Best Restaurant POS Software

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Point-of-sale software is the gatekeeper for just about everything in your food-and-beverage business, from menu selection and customer loyalty programs to accurate accounting and inventory. After testing the top restaurant POS software available on the market, we narrowed them down to our top five and found Lavu to be the most comprehensive POS system available for most businesses. It’s flexible, versatile, and affordable regardless of how (and where) you do business.

The Best Restaurant POS Software for Most

Running a restaurant or quick-service business is hard. At best, it’s chaotic. At worst, it’s a money-sucking nightmare full of unhappy customers with cold food. Thankfully, Lavu delivers an all-in-one restaurant and quick-service POS system designed to calm the chaos and centralize your entire operation to deliver better customer experiences one plate at a time.

Whether you operate out of a truck, a small retail space, or multiple locations, Lavu has everything you need to start delivering fast, friendly, and “exceeds-expectations” customer experiences today.

The 5 Best Restaurant POS Software Options to Consider

1. Lavu – Best restaurant POS software for most
2. Sapaad – Best franchise restaurant POS software
3. Loyverse – Best integrated CRM and loyalty program
4. BIM POS – Best delivery and catering solution
5. Poster – Best POS menu management

When It Makes Sense to Invest Into Restaurant POS Software

Most restaurants operate in a state of organized chaos. If yours doesn’t, we hope you’ll share your secrets with us.

Jokes aside, the right POS software brings a steady constant in an ever-changing restaurant environment. But it can also do more than just take payments and orders—tracking revenue, streamlining accounting, bolstering inventory management, and detailed data reporting aren’t beyond a solid POS’s capabilities.

But again, it goes further than that. Setting up self-ordering kiosks, for example, can enhance and simplify your guest experience. Not only does it empower customers, but it also improves efficiency and increases table turn and revenue. 

Implementing restaurant POS empowers you and your team to alleviate confusion, streamline your business processes, reduce waste, ensure stock levels, and improve data accuracy across your entire business. All of which… lead to excellent customer experiences and an organized work environment.

Standard POS systems may work okay, but most of them aren’t built to handle the fast-paced rhythm of restaurants, bars, cafes, fine dining restaurants, and everything in between.

If you run a food and beverage business, restaurant-specific POS software is a smart idea.

#1 – Lavu —The Best Restaurant POS Software for Most

We all dislike long wait times at restaurants and, even more than that, we hate slow service and unorganized chaos the moment you walk in the door. Lavu helps ensure this feeling never happens to your customers with its iOS-based POS software. 

With it, your servers can move around the restaurant taking orders with an iPad or iPhone, resulting in faster service and happier customers. Not only that, but it significantly speeds up the ordering process.

In a restaurant, every second matters and adds up over an entire day of business. So, those few seconds it takes to handwrite an order or search through an unintuitive POS system to find the exact menu item you’re looking for can add up to hours lost across all of your servers throughout the day.

With Lavu, your team can say goodbye to old-school pen and paper (with illegible handwriting) for good.

Its flexibility and versatility also make it great for servers who move throughout the restaurant. For example, you can easily take a drink order for someone waiting for a table, store their payment information, and offer five-star service while they wait to be seated.

Lavu is even a great fit for food trucks that need greater flexibility and mobility from their POS system. There’s even a specialized solution for mobile food providers as well.

Operating a bar? With Lavu, it’s no problem. You can consolidate orders to one centralized place even if you have numerous bartenders or one taking orders and one pouring the drinks (stirred, not shaken).

Accepting payments even during your busiest rushes has never been easier.

Speaking of payments, Lavu makes it extremely easy to collect payments through numerous different payment methods. The platform also works offline so customers never have to wait because your system is down. Orders are always synced between your connected devices as soon as a connection is restored.

That also means your orders sync in real-time across all your devices. Always.

No matter what, your front-of-house, bar, and kitchen are always on the same page, never letting chaos creep in while orders don’t stop flowing.

Lavu even makes task management easy with its Pilot iOS app. With it, you can navigate total sales for the day and you can get as granular as tracking every hour. Plus, anyone can stay on top of taxes, tips, hours worked, inventory levels, any voided orders, and credit card and cash payments. 

