9 Best Restaurant Management Apps In 2024

Toast offers customer order and payment, restaurant menu, inventory, reporting, invoicing, and basic employee management on all plans.

The “free” plan includes everything in the Core plan plus no upfront-cost POS hardware, but you must pay a higher payment processing fee. We recommend signing up for the Core plan and purchasing your POS hardware upfront if possible. It will save you money in the long run.

The Growth Plan includes takeout and online ordering management from your own branded online ordering page.

Most of Toast’s unique restaurant management features will come in the form of a paid add-on, which you need to get a custom quote on.

Toast’s many restaurant management features include:

• Customer Relationship Management: Toast users get access to a gift card management suite, an extensive loyalty program, and email marketing to keep up with customer communications.
• Accounting: Toast POS orders, inventory movement, tips, expenses, employee hours, and more can be imported to xtraCHEF so you can get an overall view of your business activity. You can also manage accounts payable and accounts receivable.
• Tip Manager: Set tipping rules, automate tip distribution, and get reports on tips so you’re ready for tax season.
• Employee Scheduling, HR, & Payroll: Toast scheduling software allows employees to view and switch shifts between coworkers on their own or require manager approval. The HR software includes employee onboarding and benefits enrollment. Running payroll is also simple and payroll information can be imported to your accounting software.
• Event Management: Toast’s new catering management software allows you to create custom catering menus, accept deposits, manage a company event calendar, order inventory specifically for events, and more.
• Reservations & Waitlists: Customers can reserve tables, sign up for waitlists, and get SMS communication about their tables. Servers can easily see who is up next, table turnover, and customer preferences with their own Toast Tables app on a tablet.
• Multilocation Management: Toast is one of the best POS systems for franchises and chains because you can easily clone restaurant settings when opening a new location, view revenue across locations, and make changes to individual or all locations.

While you don’t need any additional software when using Toast, you do have the option to integrate your Toast POS system with several other apps such as Resy for hotel management and Chowly for aggregating all third-party delivery service orders.

Toast requires a long-term contract that includes an early termination fee. You must also purchase your POS hardware and sign a payment processing contract with Toast. This is a high level of commitment, so make sure Toast’s software (and Toast’s price tag) is right for your restaurant.

If Toast is a little expensive for you or your restaurant does not need such extensive management software, Square or Lightspeed Restaurant are strong alternative options.

Newer business owners should stick to the free plan until they have more complex menu and inventory management requirements, require full-service restaurant features like course management and floor planning, need more business reports, and/or want to use the Square mobile ordering kit. The relatively low inventory and menu management requirements and great price make Square one of the best coffee shop POS systems.

Note: The Plus plan comes with one countertop POS device license per location. You have to pay an additional $40/device/month for each new device you add Square For Restaurants to. The Plus plan comes with unlimited Square KDS software licenses, while on the free plan, you’ll be charged an additional $20/device/month.

These are the most popular Square For Restaurants add-ons:

• Square Payroll: $35/month + $6/employee
• Square Loyalty: $45+/month
• Square Online: Free-$72/month
• Square Marketing: $15+/month

If you pay for a website rather than use the free Square ordering page, you can customize the page to match your brand and remove Square advertising.

Square’s best restaurant management features include:

• Menu & Inventory Management: Create several menus with scheduled discounts and promotions. With automated inventory tracking, an item/modifier will be automatically removed from all ordering platforms if you run out of the necessary ingredients. Any employee can 86 an item when necessary.
• Online Order Management: Square offers a free online ordering platform, plus integrations with your restaurant’s Google Business Profile and third-party ordering platforms. Square kitchen displays aggregate all these orders in a simple kitchen order interface that’s easy for kitchen staff to navigate.
• Scheduling: You get free employee scheduling and staff permission features for up to five employees with Square Teams, included in free Square plans. Paid plans get Square Team Plus, which offers more features like automated scheduling and labor reports.
• Payroll & HR: Square’s affordable payroll software and HR add-on feature includes time off requests, automated payroll processing, new employee onboarding, tax support, and more.
• Customer Management: Square offers several customer engagement tools like eGift card management, customer loyalty program builders, and email marketing campaign software.

