The Best EPOS Systems for Hospitality

The best EPOS system for your hospitality business highly depends on the type of business you run. After all, a local cafe doesn’t have the same needs as a fine-dining restaurant or hotel. We make it easy to find the right fit, using testing and research to recommend different EPOS systems for different types of hospitality businesses.

Square and Clover are the best hospitality EPOS systems for restaurants, with Square being better for smaller, growing venues and Clover being better for established full-service restaurants.

Small local cafes will appreciate the affordability and simplicity of SumUp, while hotels will benefit from Epos Now’s dedicated system for the industry that integrates with popular PMS apps. TouchBistro is our pick for pubs and bars since it’s got a quick order function and supports open tabs.

The Best Hospitality EPOS Systems: Quick Comparison

For a quick overview of the best EPOS systems for hospitality businesses, check out the table below:

1. Square: Best For Growing Restaurants

Square’s EPOS system is affordable and easy to use, but it also comes with robust restaurant management tools and a vast ecosystem of marketing and loyalty add-ons. This makes it a great option for small restaurants focused on growth.

What makes Square the best growing restaurants?

Square’s app-based EPOS software starts at £0 per month, making it a good entry point for small or new restaurants. At the same time, the advanced features of its paid plans (starting at £69 per month) and its wide range of hardware make Square equally suitable for small or budding chains.

On Square’s free EPOS plan, you’ll be able to manage orders, do the basics – such as set up your menu and table plan – from both the front and back end, and track which dishes have run out. You’ll even be able to create menu subgroups, which is great for casual eateries that offer flexible ordering.

The £69 Plus plan and custom-priced Premium plan will give you access to more advanced features, such as the ability to access the EPOS system via mobile, customise your table plan, and advanced reporting (generates reports by the hour, staff members, and more).

With Square, businesses create an online ordering website and enable QR code ordering, facilitate order pick-ups for customers and boost sales by catering to busy customers. Add to this Square’s email and SMS marketing and loyalty programme add-ons, and restaurants have a complete kit of tools for growing their customer base.

When it comes to hardware, Square offers a variety of options to suit both counter and full-service restaurants. The cheapest option is the £99 + VAT Square iPad stand, which has a built-in card reader and a swivel design to allow for customer-facing transactions. For table service, there’s also Square’s newly launched £169 + VAT Square Handheld, a slimmed-down version of the Square Terminal designed for taking orders on the go.

Our experience testing Square

We found Square generally very easy to use. The backend was quite intuitive, and we had no trouble creating menus or listing items. We also appreciated the search function, which helped us find tools quickly.

We did run into a few annoying glitches, however, such as the table plan not appearing in the backend, and we found the process of cancelling orders and adding staff accounts overly complicated.

When it comes to hardware, we tested the Square Terminal, its portable POS device and card machine. While it was easy to access inventory and process payments from the device, we did have issues with the physical design. The card machine was quite wide, so it wasn’t easy to hold in one hand, making it better suited to countertops than table service.

Alternative restaurant EPOS systems

• Clover – For advanced reporting: Clover is a great Square alternative for established restaurants that need robust reporting and analytics tools, such as cost vs profit management.
• Epos Now – For ingredient tracking: Epos Now has dedicated EPOS systems for just about every type of business you can think of, including restaurants, and it offers ingredient tracking, a feature that Square is missing.
• SumUp – For a training mode: SumUp offers similar benefits to Square for cafes, in that it’s got free software and affordable hardware. But unlike Square, it has a training mode for employees, so they don’t have to learn on the job.

For more provider recommendations, head over to our guide to the best EPOS systems for restaurants.

2. Clover: Best For Busy Full-Service Restaurants

Clover is the best EPOS system for restaurants thanks to its high-grade hardware and full suite of features, including customised floor plans, advanced bill management, mobile ordering and more.

What makes Clover the best for full-service restaurants?

Clover’s EPOS system includes all the basics and more for effectively managing table service. You can create custom table plans that perfectly match your restaurant’s layout, create customised orders for guests, and even transfer orders from one table to another if customers switch seats. Platforms like Square and SumUp don’t allow for this level of flexibility, especially on their free plans, which is why we picked Clover for full-service restaurants.

With Clover, you’ll also be able to see the status of each table in real-time, track and transfer bar tabs, send orders straight to the kitchen, split bills, manage staff, take bookings and track your sales.

When it comes to employee and inventory management, Clover offers a customised approach, which means you can pick the features you want. Additional features include low stock alerts and profit tracking, and advanced employee scheduling.