Plus, Lavu Pilot will let you track labor. Managing timesheets is a pain, but with Lavu you can track trends regarding labor costs through the percentage of sales.

Here are some other useful features of Lavu:

• Customer pre-ordering for carryout
• Menu combo builder
• Optional ordering through self-service kiosks or digital menu boards
• Go green with decreased paper waste and use email receipts

Whether you’re running a sit-down restaurant, a food truck, a coffee shop, a brewery, a bar, or anything in between, Lavu has all the features you need to make ordering and payments a breeze.

Pricing starts at $69 per month for one Lavu terminal. For multiple terminals or enterprise plans, you must contact them for a quote. 

Either way, Lavu will create a plan tailored to your restaurant, cafe, or food-and-beverage franchise. 

#2 – Sapaad — Best Franchise Restaurant POS Software

Sapaad is a franchise-building machine that comes with all the tools you need to deliver a better POS experience across dozens of locations. It makes establishing, organizing, and managing inventory for all of your restaurants easier than ever with a click of a button. 

This powerful POS system allows you to expand your restaurant empire with ease. You can take your business from local to global with this turnkey franchise-specific POS solution.  

Being able to easily replicate your processes and standards is what franchising is all about. But opening new restaurants always seems to become a messy, complex thing. Sapaad helps you take your business and easily set up the same design and functions of your new restaurant in a few clicks or taps.

Easily set up order-taking processes, loyalty programs, and account integration for each one of your businesses no matter where they are and who’s running the show.

Having multiple locations usually requires you to set up the software for each storefront you have, which can drastically increase costs, introduce the inevitability of mistakes, and take a lot of time.

But with Sapaad, you can take advantage of cloud-based POS software that can manage all your daily business around the world, no matter the size of your operation because it lives inside a web browser. 

The ease of pushing changes to all of your locations from your couch (or home office) is what not only saves you time, but also gives you the power to make adjustments and experiment with new menu items, combos, and other functions of your business quickly. 

Sapaad’s ease of use helps your franchise employees, too. This simple and clean POS interface gives employees with no technical skills a low learning curve to incorporate the software. It’s customizable for them and is very adaptable for workers’ needs. 

Sapaad provides you with: 

• A detailed dashboard with reporting, giving you the ability to monitor how each location is doing remotely over secure internet connection. 
• The ability to track deliveries from customer contact, through preparation of the order, and on to final delivery of the order all in real time. 
• Some add-on features provide easy, precise control over your inventory through using monitoring tools like food cost, recipe management, purchases, waste control, and live visibility of your stock.

Sapaad also provides you with a mobile and web ordering channel to simplify customer online orders, which can be set up in minutes. 

Pricing is based on the number of locations you have and starts at $53.99 per month for one location, billed annually. You can also choose to pay month-to-month, starting at $58.99 for one location. Sapaad also offers add-ons like a CRM and a custom online order solution.

The ability to grow from a small restaurant into a global empire is easily manageable with Sapaad. Start your free trial today. 

#3 – LoyVerse — The Best Integrated CRM and Loyalty Program

LoyVerse offers a full-fledged, customizable point-of-sale platform with a built-in CRM and a world-class loyalty program to keep customers coming back time and time again.

Many restaurants and quick service businesses ignore this crucial piece of the puzzle, yet LoyVerse helps you implement these systems without adding extra work to your plate. You get incredible value without having to reinvent the wheel.

Managing customer relationships and encouraging repeat purchases helps you develop lifetime customers that love what you do while ensuring they feel special with every interaction. With a focus on customer engagement, customizable rewards, buying behavior, and individual interactions, you get everything you need to increase customer lifetime value and personalize the loyalty experience.

With just one click, you can set up a percentage-per-purchase rewards program, meaning a portion of each customer purchase will go to a customized reward system you create. 

Next, you can create loyalty cards with barcode scanning, so loyalty members can get discounts easily applied. 

If you have multiple locations, reward program benefits are applicable to all your stores. This is made possible by the built-in CRM that gathers and tracks your customers’ information and purchase histories. 