Square offers low-commitment plans and great Square POS hardware warranties. You do have to use Square Payments for payment processing. The flat-rate payment processing may not work well for larger businesses, but small businesses will benefit from this payment processing model.

Also, once you start to expand, consider whether using Square with a bunch of different add-ons for things like inventory management and accounting is worth it, or if you should invest in a more holistic solution like Toast or Revel Systems.

We recommend the Starter plan for small counter or full-service restaurants. The plan includes extensive menu item setup and pricing management, the ability to completely customize your iPad POS screens, floor planning, card pre-authorizations, and a basic loyalty program builder.

The Essential plan includes online ordering, tableside ordering, QR code ordering, and advanced inventory management, making this plan much more suited for larger restaurants with more ordering option requirements. Multi-location management is included in this plan.

The Premium plan includes hotel revenue management, API access to build custom integrations, and custom payment processing rates to help you lower credit card processing fees.

Many of Lightspeed’s other restaurant management software, including kitchen display screens and Lightspeed Accounting, require you to get a custom quote.

Our top Lightspeed restaurant management features include:

• Kitchen Order Management: Lightspeed kitchen display systems sync with all orders from all ordering platforms, including self-ordering restaurant kiosks, in-house delivery, and third-party delivery platforms to create an intuitive order fulfillment flow for kitchen staff.
• Inventory Management: Detailed inventory management with set minimum inventory levels, built-in purchase ordering, and automatic removal of a condiment, add-on, or dish on all ordering platforms if the system detects you’ve run out of a core item/ingredient.
• Customer Management: Lightspeed Restaurant includes a loyalty program on all plans and catalogs customer behavior so you can build targeted marketing campaigns.
• Accounting Software Integration: Lightspeed’s accounting feature allows you to funnel sales data from your POS system to popular accounting software, including QuickBooks and Xero.
• Third-Party App Integrations: Lightspeed offers many niche integrations for anything from hotel property management to liquid inventory management to employee scheduling and payroll. You can build a streamlined restaurant management solution that centers around your core POS software.

Lightspeed lists monthly costs but will have you fill out a custom order form, which will dictate your payment period. You could be charged monthly or annually for a predefined amount of time.

However, Lightspeed does charge an early termination fee if you decide to cancel your subscription early, and hardware return windows are short, so start with a monthly plan until you’re sure Lightspeed is the POS for your restaurant.

We also have to point out that Lightspeed does not have built-in accounting but rather the ability to export data to other accounting platforms. It also does not have built-in employee scheduling but integrates with popular platforms, including 7shifts (which we’ll discuss below.)

Revel requires every restaurant owner to contact a representative for a custom quote that will depend on the number of features you’re looking for, the number of locations you own, and the number of POS registers you’d like at your establishments.

The core POS system, basic inventory management, and in-store order management will be included in your base price, but add-ons like Delivery XT driver management, Online Ordering XT, and Drive Thru XT will cost extra.

A lot of features like shift scheduling, payroll data collection (for export to your chosen accounting software), house account and catering management, and purchase order creation/receiving are built into the system.

There’s also a highly customizable delivery driver management module that makes Revel an excellent pizza POS system, as well as a drive-thru order management module that places Revel on our list of the best drive-thru POS systems.

Revel’s best features for larger businesses looking to create a completely custom restaurant management solution include:

• Data Connector: With Revel’s Data Connector tool, you can connect all your POS data to any business intelligence tool (Google Data Studio, Power BI, Microsoft Dynamics, etc.) and use it to answer questions about product and location performance, track KPIs, and present data in a more streamlined way.
• Enterprise Management System: Manage products, employees, ingredients, discounts, marketing, and more across several locations. Grant access to managers, franchisees, and restaurant group owners. Transfer inventory across locations when necessary.
• Partner Integrations: Revel offers several partner integrations for everything from merchant services to security camera integrations to drive-thru POS hardware.
• Open API: Revel’s open API allows any developer with the right permissions to create custom software integrations, so you can connect (or build) any app that you need to run your restaurants.
• Custom Implementation: Revel users get a dedicated support representative to help build and implement their Revel software.

