Every restaurant needs a point-of-sale to take orders and payments. Beyond that, the useful categories are online ordering, reservations or a waitlist, inventory and food-cost tracking, and staff scheduling. Most restaurants standardize on a POS that bundles several of these, then add tools where the bundle is weak. The trick is buying for your real bottleneck — labor, food cost, or covers — not for the feature list on the demo.
We build restaurant websites and run our own local service businesses on the same stack, so we'll be straight: these tools are good at running the floor, and none of them fills your seats from a Google search. That's where your site comes in. Here's how to choose without overpaying.
The hub — orders, tickets to the kitchen, payments, and reporting. Watch the processing rate (about 2.3–3.5 percent per card) because at volume that fee dwarfs the software cost. Modern POS systems bundle ordering, loyalty, and reporting.
Commission-free ordering through your own POS or site keeps the margin a delivery app would skim (15–30 percent). Run third-party apps for reach, but push regulars to order direct.
Booking, waitlist texts, and table management. Some platforms charge per-cover fees, so weigh the cost against the covers it actually fills. A simple request form is enough for a small spot.
Food-cost and inventory tracking is where margin is won or lost, and staff scheduling controls your biggest variable expense. These pay for themselves only if you'll actually use them daily.
Some are free with payment processing; full-feature plans run per terminal. The real cost is usually the processing fee, not the subscription.
Tablet or terminal, card reader, kitchen printer or display, and cash drawer. Some vendors lease hardware to lower the upfront hit.
Online ordering, loyalty, reservations, inventory, and payroll often bill separately. Add them when the bottleneck justifies it, not all at launch.
Restaurant software runs the floor. It does not fill your seats from search. A POS ordering link is a checkout, not a storefront — it doesn't show the menu, the hours, the photos, or the reviews that win the diner deciding where to go, and it doesn't rank for "near me." That's the part we build. The site wins the search and the question; your POS and ordering tool take it from there.
Our Start Getting Leads plan ($249/month) is a hand-built restaurant site with menu, ordering and reservation links, and 24/7 AI lead capture. Grow in Google ($597/month) adds the monthly SEO content engine and attribution. Don't buy a CRM to do what your POS already does well — buy the storefront your software doesn't give you. We run our own businesses on this stack; month-to-month, you own everything, free demo in 48 hours.
We don't post stock testimonials. On a 15-minute call we screen-share the real dashboards behind our own businesses — live leads, rankings, and the exact page that produced each one. See the proof →
See our restaurant website design page, browse more business software guides, and read why local SEO is worth it for a place people search by name and by "near me." Our local SEO cost guide shows what getting found really runs.
At minimum a POS for orders and payments, then online ordering, reservations or a waitlist, inventory and food-cost tracking, and scheduling. Many POS systems bundle several of these.
Roughly $0–$200+ per terminal per month, plus $300–$1,500 hardware per station, plus about 2.3–3.5 percent per card transaction. Add-ons cost extra.
Delivery apps bring reach but charge 15–30 percent. Commission-free ordering on your own site keeps the margin and the customer. Most restaurants run both and push regulars to order direct.
Yes. A POS ordering link is a checkout, not a storefront. A real site shows the menu, hours, photos, and reviews, ranks for "near me," and hands off to your ordering tool.
Send your restaurant name and city — we'll confirm your market is open and build a working demo within 48 hours. Free, no card, no commitment.
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