The Best Phone Systems for Restaurants & Takeout in 2025

RingCentral Advanced is the best overall phone system for US restaurants and takeout, according to our research and testing of US-first platforms.

It handles the realities of service, such as spikes at lunch and dinner, simple FAQs, and multi-location routing, with multi-level IVR for hours/directions/menu info, rush-hour call queuing (with options for wait-time/position announcements), and custom on-hold audio to promote daily specials or loyalty offers. For growing groups, multi-site controls and a broad integration ecosystem make it easier to keep hours accurate and call flows consistent across locations, all at a competitive price point.

That said, not every operation has the same needs with systems such as GoTo Connect offering speedy drag-and-drop call queue setup, or 8×8 Work offering stronger daypart rules (lunch/holiday/exception hours). Keep reading to pick the provider built for your style of service, as there are plenty of options.

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The Best Phone Systems For Restaurants in 2025

We’ve analyzed the best phone systems for US restaurants and takeout businesses in 2025, and there’s a clear top five in our view.

Below we look at those five in detail, but here is an at a glance summary of the best plan each offers, which are likely to make most sense for your team.

1. RingCentral: Best for multi-location restaurants needing structured phone menus and queues

RingCentral stands out for restaurants and takeout groups that juggle multiple locations and peak-time call spikes.

Its multi-level IVR makes it easy to route callers to hours, directions, or “place an order” lines, while queue announcements for position and estimated wait time help reduce hang-ups during dinner rush. Custom music/announcements on hold let you plug daily specials while guests wait, and the platform’s multi-site controls suit franchise and multi-unit operators.

How does RingCentral integrate with restaurant and takeout ordering and POS systems?

Most restaurants pair RingCentral with a voice-AI order taker that pushes orders straight into their POS system. For example, SoundHound for Restaurants injects phone orders directly into Toast POS. Meanwhile, HungerRush OrderAI Talk feeds orders into HungerRush and, via ItsaCheckmate, into the likes of Toast, Revel, PAR Brink, and others. In practice, you route “Press 2 to place an order” from RingCentral’s IVR to that AI number/endpoint, and the AI handles the POS entry.

Compared with the other four providers on our list, RingCentral and 8×8 are the most flexible for multi-location routing/schedules (multi-site and holiday/lunch menus), while GoTo Connect is quickest to wire up these hand-offs thanks to its drag-and-drop dial-plan editor.

Nextiva and Zoom Phone don’t ship restaurant-specific POS plugins either, but both support forwarding IVR branches or queues to external numbers (so they work with the same AI order tools); RingCentral’s broader IVR/queue options give it the edge when you need more complex branching per site or daypart.

If you want to connect calling events to commerce systems directly, RingCentral’s ecosystem/automation routes are wider than most. For instance, you can use Zapier to connect RingCentral with payment processing like Square, which is useful for simple workflows like creating a customer or logging a missed-call follow-up in your POS/CRM.

The same pattern exists for rivals, but app coverage varies, and since RingCentral supports integration with over 500+ external apps, you’re most likely to have your needs served with it as your calling system.

What phone features does RingCentral have to help restaurants and takeout businesses in the food & beverage sector?

• Rush-hour load management. RingCentral queues can automatically announce queue position (PIQ) and estimated wait time (EWT), helping callers decide to hold or hang up while your host packs orders. This is a measurable win in meal-order and dinner service spikes.
  • Nextiva and 8×8 also support EWT/PIQ (Nextiva via queue features; 8×8 via queue scripts/objects), while Zoom focuses more on standard queue settings and business/holiday hours without comparable announcement depth on its Phone plans. GoTo Connect handles queues fine, but its standout is the visual dial-plan for overflow/voicemail branches rather than EWT/PIQ specifics (those are avaliable in its contact center plan).
• Clear self-service for hours & directions. RingCentral’s multi-level IVR lets you keep humans off simple calls: “Press 1 for today’s hours,” “2 for directions,” “3 for order status,” “4 to place an order.”
  • 8×8 matches this with granular open/closed/holiday/lunch menus per auto-attendant (handy for split kitchen hours), while Zoom supports business/closed/holiday schedules on its auto receptionists and GoTo gives you rapid changes through the dial-plan UI. Nextiva offers standard attendants with overflow rules but fewer schedule types than 8×8.
• On-hold upsells and promos. Upload custom hold music/announcements so waiting callers hear happy-hour, LTOs, or loyalty sign-ups, with no extra ad platform needed.
  • Nextiva and GoTo Connect offer the same “upload your own audio/playlist” controls, and Zoom Phone supports a hold-music audio library as well. 8×8 also supports customized holiday and menu prompts for consistent branding across sites, so this isn’t unique but important to have.
• Franchise/multi-unit governance. For operators with many sites, RingCentral’s multi-site feature centralizes policies while allowing local variations (e.g. different IVR branches for mall vs freestanding units).
  • 8×8 offers robust queue/attendant analytics and site-level menus; Zoom and Nextiva provide queue and hours controls but are lighter on multi-site constructs; GoTo prioritizes speed of change with its editor rather than enterprise-style site hierarchy.

