How to Choose a POS System for Your Restaurant
The short answer
Pick a POS that takes orders from every channel you actually use, connects to the software you already run, and comes from a company that builds for restaurants, not shops.
Get it wrong and you'll feel it every service. Terminals lag, staff rekey online orders by hand, and at the end of the week the sales data has holes in it.
What a restaurant POS system actually does
At its most basic, a restaurant POS system takes orders and payments. Most current systems also link the dining room, the kitchen, your online orders and the delivery apps, so everything lands in one place.
A decent one handles:
- Dine-in orders, at the table or the counter
- Takeaway and collection
- Online orders from your own website or app
- Orders from Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats
- Kiosk orders
- Card, cash and contactless payments
- Kitchen display screens and ticket routing
- Sales reports and end-of-day cash-up
- Staff logins and permissions
Step 1: List your ordering channels
Before you look at a single vendor, write down every way a customer can place an order with you.
| Channel | Does your POS need to handle this? |
|---|---|
| Dine-in at table | Yes |
| Counter service | Yes |
| Phone orders | Possibly |
| Your own website | Yes |
| Branded mobile app | Possibly |
| Just Eat / Deliveroo / Uber Eats | Yes (via integration) |
| Self-service kiosk | Possibly |
| Drive-through | Possibly |
If each of those channels runs through its own system, the kitchen is juggling several ticket streams at once. A tablet for Deliveroo, another for Just Eat, printed tickets from the till. That's where orders get missed and food goes out late. You want one queue in the kitchen with every order in it.
Step 2: Write down what's wrong with your current system
Most restaurants change POS because the old one is causing problems. The usual ones:
- Online orders don't show up on the kitchen screen
- It falls over when it's busy
- The reports are too thin to make decisions from
- Every new site needs its own licence, and there's no way to see all your sites together
- The vendor doesn't get how a restaurant runs
Pick the three that hurt most and write them down. The new system has to fix those. Matching what you've already got isn't enough.
Step 3: Match the system to how you operate
A takeaway and a sit-down restaurant need different things from a POS.
Quick service and takeaway sites need fast transactions, menus with simple modifiers (extra cheese, no onions) and a tight link to online ordering and delivery. Casual dining needs ordering at the table, bill splitting, courses and a connection to your reservations system.
Multi-site groups need to manage menus centrally, see reports for every location in one place and push a change to all sites from one dashboard. Franchises need much the same, plus reporting per franchisee, brand-level control over menus and prices, and a clear record of who changed what.
Step 4: Check it works with what you already use
Most of your other software will need to talk to the POS. Check it integrates with:
- Your accounting package (Xero, QuickBooks, Sage)
- The delivery platform tablets, or whether the POS can get rid of them
- Your loyalty and CRM platform
- Your kitchen display system
- Your payment provider
If it doesn't connect, someone on your team ends up copying numbers from one system into another, and mistakes creep in.
Step 5: Questions to ask before you sign
| Question | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Is pricing per transaction, per terminal or per location? | The total cost can look very different depending on the model |
| What happens if the internet goes down? | You need to keep taking orders and payments offline |
| How long does onboarding take? | A messy migration can disrupt service for weeks |
| What support is there during service hours? | Things break at 8pm on a Saturday, not 10am on a Tuesday. Office-hours support won't help |
| Can I manage menus centrally across locations? | You'll need this if you run more than one site |
| Is online ordering built in? | Bolting on a third-party ordering tool means another bill and another thing to break |
Step 6: Look at the company, not just the software
- Do they specialise in restaurants? Vendors that mostly sell to retail tend to be weak on the kitchen side.
- Who handles onboarding - moving your menus across, training staff, being there at go-live?
- Can you get a person on the phone during a busy Friday night service?
- What are they building next? Look for restaurant features on the roadmap, like AI ordering, kiosks and loyalty.
Common mistakes when choosing a restaurant POS
Going on price alone. A cheap system that doesn't fit how you work costs more in staff hours and lost orders than the extra monthly fee for one that does.
Forgetting about online ordering. If the POS doesn't connect directly to your own website and app, you'll be running a separate system for each online channel.
Not testing it under pressure. Ask for a demo that simulates a busy service. Something that runs fine in a quiet demo can behave very differently at 200 covers.
Buying a retail POS. Retail systems don't do kitchen routing, modifiers, courses or the reports a restaurant needs.
How Flipdish handles this
Flipdish is built for restaurants. POS, online ordering, branded apps, self-service kiosks and AI phone ordering all run on one platform, so counter, online, app, kiosk and phone orders go into the same kitchen queue. No separate systems to manage.
It's set up for multi-location groups and franchises. Menus are managed centrally, reporting covers every site, and you can change something across all your locations from one dashboard.
Quick checklist: before you commit
- Listed every ordering channel
- Written down what's wrong with your current system
- Confirmed it integrates with your existing tools
- Tested it during a simulated busy service
- Worked out the full cost: setup, monthly fee and per-transaction charges
- Checked support is available during service hours
- Checked the vendor's restaurant experience
- Spoken to existing customers who run a similar kind of restaurant