You need to sign up for a three-year deal and agree to use Revel Advantage to get the best monthly subscription price, but this isn’t a requirement to use Revel’s services.

There is a substantial early termination fee, so consider negotiating a short-term plan over a longer contract until you’re sure Revel is the right POS for your restaurant.

TouchBistro Reservations itself is a $229/month add-on to the core POS subscription plan. There are no per-order dollar amount or percentage fees.

If you don’t use any integrations or add-ons, TouchBistro POS is $69/month for one register, billed annually. The Dual plan includes two user licenses and costs $129/month. The Team plan includes five user licenses at $249/month, and the Unlimited plan includes unlimited user licenses at $399/month.

The company also charges a nonrefundable setup fee that starts at $200 and includes your hardware setup plus software walkthrough.

Other TouchBistro add-ons start at the following prices:

• Online Ordering: $50/month
• Gift Cards: $25/month
• Loyalty: $99/month
• Marketing: $99/month
• Kitchen Display System: $19/month
• Profit Management: $330/month

TouchBistro’s reservation and waitlist management features include:

• Allowing customers to make reservations and add themselves to waitlists on your TouchBistro-powered online ordering site, Google Business Profile, and by calling the restaurant
• Creating floor plans and menus specifically for event reservations
• Sending automated reminder phone calls/emails for reservation reminders and SMS updates for waitlist statuses
• Enforcing no-show fees to encourage customers to keep their reservations
• Collecting data such as the number of children coming, allergies, and VIP diner status when customers make reservations to create a personalized dining experience
• Enforcing cutoff times for customers trying to add themselves to a waitlist

Servers can also see the status of table courses and table turnaround times to get a better idea of how quickly customers can be seated.

TouchBistro integrates with 7shifts and Push Operations for scheduling employees. Staff can clock in and out on the TouchBistro POS app and view their tips with a shift report. Managers can get detailed labor reports as a CSV file to import into accounting software.

TouchBistro recently launched profit management software that allows you to import digital invoices, automatically track inventory count and cost, get recipe and menu analysis reports, and track overall profitability over time. You can also create and receive purchase orders with TouchBistro Profit Management.

TouchBistro does charge an early termination fee if you cancel your plan early, and the fee is dependent on how long you had between your cancellation date and the end of your contract.

If you do end up canceling your plan, you must send a written notice to TouchBistro at least 30 days before the end of your subscription term, or you’ll be automatically charged for another term.

Cloudbeds, like many other property management systems, require you to get a custom quote on your software package.

Cloudbeds is a holistic hotel management solution with features that are great for managing a hotel, but not very important for restaurant managers.

Once you integrate your restaurant POS system with Cloudbeds, the best Cloudbeds features for hotel restaurant managers include:

• Multi-section and multi-location restaurant order management
• Bill charges to a guest’s room or group booking
• Room service orders via phone or QR code for guests, with estimated order delivery times
• Restaurant-specific inventory and employee management
• Customer data collection that syncs with Cloudbeds data that can be used to create a more personalized guest experience

The best hotel management-specific Cloudbeds features include:

• Reservation booking on a branded booking portal or popular travel platforms like Kayak and Travelocity
• Room occupancy, maintenance requests, cleaning schedule, inventory, and work order management
• Calendar view of upcoming reservations with simple check-in/check-out management
• Guest communication software to field questions, requests, and feedback from one communications hub
• Integrations for everything from room locks to security to hotel event management

Cloudbeds will provide every business owner with a custom quote. You may be charged monthly, annually, or sign-on for a custom contract length. Some users have reported hidden fees, so get a complete picture of what you’re paying for before you dedicate yourself to this software.

Additionally, Cloudbeds offers payment processing for reservations, purchases, etc. Negotiate a good merchant services agreement to get the best payment processing rates.

You must provide at least 30 days’ notice to cancel your Cloudbeds subscription.