Learn about more efficiency boosting VoIP features in our comprehensive guide.

2. GoTo Connect: Best for single-location restaurants that need fast, visual call-flow setup

GoTo Connect is ideal for independents and small food businesses that want rush-hour call flows live in minutes. Its drag-and-drop dial-plan editor lets non-technical managers add or change branches (“Press 1 for today’s hours; 2 for curbside pickup”) without IT tickets, and its built-in audio library makes it easy to refresh greetings and on-hold promos for daily specials. An optional AI Receptionist add-on can deflect simple FAQ calls (hours, directions), so staff can stay on the line taking orders.

How does GoTo Connect integrate with restaurant and takeout ordering and POS systems?

As we discussed with RingCentral above, GoTo Connect can also hand off an IVR branch to third-party AI phone-ordering services (e.g. the vendor phone/endpoint those tools provide). Those tools then inject orders into restaurant POS platforms (Toast, Square, Clover, etc.).

The difference with GoTo is operational: its dial-plan editor makes it quicker for a manager to re-point the “Place an order” branch during peaks (e.g. switch between an AI line and an in-house queue), add a temporary “Play sound clip” for today’s menu, or drop in a holiday schedule path, without touching code.

What phone features does GoTo Connect have to help restaurants and takeout businesses in the food & beverage sector?

• Rush-hour call handling you can tune on the fly. GoTo’s queues support estimated wait-time announcements and auto-queue callback thresholds (offer a callback only when recent average wait exceeds X mins), which helps keep lines clear during dinner spikes.
  • Nextiva also advertises PIQ/EWT prompts, while Zoom Phone focuses more on max-wait/overflow policies than explicit EWT prompts. 8×8 can accomplish advanced announcements in its more configurable menus, as well as RingCentral offering PIQ/EWT in its queue toolkit. But GoTo’s callback threshold control is a handy, practical lever for single-site operators.
• Menu, special, and holiday messaging without IT. You can upload or assemble playlists for hold/greeting audio and assign them in the dial-plan, so callers hear today’s limited time offers, menu specials, or bundles while waiting. Schedules let you route differently when Open/Closed/Holiday, though note GoTo’s holidays don’t auto-recur, you’ll re-add dates annually.
  • In contrast, 8×8 provides dedicated lunch/holiday tabs for attendants, and Zoom Phone offers default holiday settings that can apply across objects.
• Growing beyond one location. GoTo does include Multi-Site Admin & Management if you scale, but RingCentral’s multi-site feature set is deeper (site codes, per-site assets, streamlined moves between sites).
  • 8×8 also structures attendants and schedules by Site, which helps larger groups. Choose based on your trajectory, as GoTo offers agility now, while RingCentral/8×8 are best if you’re planning a multi-unit build-out soon.

3. 8×8 Work: Best for multi-unit restaurants that need granular hours and site-by-site control

8×8 fits restaurant groups that want tight control over when and how phones route, down to lunch breaks, holiday menus, and per-site rules, without re-building trees for every location.

Its Admin Console lets you define business, lunch, exception, and holiday schedules for Auto Attendants, assign them to Sites (locations), and keep greetings consistent while routing differently at each store. Custom music-on-hold and queue analytics round it out for operators that care about upsells and reducing abandons.

How does 8×8 integrate with restaurant and takeout ordering and POS systems?

As we discussed with some providers already, 8×8 can also forward an IVR branch to third-party AI phone-ordering services (SoundHound, Kea, ConverseNow, OrderAI Talk), which then forward orders into POS systems like Toast, Olo/marketplaces, Revel, and more.

