Restaurant epos systems
- Table cards to print
- 24
- One off cost to code the room
- £20.40
- Paper menus reprinted a year
- 240
The figures these sheets work come from your own inputs and from the record a till keeps of what was ordered: one order per table or collection slot, one line per item, and one reprint per menu change. Nothing here quotes a vendor's price except where the page names the vendor, the page it was read from and the day it was read.
A restaurant epos system is bought as a box on the counter and lived with as a record. What decides whether you are happy with it in year three is not the hardware, it is whether every order is still findable: which table, which items, how many covers, what it came to, who took it and whether it was settled. Everything else in a quote, from the drawer to the printer, is replaceable in an afternoon.
Open the QR code menu cost Free to use. No account, no card, no trial clock.
Start from what an order has to carry
Before you compare products, write down what one order in your room actually holds. A table number or a collection slot. A line per item with any modifiers, because 'no onions' is the line that comes back if it is lost. A cover count, because that is what turns takings into a spend per head you can act on. A status through the pass, so the floor knows what is coming. A total, and a note of how it was settled. A till that cannot hold one of those is a till you will be working around by Christmas.
Watch an order change after it has gone to the kitchen
On the demo, send a table's order to the pass and then change it: add a side, swap a main, void a starter. The change has to reach the kitchen as a change, on the same ticket number, and the record has to show the original, the amendment and who made it. A till that prints a second ticket for the amended order will cook two mains on a Friday, and a record that overwrites the original cannot answer the question a refund argument asks the next day. That one demonstration separates tills more reliably than any feature list, and it takes two minutes.
Count the room, not the features
The two numbers that decide the shape of the purchase are the tables you have and the menu changes you make in a year. Tables set how many codes, cards or handhelds you need and therefore what the roll-out costs. Menu changes set how much reprinting you are doing today, which is the cost a code removes. The sheet on this site works both from your own figures: on its worked example, 24 tables with one card each cost £20.40 to code, against £336.00 a year of paper menus at four changes.
Ask what leaves with you
The question every demo skips is what happens when you stop paying. Ask whether you can export every order with its items and totals, in a file you can open, without asking support. Ask how long the history is kept and whether it is trimmed. A till holds the only record of what your business sold, and a product that keeps that record hostage is a product you cannot leave, which is a worse problem than any missing feature.
Read the week back from the record
Once a week, three questions of the record: covers by day, spend per head by service, and the items ranked by margin. Those three are the whole of what a till knows that a drawer did not, and they are arithmetic over the lines the record holds. A till that can export the lines lets you ask them in a spreadsheet; a till that cannot has decided you will buy its reports instead. Ask on the demo for last month as a file, and open it before you sign.
Restaurant epos systems: what operators ask before they sign
What is the difference between an EPOS and a POS?
Nothing, except which side of the Atlantic wrote the brochure. EPOS is the British word for an electronic point of sale and POS is the American one. UK vendors quote epos systems, US vendors quote restaurant pos, and the box does the same job.
Do I need a full till system if I only take card?
A card reader takes a payment; it does not tell you what was sold. If all you need is money in, a reader is enough. If you want to know which dishes sold on a Tuesday, what a table spent per cover or why last month was down, that comes from an order record, and only a till keeps one.
Can I keep the hardware I already have?
Usually, if it runs a modern browser. A tablet on a stand and a Bluetooth receipt printer cover most rooms. Ask before you buy hardware from a vendor, because that is where a modest monthly price often turns into a large first invoice.
Do I have to take the card reader from the same vendor?
Usually not, but the bundled reader is often where the monthly price is recovered: the software is cheap and the rate is not. Ask for the software price alone and the card rate alone, in writing, and put last month's card takings against the rate before you decide the bundle is the bargain it looks.
Will the Restaurant epos systems fit the room you run?
Tell us how your room takes orders today and we will tell you plainly whether Eposvo fits it. It helps to know three things: how many tables you have, whether collection orders come in through a marketplace or your own site, and what is on the counter now. If the honest answer is that a full suite suits you better, we will say so, because a customer who leaves in month two costs us more than the one we did not take.