7Shifts offers the following pricing plans:

• Comp: $0; includes scheduling for up to 30 employees
• Entree: $34.95/month/location for up to 30 employees; includes scheduling templates, labor budgeting, and labor reports
• The Works: $76.99/month/location for unlimited employees; includes labor compliance, labor optimization tool, and employee shift feedback
• Gourmet: $150/month/location for unlimited employees; includes daily task manager, auto-scheduler, and implementation plan

Note: You can save 10% with annual billing.

You can also add 7Shifts Payroll for $39.99/month/location plus $6/employee paid.

7Shifts offers the following employee management features:

• Employee scheduling and time-off requests, with an auto-scheduler option (depending on your pricing plan)
• New hire onboarding and training, including documentation collection and training videos
• Run payroll with automated shift data from employee clock-in/clock-out
• Employee 7Shifts mobile app to view upcoming schedules, payroll, and make time-off requests
• Measure employee satisfaction with automated shift feedback surveys
• Track employee performance, including the number of shifts worked, shifts dropped, absences, late shows, and staff happiness

7Shifts integrates with several other restaurant management apps, including popular accounting software, security cameras, analytics software, and popular payroll software. If you only want to use 7Shifts to schedule, you have lots of integration options to fill any gaps in functionalities.

7Shifts has a straightforward contract offering. You must schedule a call with a representative if you would like to cancel your account.

OpenTable offers three pricing plans:

• Basic: $39/month plus $1.50/OpenTable website reservation and $0.25/reservation made through your own website
• Core: $249/month plus $1.00/OpenTable website reservation
• Pro: $449/month plus $1.00/OpenTable website reservation

You may also allow customers to order takeout and book experiences (e.g. wine tastings) through OpenTable. If you do this, you can expect to pay a 2% service fee and payment processing fees.

Note: The POS integration and waitlist functions are not available on the Basic plan.

OpenTable’s best reservation and waitlist management features include:

• Accept online reservations from the OpenTable booking website to gain more exposure to locals and travelers
• Require a deposit or card on file to reduce no-shows and cancellations
• Restrict waitlist/reservation times and party sizes
• Integrate OpenTable booking and waitlist widgets with your online ordering website
• Ask for guest preferences to create a personalized dining experience
• Create guest profiles with notes to remember for next time (and use in marketing campaigns)

You can also view and respond to guest reviews from all major platforms (Facebook, Google, Yelp, etc.)

OpenTable plans are billed annually and then automatically renewed every month. To cancel your OpenTable account, you must provide 30 days’ notice and pay an early termination fee.

Also, OpenTable does offer some services which require online payment processing through the company. Look into the payment processing fees and make sure you’re not being overcharged, or refrain from using OpenTable for things like booking events or accepting takeout orders.

BevSpot offers two plans:

• Standard: $249/month (billed annually); includes inventory, ordering, POS integration, and report exports
• Pro: $299/month (billed annually); includes product variance reports, real-time expected inventory, multi-location management, accounting software integrations, and dedicated account support

Note: There is no fee for integrating BevSpot with a preferred POS provider. Preferred providers include Square, Toast, and Lightspeed Restaurant. You will need to pay a fee for a nonpreferred POS provider integration.

The best restaurant management features you get with BevSpot include:

• Straightforward inventory management, including running inventory, to quickly finish inventory counts
• Visual bottle inventory slider to help you get an approximate idea of how full bottles are
• Inventory reports that can be exported to other accounting software if needed
• Built-in purchase ordering from vendors, with reordering guidance based on inventory forecasting
• BevSpot software sends out SMS/email order confirmations to vendors once you’ve placed an order

We also love that BevSpot integrates with some of the best POS systems for restaurants. You can use BevSpot reports to adjust menus and recipes in your POS system for peak profitability.

BevSpot requires you to pay annually for your software. This is a big commitment, so consider whether you can build liquid inventory management into your current inventory software before investing in BevSpot.

If you want to cancel your BevSpot account, you must provide at least 30 days’ notice and talk to a customer representative.