What’s different with 8×8 is how precisely you can time and scope those hand-offs:

• You can put “Press 2 to order” under a lunch schedule on weekdays, then switch to a different target (e.g. in-house queue) for dinner. Likewise, route holiday calls to a special greeting that diverts to the AI line when staffing is thin.
  • These schedule types (business, lunch, holiday, exceptions) are native in 8×8’s Auto Attendant and map neatly to restaurant dayparts.
• For groups, 8×8’s Sites let you apply a consistent tree but vary hours and prompts per location, which is harder to standardize at the same granularity in Nextiva or GoTo without duplicating flows.
  • RingCentral also offers strong multi-site tooling, but 8×8’s built-in lunch/holiday tabs reduce the number of separate menus you manage.

What phone features does 8×8 have to help restaurants and takeout businesses in the food & beverage sector?

• Daypart-aware menus and holiday handling. In Admin Console, Auto Attendants include Holiday and Lunch menus alongside open/closed states; you can upload or record holiday-specific greetings (“We close at 3pm on Thanksgiving”) and route to voicemail, FAQs, or the AI ordering line automatically.
  • Zoom supports business/holiday hours and templates, but not the same baked-in lunch concept; Nextiva handles holidays cleanly but with fewer schedule types; GoTo can achieve similar results via schedule nodes, though dates don’t auto-recur.
• Queue management with visibility. 8×8 Work provides queue metrics (calls waiting, agents available, average wait) so managers can decide when to open a second line or temporarily shunt calls to the AI order path. If you need position-in-queue/estimated-wait announcements or opt-out/callbacks, 8×8’s Contact Center layer adds those in-queue treatments.
  • RingCentral and GoTo offer EWT/PIQ in certain queue modes; Nextiva advertises PIQ/EWT prominently for standard queues. Pick based on how much caller transparency you want without upgrading tiers.
• On-hold promos and consistent branding. Upload music/announcements on hold per user or queue from the audio library, which is useful for rotating lunch combos or loyalty pitches.
  • Zoom and RingCentral also provide audio libraries; GoTo uses “Play Sound Clip” blocks; Nextiva is very straightforward for a single rotating promo. If your brand needs per-site variations (e.g., mall unit vs. drive-thru), 8×8’s Sites help keep assignments tidy.
• Multi-site governance from day one. 8×8’s Sites centralize time zone, emergency address, dial plan, and more, so regional managers can roll out consistent rules while allowing local edits.
  • That’s comparable to RingCentral’s multi-site feature set and generally deeper than GoTo/Nextiva for franchise-style orgs; Zoom is clean and scalable but less opinionated about site hierarchies.

4. Nextiva: Best for independent restaurants that want queue transparency and simple promo-on-hold

Nextiva is a strong fit for single-location restaurants and small groups that need callers to stay on the line during the dinner rush and want easy, low-maintenance ways to promote daily specials while people wait.

Its queue features announce position in queue and estimated wait time (reducing abandon rates), and its on-hold setup is straightforward: upload a clip and let every caller hear your offers or loyalty pitch. Schedules and holidays are simple to manage, so managers can keep hours accurate without IT.

How does Nextiva integrate with restaurant and takeout ordering and POS systems?

As with RingCentral and GoTo, Nextiva can hand off an IVR branch to third-party AI phone-ordering services which then push orders into a POS such as Toast, Square and Clover. With Nextiva, you’ll configure this hand-off in its call-flows and standard queue/forwarding rules rather than a visual canvas.

If you need lightweight data syncs, Zapier provides ready-made connectors for tasks like logging missed calls to a POS-adjacent sheet, creating a customer in Square, or kicking off a follow-up form. For custom builds, Nextiva’s webhooks/API are available via its contact-center and developer resource

By offering more channels than any other provider plan at this level, Nextiva Engage also has more unified analytics that track customer journeys across calls, chats, emails, and social media. While this won’t be relevant to all industries, eCommerce and social media-driven sales teams should find this 360-degree omnichannel makeup incredibly useful for identifying trends, optimizing workflows, and improving customer satisfaction in the long run.

In terms of calling, Nextiva Engage has some features that set it apart from others, too.  Like Zoom Phone Regional Unlimited, businesses can create custom call queues with priority routing for VIP customers, bettering the likes of GoTo that can’t. This can help retain your repeat customers’ service. Even better, we’d say Nextiva Engage offers more detailed queue analytics for areas such as wait times and agent performance compared to RingCentral Advanced.

What phone features does Nextiva have to help restaurants and takeout businesses?