Plus, you have the ability to add custom notes to let you remember specific details about your customers, like their favorite dish or drink, their birthday, or any detail you want to be remembered. That can really separate you from the other places they visit. 

Want to know something incredible? LoyVerse’s POS, customer display, kitchen display, and dashboard are 100% free. 

That’s right, you can use LoyVerse for your restaurant operations and to whip up your own loyalty program for nothing at all. 

No extra fees, apps, or equipment are needed because the software turns any tablet or phone into a POS terminal or register. 

LoyVerse gives you more than you get with some paid services.

There are a couple of useful add-ons you pay for, as well.

For $25/store per month, you can add its employee management platform and LoyVerse’s advanced inventory software is available for $25/month. Integrations are an additional $9 per location per month. However, the base software and everything we talked about above is 100% free.

If you have been struggling with improving customer engagement, need reward programs ideas, or simply looking to boost revenue, incorporating LoyVerse’s custom loyalty program is a great way to start. 

#4 – BIM POS – The Best Delivery and Catering Solution

If you offer delivery or catering, a standard POS system typically doesn’t come with everything you need, forcing you to purchase multiple pieces of software. However, BIM POS does things differently. It comes with all of the delivery and catering features you need to consolidate everything into one, intuitive piece of software.

By focusing on automation, you can enhance the customer experience, get more done in less time, save money, and even take on more customers for an additional revenue boost.

From dispatching drivers, monitoring kitchen workload, and cashing out drivers to call center software, a mobile module for catering, quotes, sales orders, and custom delivery tracking pages for customers, it’s a comprehensive all-in-one restaurant POS system that comes with everything you need.

It all starts with BIM Dispatcher. This unique software component allows you to manage your delivery operations and measure kitchen and delivery driver efficiency to provide the best experience possible. 

Through BIM Dispatcher, you can control delivery routes, send orders directly to the drivers, and cash them out after delivery has taken place. 

It syncs with two other BIM POS tools; its call center software that directs orders to the right location and tracks customer purchase histories and Webtrack, which provides your customers with real-time delivery tracking.

This is powerful software that drastically improves your businesses’ delivering and catering capabilities. 

BIM POS makes it easier on wholesalers and caterers, too. The hassle of having to separate each type of payment for revenue management is extremely time-consuming and errors can easily occur, causing inaccuracy in your revenue reporting. 

This specific feature of BIM POS allows for easily creating special orders, setting up events of any price or number of attendees, and preparing quotes for your clients.

Set up your free demo and a sales representative will contact you. You can also contact BIM POS directly through their 24/7 hotline.

#5 – Poster — The Best POS Menu Management

Poster is a restaurant POS platform that has revolutionized menu management. Now you might be thinking, is this really that important? The answer to that depends on your restaurant and the customers you serve. 

If you’re a restaurant owner that likes to mix things up or never have the same menu items twice (like so many Michelin-starred restaurants do), then this software is going to simplify how you plan your menu while making it easy on your servers to see what to present to customers. 

What’s great about this software is it uses a very simple color-coded tracking system for menu items, allowing you to upload images to help waiters spend less time searching for specific dishes. 

In Poster, you can also track ingredients used and manage things you make in-house but do not sell separately on the menu. 

Poster gives you incredible control over your food budgeting and pricing by allowing you to calculate food costs for dishes automatically based on the stock balance and the supply of ingredients. Food costs are recalculated automatically. 

Also, real-time menu pricing allows updates to your menu to go live within 10 seconds.

If you own an ice cream shop and offer many different toppings, you can easily add menu modifiers offering your customers the opportunity to choose from your entire selection. This will also work for a steakhouse (for a level of tenderness or temperature), or pizza shop that offers an array of toppings. 

What we found fascinating was the ABC analysis software. It gives you the ability to analyze which dishes sell the best. 

You can quickly notice which items to remove from the menu or adjust pricing so you can find the sweet spot on what people will pay for a particular menu item.  