There’s also a Clover app store, where you can find a variety of marketing and reporting tools to integrate into your EPOS system. That said, Clover isn’t the best EPOS system for marketing, with Lightspeed Restaurant earning the top spot thanks to its built-in tools.

Clover also can be used to take online orders, since it can be integrated into your existing website with API. For a simpler approach, you could go with Square, which offers an online ordering store builder.

Clover has a large range of hardware, which includes countertop terminals, KDSs, and portable card machines that sync with the main EPOS system. Your wait staff will be able to log orders and have them automatically sent off to the kitchen via the KDS.

Our experience testing Clover

Clover has remained consistently easy to use in our testing, despite offering advanced features. We particularly like Clover’s frontend, which is highly intuitive and makes great use of colour to highlight features. The drag-and-drop design of Clover’s table planner is also a nice touch for hospitality businesses.

We were also very impressed by Clover’s hardware. Its countertop registers are sleek and modern, which can give restaurants a polished look. We found the Clover Flex, Clover’s handheld EPOS system/card machine, particularly suited for table service. It was light and fit nicely in our hand, and the touchscreen display was just as easy to navigate as the terminals.

That said, it wasn’t quite smooth sailing when it came to certain backend features. For example, we had trouble finding where to set up discounts and loyalty programmes, and real-time syncing issues disrupted the overall smoothness of the experience.

Alternative restaurant EPOS systems

Clover might not suit all restaurants, so here are some alternatives you should consider.

• Square for restaurants – More affordable: Square is better suited to small restaurants with a simple floor plan, or ones that offer counter-service. It’s cheaper than Clover, while still being highly functional.
• Lightspeed Restaurant – Better marketing tools: If marketing your business is a priority, we recommend Lightspeed Restaurant over Clover, since it has built-in features such as gift card creation and a fully integrated online ordering platform where you can display promotions.
• Toast – For automated tip sharing: Toast, like Clover, offers advanced reporting and management tools perfect for busy restaurants. But, unlike Clover, it also offers automated tip sharing, making it a great option for businesses that split tips evenly amongst employees.

3. SumUp: Best for Independent Cafes

SumUp offers free EPOS software, affordable countertop hardware solutions, and integrated online ordering and loyalty tools, making it a great option for independent or local cafes.

What makes SumUp the best for cafes?

SumUp’s free EPOS software is a great option for cafes that want to get started with very little investment. It offers essential tools for busy cafes, such as allowing menu item variants and modifiers, so customers can get their favourite milk alternative with no fuss.

You can also assign different prices and VAT on the same item depending on whether it’s eat-in or takeaway.

No other EPOS provider we tested and researched includes a kiosk as part of its hardware packages, so if you’re interested in offering customer self-service, SumUp is one of the few small business EPOS systems that provides a solution for it.

You’ll be able to offer customers a variety of ways to order, including at the counter, with SumUp’s proprietary kiosk, via QR code, or online with SumUp’s free online store builder. This can help reduce long queues at your busiest times.

With SumUp’s paid EPOS software, you’ll get access to digital gift card creation and a loyalty programme. This can incentivise customers to order from your establishment more often.

You’ll also be able to add allergen warnings to all menu items, which will appear in your backend, as well as on menus displayed on kiosks or online. This can make your cafe more accessible to people with dietary restrictions, since they won’t need to ask whether an item is gluten or dairy-free, for example, and increase the likelihood that they’ll order from you.

Our experience testing SumUp

The frontend of SumUp’s POS system is very user-friendly, allowing for speedy service, but the backend remains hard to navigate.

SumUp’s frontend has a simple, clear, and responsive interface, with a minimalist design, making finding features, such as table management and order cancellation and editing, easy. We especially like the “park order” function, which allowed us to quickly adjust items mid-transaction.

However, the backend consistently frustrated us, since its design was much clunkier, and we ran into a lot of slow loading when trying to access reports, bulk imports or user settings. The sidebar menu would also often cover up other navigation elements, which made completing tasks difficult.

Alternative cafe EPOS systems

• Lightspeed Restaurant – For an offline mode: Lightspeed Restaurant is a better choice than SumUp for medium to large chains. Unlike SumUp, it’s got an offline mode, which is useful if you face outages, and it’s got better order management than SumUp. Customers can personalise orders, and you can create custom order deals that match customer preferences, for example.
• Square – For extra marketing tools: Like SumUp, Square offers free EPOS software and affordable hardware. It also comes with a few more marketing and loyalty tools than SumUp, such as physical gift card creation and SMS marketing, but these come at an added cost.