• Queue transparency to cut hang-ups. Nextiva’s call queues announce estimated wait time and/or position in queue, so callers know if they should hold, call back, or use online ordering, which is useful during weekend peaks.
  • RingCentral and Zoom Phone also support PIQ/EWT, but Nextiva markets this prominently for standard queues without requiring contact-center add-ons, which keeps costs predictable for independents. GoTo supports EWT plus optional callbacks, and 8×8 can reach similar outcomes through its more granular queue/IVR objects.
• On-hold upsells without extra tools. Upload music/announcements on hold, with Nextiva’s support content literally citing “monthly specials”, so every caller hears happy hour, family bundles, or curbside instructions while waiting.
  • Zoom and RingCentral let you build hold-music libraries, and 8×8 assigns hold audio per user/queue, and GoTo uses “Play Sound Clip” blocks inside its dial-plan. Still, if all you need is a single, rotating promo track, Nextiva’s tools are quick and reliable here.
• Hours & holiday accuracy. Nextiva’s observed-holiday menu and custom date ranges make it straightforward to set Thanksgiving/Christmas hours or one-off closures for staff training.
  • 8×8 goes further with explicit lunch and holiday tabs inside Auto Attendants (useful for split kitchen hours), while Zoom offers account-level holiday controls admins can apply broadly. GoTo handles holidays via schedule nodes but doesn’t auto-recur dates.
• Caller context at pickup. If you keep a lightweight CRM or loyalty list, Call Pop can surface caller details as the phone rings, helping staff greet repeat customers by name or note past issues (e.g. gluten-free requests or other dietary restrictions).
  • The other providers can achieve similar “screen pop” behavior when paired with a CRM, but Nextiva bundles and brands this capability clearly, which can be simpler for small teams.

5. Zoom Phone: Best for chain-wide holiday templates and straightforward queues you can trust

Zoom Phone suits restaurants that want reliable call handling with minimal fuss, plus centralized holiday settings they can apply across many locations. Auto receptionists handle hours/menus, call queues cover rush periods with max-wait and overflow rules, and an audio library lets you upload (or text-to-speech) greetings and hold tracks for promos.

Multi-site admins can set default holidays at the account/site level and roll them out to queues and receptionists, so any franchise groups that don’t want to edit every store by hand will find this a timesaver.

How does Zoom Phone integrate with restaurant and takeout ordering and POS systems?

Like all other providers, Zoom Phone can also forward an IVR branch to third-party AI phone-ordering services (e.g., SoundHound, Kea, HungerRush OrderAI Talk). Those tools then take orders into POS stacks like Toast, Square, Clover, Revel, PAR Brink, and Olo.

Operationally, the pattern is: route “Press 2 to place an order” from a Zoom auto receptionist or queue overflow to the AI’s phone number. The AI answers and writes the order to your POS. Zoom’s own docs and vendor guides cover the forwarding step and POS links.

Zoom’s edge is centralized holidays: admins can define default holiday lists at the account or site level (and import via CSV), then apply them across auto receptionists and queues.

Of course, RingCentral and 8×8 also handle multi-location well, but Zoom’s site-level default holiday tooling reduces repetitive edits required of chains. GoTo can schedule holidays but doesn’t auto-recur and needs more manual upkeep. Nextiva handles holidays cleanly per location but has fewer bulk-apply options.

If you’re exploring AI answering inside Zoom, Zoom Virtual Agent can act as an AI auto receptionist that answers FAQs or books appointments. Most restaurants still prefer the POS-native AI order-takers above for menu sync and ticket printing.

What phone features does Zoom Phone have to help restaurants and takeout businesses?

• Set-and-forget holiday & hours governance. Define company/site holiday lists once, then apply them across receptionists and queues so Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, or weather events use the right greeting and routing without per-store edits.
  • If you run 10+ locations, this saves real admin time compared with GoTo’s per-flow edits. 8×8 offers granular lunch/holiday menus per attendant; Zoom’s strength is template-style propagation.
• Rush-hour queue basics done right. Standard Zoom Phone call queues support max callers, max wait duration, and overflow to voicemail or another target—enough to keep lines moving during dinner spikes.
  • By contrast, Nextiva exposes PIQ/EWT announcements in standard queues, while RingCentral and GoTo offer EWT/PIQ or callbacks in specific modes. Zoom reserves EWT/PIQ for Contact Center queues. Use this to decide whether you need transparency prompts (Nextiva/RingCentral/GoTo) or are fine with Zoom’s simpler queue rules.
• On-hold promos without extra tools. Upload custom hold tracks (or use text-to-speech to generate quick messages) so callers hear your lunch combo, happy hour, or loyalty sign-up while waiting.
  • RingCentral, 8×8, and GoTo also support custom audio; Zoom’s audio library is especially convenient if you’re standardizing across many sites.
• Multi-site structure for growth. If you expand, Zoom’s Sites let you organize users, numbers, queues, and receptionists by location and manage settings at the site level.
  • This is comparable to RingCentral/8×8 multi-site models and more structured than GoTo for franchise scenarios.

