How to Choose a POS System for Your Restaurant
How to choose a POS system for your restaurant
A good POS takes orders and payments, keeps track of staff and gives you sales numbers you can trust. A bad one slows the kitchen down, annoys your team and ties you into a contract you'll regret.
Here's what to check.
What a restaurant POS system actually does
A restaurant POS system is the software and hardware your team uses to take orders and take payment. In most restaurants now it also sends orders to the kitchen, pulls in online orders and feeds your reports.
Ideally that's all one system. A lot of older setups aren't. There's a terminal at the counter, a tablet for online orders and a reporting dashboard, and the numbers never quite line up.
Eight things to check before you choose
1. Does it handle your service type?
A fast food counter and a table-service restaurant need different things. Check the system can do:
- Counter service and table service
- Split bills and partial payments
- Modifiers and item notes
- Eat-in, takeaway, delivery and online orders
POS systems built for retail often fall down here. They can ring up a sale, but "no onions, sauce on the side, split three ways" is another matter.
2. Cloud or local?
A cloud POS stores your data remotely. You can check reports on your phone, and a menu change goes live straight away - on every site, if you have more than one.
A local (on-premise) system keeps the data on a server in your building. It keeps working when the internet drops, but updates are manual and getting at your data from anywhere else is awkward.
If you're buying a new system, go cloud unless you have a specific reason not to.
3. Does it integrate with online ordering?
If online orders come in on a separate tablet, the kitchen is working from two queues and tickets get missed. Pick a system where web, app and kiosk orders all land in the same kitchen queue.
Flipdish POS puts in-person and online orders in one system, so the kitchen sees a single queue no matter where the order came from.
4. What hardware does it need?
Some providers make you buy their own hardware, at their price, with no room to negotiate. Ask about:
- Terminal and screen costs
- Whether it works with a kitchen display system (KDS)
- Card machines and processing rates
- Printers and other peripherals
Flipdish sells POS hardware built for restaurants, including kitchen display systems that replace paper tickets.
5. What does it really cost?
POS pricing is rarely clear up front. Ask about each of these:
| Cost | What to check |
|---|---|
| Monthly software fee | Per terminal or flat rate? |
| Payment processing | What percentage per transaction? |
| Hardware | Purchase or lease? Who owns it? |
| Onboarding | Is setup and training included? |
| Support | Is 24/7 support included or extra? |
| Contract length | Can you exit without penalty? |
A low monthly fee with high transaction fees can cost more over 12 months than a higher monthly fee with lower rates. Do the sum with your own card volume.
6. How good is the reporting?
You want to know what sells, when you're busy and what your margins are. Look for:
- Sales by item, category and time period
- Staff performance
- Void and refund rates
- Revenue by channel (in-person, online, delivery)
If you run several sites, you need reports that cover all of them in one place. Exporting a spreadsheet from each site and stitching them together every Monday gets old fast.
7. Can it grow with you?
If you're planning more sites, check the POS can keep up:
- Can you manage menus from one place?
- Can staff move between sites?
- Are there volume discounts?
- Does it support franchises?
8. What's the support like?
The POS going down in the middle of Friday dinner service makes for a very bad night. Ask every provider:
- What's your uptime guarantee?
- What happens if the system goes down during service?
- Is support 24/7, weekends included?
- How long do hardware faults take to fix?
Common mistakes when choosing a POS system
Choosing on price alone is the big one. A cheap system that's down for two hours a month costs you far more than a dearer one that just works.
It's easy to test the front-of-house screens and never look at how orders show up in the kitchen. Put a real order through, start to finish, before you sign.
If you use a particular accounting package, delivery platform or loyalty tool, confirm it integrates before you commit. "It's on the roadmap" isn't a yes.
Be wary of long contracts. A three-year deal can look fine on the day you sign it and turn into a problem if the provider gets bought or the product gets worse.
How Flipdish does it
Flipdish is a restaurant POS system for restaurants, takeaways, cafés and multi-location groups. POS, online ordering, kiosks and AI tools all run on the one platform.
Every order goes through the same system, so your reports cover every channel, the kitchen works from one queue and a menu change applies to every site at once.