If you’d like more recommendations for casual counter-service eateries, head to our guide to the best EPOS systems for takeaways.

6. Epos Now: Best for Hotels

Epos Now offers dedicated EPOS software for hotels and is an affordable option for smaller hotels. It charges one upfront fee for a software-hardware kit (from £249) and has an approachable monthly fee of £54.

What makes Epos Now the best for hotels?

Epos Now’s dedicated hotel EPOS software lets you manage your hotel restaurant or bar, room bookings, room service, and payments, all from the same system.

That’s because Epos Now integrates with popular Property Management Systems (PMS) RoomRaccoon for bookings and Mews for housekeeping management. Epos Now also integrates with popular accounting software, like QuickBooks and Sage, making it easy to export data from your EPOS system. There is also a host of loyalty and marketing integrations at your disposal, which you can use to incentivise guests to return, such as LoyalDog.

The primary use case for using Epos Now’s system in a hotel is for managing your food and drinks service. Whether your hotel has a restaurant, bar, or simply offers room service, you’ll be able to log menu items into your EPOS system, and wait staff can use EPOS Now’s portable card machines to easily take payments from guests.

On the hardware front, Epos Now also provides you with a physical countertop terminal, and it has a caller ID accessory. If you have repeat guests’ phone numbers saved, you’ll be able to know when they call up your hotel, improving your service when you answer the phone.

It’s also one of the few EPOS  systems where all tools, both backend and frontend, can be accessed on a desktop computer, via an app, or from a physical terminal. This gives busy hotels a lot of flexibility when it comes to editing floor plans, discounts, and menus.

Our experience testing Epos Now

Epos Now isn’t the easiest system to use, mainly because the more advanced a system’s features are, the less intuitive it tends to be. One example is when we tried to set up price scheduling, so prices would change depending on the time of service. It was difficult to find these functions since there were so many tabs and buttons to sift through. We had a much easier time finding this on Square.

We found that the front end was slightly easier to use than the back end, although we had no issue with basic tasks such as creating floor plans and assigning ingredients to menu items facilitated stock tracking. However, sifting through all the reporting and tracking options was a little overwhelming.

We also tested Epos Now’s physical terminal. Although it’s not quite as modern-looking as the Square or Clover equivalents, its simple black design means it can easily fade into the background, so it won’t distract from your hotel’s charm.

Alternative hotel EPOS systems

• Square – For ease of use: If you’re looking for a simple system to use, we recommend Square over Epos Now, since the former can be tricky for novice users. Square also has its own marketing and loyalty tools, saving you from having to use third-party integrations, and dedicated restaurant, retail, and salon EPOS systems to cover all hotel services. It also has built-in tip sharing, unlike Epos Now.
• Lightspeed Restaurant – For the hotel restaurant: If you’re primarily looking for a system to help run your hotel’s restaurant, Lightspeed is a better choice than Epos Now. It integrates with hotel PMS systems and has better reporting features for tracking dish popularity, repeat customers, and customer spending habits.

5. TouchBistro: Best for Pubs and Bars

TouchBistro is the best EPOS system for pubs and bars. It’s easy to use, has portable hardware options so staff can easily move around the bar to take orders, and even has a dark mode perfect for low-lit venues.

TouchBistro’s pricing is only displayed in US dollars (USD)

What makes TouchBistro the best for pubs and bars?

TouchBistro was one of the easiest-to-use EPOS systems that we tested. The layout of the front end was highly intuitive, and we encountered very few unnecessary steps for basic tasks like taking an order or splitting a bill. The system also has a “Fast Bar” mode for the register, which allows staff to take orders in two taps, speeding up service even further.

For comparison, when we tested Epos Now, the ordering process required a lot more taps, especially if mistakes were made or customers changed their minds. This helped cement TouchBistro as the best system for pubs and bars that require speedy order processing.

Besides the ease of use, TouchBistro’s software includes features vital to pubs and bars. The system supports tabs (something EPOS systems like SumUp don’t do), so customers can run up a bill and pay at the end of the night, as well as bill splitting and table transfers.

If you serve food, TouchBistro can help streamline your Sunday Roast Rush with its integrated KDS. It costs an extra $19 USD a month, but we think it’s worth it. Kitchen staff will be able to see the time orders were submitted at and prioritise accordingly, and they’ll be able to clear completed orders with one tap.

Other software add-ons include marketing and reservation tools, which can get very expensive. It might be cheaper to go with a third-party software for this.