How to Choose a Restaurant/Takeout Phone System?

Realistically, restaurant phones are going to used over service rush hours. Rather than looking for features such as multi-channel comms (such as web conferencing or team chat) or coaching for swathes of phone operators as other businesses might, it’s far more likely that you’ll want to prioritize features that help your restaurant take orders effectively.

That means prioritizing menus, queues, announcements, and accurate hours over conference calling or big video features. Use these six focus areas, so you pick a system that reduces missed orders and shortens wait times.

1) Peak-hour call handling & IVR

Look for IVR (also known as Interactive Voice Response) to route simple requests, such as “Press 1 for hours, 2 for directions, 3 to place an order”, and queues that keep callers informed.

The most useful queue prompts are PIQ (Position in Queue) and EWT (Estimated Wait Time), plus max-wait rules, overflow (to another line/voicemail), and optional callbacks during spikes.

Ask providers: Do standard plans (not contact center tiers) include PIQ/EWT or callbacks? Can I change where “Press 2 to order” goes during lunch vs. dinner without rebuilding the menu?

Want to make sure your phone system can handle demand? Learn how to set up a phone system to handle more takeout orders in our guide.

2) Hours, holidays & dayparts

You’ll want granular schedules, such as open/closed/holiday and ideally lunch or other dayparts, so phones match reality across split kitchen hours, early closes, and weather events. Chain operators benefit from holiday templates you can apply across locations in one go.

Ask providers: Can I define lunch and holiday menus separately? Can I push a default holiday list to every site and still let stores tweak local hours?

3) Ordering & POS hookups (now and later)

Most restaurants route “order by phone” to either a staffed queue or a voice-AI line that drops tickets straight into the POS (Point of Sale; e.g., Toast, Square, Clover, Revel, PAR Brink, Olo rails).

Your phone system doesn’t need a native POS plugin, as that isn’t too common, it just needs clean forwarding to an external number/endpoint and the ability to re-point quickly when staffing changes.

Ask providers: How do I forward an IVR branch to an external number? Can managers switch that destination on the fly (AI ↔ staff queue) for peaks or understaffed shifts?

4) On-hold marketing & caller context

Custom music/announcements on hold are free shelf space to promote bundles, limited-time offers, loyalty sign-ups, curbside instructions, or “order online” nudges.

A central audio library and time-of-day assignment (lunch vs dinner promos) help multi-site consistency. If you track regulars, a simple caller pop (show name/notes as the phone rings) speeds service, although we’d say that last point is more ‘nice to have’ rather than essential.

Ask providers: Can I schedule different hold tracks by queue/time of day? Is there an audio library I can apply across locations?

5) Reliability, uptime & network readiness

Great menus still fail on weak networks. Check the SLA (Service-Level Agreement) and 12-month uptime history. On your side, set basic QoS (Quality of Service) so voice traffic gets priority; use wired PoE (Power over Ethernet) desk phones at the host stand; disable SIP ALG (Session Initiation Protocol Application Layer Gateway) if the vendor advises.

For resilience, plan LTE failover on the router or automatic call forwarding to mobiles during outages. When testing, aim for healthy audio scores (vendors may reference MOS, Mean Opinion Score), low jitter, and minimal packet loss.

Ask providers: What’s the measured uptime and credit policy? Do you support automatic failover/forwarding on internet loss? Do you provide network setup guides (firewall/ports) for restaurants?

6) Cost, scaling & essentials you shouldn’t skip

Most restaurants need only one or a couple named users, with shared/front-desk devices and queues, rather than full Unified Communication (UC) suites.

Confirm common-area device licensing, taxes/fees, number porting, and whether seat minimums or annual terms apply. If you operate multiple locations, ask about a multi-site model (per-site numbers, time zones, shared audio) and basic reports you’ll actually use: abandoned calls, ASA (Average Speed of Answer), and peak intervals.

Ask providers: Which tier includes auto-attendant, queues, and custom hold audio? Can I mix cheaper common-area phones with a few full users? What multi-site controls and exportable reports come at the base tier? How is E911 set per location, and can recordings auto-pause during payments?

How Did We Find The Best Phone Systems For Restaurants?