seamlessly.
The team is dedicated to adding every new feature to make this POS updated with changing technology. Everything is streamlined, from taking orders from customers efficiently using a POS terminal or kiosk to retaining those customers using a loyalty program and marketing.
Since the POS is completely cloud-based you can access the reports and analytics from anywhere and take a quick overview of the performance of your restaurant.
Features of Linga POS
- Customer loyalty program
- Online ordering with curbside pick up
- Inventory management
- QR code accessibility
- Virtual kiosk
- Offline mode
- PCI compliant
Conclusion
With emerging new technologies, business operations became easier, and the same is true for the restaurant business. The Restaurant POS system is wholly dedicated to streamlining your restaurant business, so use the latest technology and prevent yourself from being outdated. Choose the right POS software from the above list and provide the best customer experience.
FAQ
Do I need a restaurant POS system?
The answer is not clear however there are many benefits of using a restaurant POS system but you can still run your restaurant without one. However, a POS system can save you time and money, and it can help you increase sales.
How much does a POS terminal cost?
Most POS companies give you one free terminal when you sign up. However, if you want extra terminals, prices can vary with suppliers depending on the features.
What is the best POS system for restaurants?
The best POS system for restaurants is as follows
- Lavu
- Toast
- Square Pos
- Nobly Pos
- Upserve Pos
- Clover
- TouchBistro
- Cake Pos
- HarbourTouch
- Linga Pos