Pricing is based on how many items you will have on your menu. It starts at $24/month, billed annually, for 100 products and dishes, and scales up to handling 1,500 products and dishes for $64/month, billed annually.

Methodology for Choosing The Best Restaurant POS Software

There are several reasons to use restaurant POS software and most have to do with managing your business’ accounting, inventory, menu, and delivery services. It can also help with preventing theft, managing worker attendance, and setting performance goals. 

With so many out in the marketplace we carefully reviewed them to select the top five. In doing so we used a specific methodology to make it easier to find the best choices. 

We want to share our methodology so you know what to pay close attention to when selecting your own restaurant POS Software. 

Restaurant Needs

Each one of the restaurant POS software services on this list can fully manage your business and keep you on track throughout your daily workflow. 

With that said, each one specializes in operations of one size or another. Whether you want to scale to a global restaurant empire, manage a local cafe, or integrate your larger establishment with state-of-the-art custom menu software, choose one of these five that fits your scope best.

You want to make sure you’re paying close attention to what you need to organize your business and not pay for services that don’t focus on what is going to optimize your specific needs. 

Customer Loyalty and Integration

Being able to bring in repeat business is a high priority for any consumer-based business. Some POS software offers customer rewards as part of the base package and some, like LoyVerse, go the extra mile and offer custom software to maximize this opportunity to grow your business and make your customers feel special. 

No matter what software you select, it’s imperative it offers some sort of customer loyalty program so you can keep customers coming through the doors. 

You can also look for a built-in CRM and other types of integration to make managing data simple. Keep reporting capabilities in mind when you are figuring which service works best for you. 

Cloud-Based and Mobile Technology

Let’s clear up any confusion between these two features. 

First, cloud-based technology allows you to access your business dashboard from any device. It gives you the power to make updates, see reports, change menu items, and review accounting details on or offline depending on the software provider. GPS tracking and SMS messaging are often included in cloud-based services. 

Mobile, on the other hand, not only gives you cloud-based features, but it also allows your employees to take payments and make and update orders on the fly from anywhere inside your restaurant, be it tableside or while customers wait. 

It gives your servers the power to maneuver from customer to customer with a mobile device and give a full restaurant experience efficiently, sending orders directly to the kitchen, minimizing order errors, and keeping the flow of service smooth. 

Not all software has these capabilities, so if you own a business where long lines and wait times are a problem, mobile POS technology is an excellent solution to offer a refined customer experience.

Growth and Customization

Sapaad is the best solution for growth if you plan on owning multiple locations or building out a franchise. It makes it very simple to grow your business and manage it all from a single dashboard. 

When you envision opening a restaurant, you might not imagine creating an empire, but it’s certainly possible! And if you do start with that in mind, deciding to use POS software that is scalable and easy to add locations to at the drop of a hat is a major benefit. 

This list offers a few options for medium to large businesses. It also has options for starting small and scaling as large as you want. 

Being able to customize your experience to fit your business removes an extra step you will need to take later if you outgrow your software provider. Losing precious data about customers because of migration errors is a mistake that can cost you thousands. 

So, be aware of this when you are picking your software. If you know you are going to stay small or currently own a small to a medium-sized restaurant, then selecting a larger restaurant software provider won’t be as helpful for you. 

Individual Pricing and Reporting 

Pricing is always on the minds of restaurant owners. Knowing what you’re spending and your budget is a common concern. We selected providers with generally quite reasonable pricing.  

But having intuitive and easy-to-collect reporting will help you find additional savings elsewhere. Take Poster, for instance—they give you food costing and inventory tracking software that allows you to make quick adjustments before you overspend. 

This can be critical in turning a profit every month, helping you see a quick overview on how to make the changes necessary to efficiently manage inventory and pricing for your restaurant. 

Summary

Finding the right POS software doesn’t have to be difficult, but can be overwhelming because there are so many options. We feel our recommendations are a great start. 

Lavu rises to the top of the pack in our mind, because of its flexibility and capabilities at a great price point.

But if you decide to venture out and begin your search for restaurant POS software, this review empowers you with the best methodology and guidance to assist you in selecting the best restaurant POS software for your needs.