Luckily, all key functions are included in TouchBistro’s basic package, including staff management. It allows staff to clock in and out, provide labour cost reports, and help with payroll by logging staff hours. This is often a paid add-on or only available through integrations in other EPOS systems.

Our experience testing TouchBistro

As we’ve highlighted, we found TouchBistro very easy to use in general. This was helped by the fact that TouchBistro lets users pick and choose what features they want to include in their EPOS system, so the dashboard isn’t cluttered with tools you don’t use.

Most tasks also only take a few taps to complete, far less than with competitors Square or Clover, leading to quick order processing.

Our main criticism is that it’s not the most aesthetically pleasing system. We also had trouble locating sales reports because they were located in an odd spot. We had to go into “floorplan admin” to find them, which we found counterintuitive.

Alternative pub and bar EPOS systems

• Clover – Better for gastro pubs: Although we’ve recommended Clover to restaurants, it’s also a good option for pubs and bars. Its extensive order management tools are ideal for pubs with an emphasis on food, and its got physical as well as portable EPOS devices, whereas TouchBistro only has the latter.
• Square – More affordable: Square’s EPOS system can also work well for pubs and bars. It costs less than TouchBistro’s, and Square is very transparent about all its pricing, making it a good option for smaller establishments. Square also has a dark mode, and it can accept QR code ordering (unlike TouchBistro), which is great if you want to free up staff and let guests order on their own from a table.

For more information, check out our guide to the best EPOS systems for pubs and bars.

Interview: Restaurant Manager On What They Look For In an EPOS System

We asked Daniel Fragkos, an operations manager for a restaurant chain with over 10 year’s experience working in the front and back office, for insights on what makes a good EPOS system.

What features are missing from your current EPOS system that you wish were present?

“Our EPOS system doesn’t have graphs [for data report visualisation]. It feels very numerical sometimes, and it could save me loads of time if I could look at a pie chart rather than focusing on individual numbers.

“Newer EPOS systems usually have this feature included and have an easy interface. Our current EPOS system requires training for new users, whereas newer [more intuitive ones] don’t, since they’re quite straightforward.”

What EPOS features improve user and customer experience the most?

“From a user experience standpoint, digitalisation helps things run smoother. For example, we are currently using printed paper tickets to send orders to the kitchen, which increases the chances of things going wrong. If we had digital tickets on a screen, we could easily update the ticket if the table moves seats, and the new information would appear on the kitchen screen and food runner screen.”

Buying Guide: What Should You Look For in a Hospitality EPOS System?

Here are a few things you should consider when choosing an EPOS system for your hospitality business:

✔ Cost

An effective EPOS system doesn’t have to break the bank. Higher prices don’t always mean higher quality. As well as being affordable, an EPOS solution should save you money in the long run through increasing productivity. EPOS Now’s system claims to offer savings of 10% just by reducing losses due to human error. When you start streamlining your processes, the savings follow naturally.

✔ Reliability and speed

Service doesn’t just stop randomly, and your EPOS system can’t afford to either. Choosing an EPOS system with offline functionality can help avoid delays if ever your internet goes down.

Likewise, speed is of the essence to ensure your patrons enjoy their stay. Look for an EPOS system with a quick load time, and a well-organised dashboard, so you don’t waste time shifting through the interface looking for key functions like bill splitting, discounts, or refunds.

✔ Functionality

On that same point, you also want to make sure you choose an EPOS system equipped with the right functions for the industry you’re in. If you run a dimly lit bar or nightclub, choosing a system with a dark mode could be beneficial. If you run a restaurant, being able to quickly and easily split bills is a must. For hotels, a comprehensive bookings and reservation feature is what’s most important.

✔ Aesthetics

The aesthetics of your EPOS system might not be top of mind, but they’re important to consider, since you’re a customer-facing business. Choose an EPOS system that doesn’t look out of place in your existing work environment. If you run a local cafe or takeaway, you can probably get away with a more vintage-looking system, but if you run a trendy bar or restaurant, you might want to go for something with a sleek and modern appearance.

After your staff, customers interact the most with your EPOS system, so it’s a core part of your brand image.

✔ Portability

If you do table service, or your staff are moving to different parts of the bar to serve customers, you’ll want to choose an EPOS system provider that can equip you with portable devices, so there’s no flitting back and forth between tables and static terminals. Exude professionalism and never miss an order with a sleek, mobile EPOS solution.

How We Test EPOS Systems for Hospitality