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High-quality restaurant order management software streamlines operations, improves efficiency, helps ensure accuracy, and enhances the overall customer experience, whether it’s a small local cafe or a branch of a large national chain.
Additional functions, such as real-time inventory management and data management, take some applications beyond being basic order-takers.
In this guide, I take a look at six restaurant order management software products to determine which ones offer great value and functionality, and suit different types of restaurant and food service businesses.
Toast scored a perfect 5 out of 5 in this guide’s general features breakdown for having a full suite of order management-related capabilities. It’s easy to use for FOH and BOH team members, syncs menus across channels, and keeps in-person, online, phone, and third-party orders organized from prep to pick-up.
Toast: Best restaurant order management software for customer experience
Square: Best restaurant order management system for small and new restaurants
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Lightspeed: Best restaurant ordering software for full-service and fine dining operations
Clover: Best restaurant order management system for quick-service restaurants
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SpotOn: Best restaurant ordering system software for large teams
ChowNow: Best for takeout and delivery operations
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Methodology: How I rated the best restaurant order management software
Pricing: 30%
Obviously — and especially in a challenging economy — businesses have to watch their outgoing expenses. Pricing is a major consideration, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the cheapest product is automatically the best.
It’s important to balance value for money with functionality and whether a business is better off spending more for a solution that best suits their needs. This is where free demos and trials are useful.
General features: 25%
It’s important to look first and foremost at the general features — the ones most businesses will use most of the time — to work out what products will be the most valuable on a day-to-day basis.
Because almost all employees will interact with the software during their shifts, it’s smart to evaluate how intuitive and user-friendly every product is, especially when it comes to how easy it is to train people.
Advanced features: 15%
When it comes to choosing software, most businesses will have a list of need-to-have requirements, as well as nice-to-haves.
Individual restaurants will have different needs when it comes to the more advanced features. For example, a fine dining establishment that values repeat business and loyalty may require deeper insights into customer behavior than a highway diner with a more itinerant customer base.
Support: 20%
Especially when someone is new to the restaurant business and onboarding requirements are extensive, it’s vital that they have the right support from day one.
The products that will be praised for customer service and support are generally the ones that allow busy, and often frustrated, people to solve problems quickly and via their preferred form of communication. While online support is the main way of accessing support, for many users, the human touch is still important.
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Expert score and user reviews: 10%
I always analyze as many expert and user reviews as possible. Expert scores are useful for getting an overall picture of how effective each product is and what features and benefits it has to offer restaurant managers and employees.
Equally, it’s important to find out what real people who use the software on a daily basis have to say about everything from ease of use to customer service to the advanced functions they find genuinely worth the purchase price.
Top considerations when you’re trying to choose the right order management software
Your restaurant size
Bigger premises and bigger teams will have different needs than smaller spaces where you may be able to count the number of employees on any given shift on one hand. If a restaurant has multiple tills, a large number of tables, and a complex menu, easy access is crucial.
As well as the capacity for multiple users, it can be useful to invest in a product that allows different levels of access, from day-to-day functions to access to detailed reports. Smaller businesses and startups may need a more basic program to help them hit the ground running, although they may find they need to upgrade their subscription if they scale up.
Your budget & costs
Every restaurant needs to work out how much it can afford to spend on order management software and, ideally, seek out the product that ticks as many boxes as possible without breaking the bank. Simply choosing the cheapest option can turn out to be a false economy if it’s not right for your business.
Free demos and free trials can be useful for making a decision before committing to a system. Check contracts and cancellation terms carefully. Are you confident enough in your business to lock into a longer contract, or would a short-term option be a safer bet?
Your integration needs
Most businesses are looking for a software solution that does more than just basic POS functions. With this in mind, ensuring the product meets your software and hardware integration needs is important. Many systems integrate with popular programs, such as QuickBooks.
Some restaurant software requires you to purchase their hardware, while others can be integrated with other brands. If you already have hardware or software that you’re happy with, definitely make sure you check the integration capacities on any product you’re considering.
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Your required features
What are your need-to-haves when it comes to choosing restaurant order management software? And what are your nice-to-haves? First, make a list of the need-to-haves, the functions that are absolutely not negotiable. These are usually the functions that you and your team will be using every day.
When it comes to additional bells and whistles, such as advanced reporting and inventory management, determine if you already have the capacity to manage these functions or whether it’s worth paying a bit more for software that does more than just order-taking and POS tasks.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
Everyone’s mileage varies when it comes to how quickly and easily they can learn new software. That said, Clover and Toast consistently score well with real-world users when it comes to rating ease of use and easy staff training.
Some brands offer free versions or free subscriptions with a few additional costs. These include Toast’s Starter Kit, Square’s free POS plan, and SpotOn’s Quick Start plan. However, free versions will always be more limited than the paid packages, so it’s worth analyzing whether you should spend a bit more.
Absolutely. Indeed, every product we have reviewed here is designed to easily integrate with existing POS systems or comes with its own. Some plans require restaurants to purchase their POS hardware, while others work with existing systems. It’s smart to determine what will work best for your needs and budget.
POS software handles customer-facing transactions, payments, and checkout interactions. Order management software takes on more roles for the whole journey from sale to delivery, which can include communication between BOH and FOH, reporting, data analysis, inventory control, marketing, and HR operations.
Last bite
Every establishment is different, so when it comes to choosing ordering software for restaurants, it’s a case of “horses for courses.” What might be ideal for a fine dining restaurant at the premium end of the market might be too complex for a more down-to-earth food truck or takeout-and-delivery focused venture. The needs of a restaurant with a large staff will differ from a small operation with a few employees, so it’s important to shop around.
While we’ve rated Toast as the best overall product, this guide serves as a window into a range of leading software options that work well for different types of restaurant businesses. Striking the right balance between the best functionality for your unique needs and getting great value for money is vital.
Georgia Lewis has been a journalist for more than 30 years. Her work has taken her all over the world, including Australia, the Middle East, Africa, the US, Europe, and the UK. Over the years, she has had an interesting relationship with restaurants, from working at Pizza Hut as a driver, wait-person, and manager, to almost getting fired for an honest restaurant review in Dubai. Two of her main areas of professional interest are hospitality and technology, so contributing to The Restaurant HQ is an opportunity to take deep dives into both industries.
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