Generally, most of the restaurant management software available in the market today is enriched with features such as billing, CRM, stock and inventory, and reporting and analytics.
Thus, you can safely say that you can automate these time-consuming tasks using restaurant management software and reduce the responsibility of the management. On the other hand, it can also provide a rich experience to customers and reduce human errors.
In this article, we have discussed the best restaurant management software that can prove to be a savior for the management and restaurant owners.
OpenTable
OpenTable is an ultimate restaurant management solution that comes in handy to accept reservations by customers online and book tables accordingly. It has two primary modules, namely Connect and Guest Center.
Connect Module captures the online reservation requests and, if customized, can inform the guests about the offers and promotions they can benefit from. The software can also collect special requests such as seating preferences, booking for a special occasion, etc.
The Guest Center module enables the managers to sync OpenTable with their mobile and track available tables along with staying informed about the time spent by each guest.
Besides these modules, other features like the gift management module, payment module, and private dining are also available. The gift module lets the customers send and receive gift cards. Similarly, the payments module of the app provides a way for guests to make payments online.
OpenTable offers a trial period of 30 days, and its subscription plans start at $39, chargeable monthly.
UpMenu enables restaurants to create customized mobile apps and websites. It is also possible to create your food menu where food items are segregated into menu and sub-menu. Thanks to the feedback system, you can send forms to the customers to capture their feedbacks that can help improve the service. Its marketing tools come in handy to send targeted emails, push notifications, and promotional SMS to the customers.
It also comes with an application programming interface (API) that integrates UpMenu with another third-party point of sales, delivery, payments, marketing, and CMS solutions. Besides, it is also possible to launch loyalty programs for customers that let them avail themselves of the discounts and free items when making payments.
Pricing for UpMenu starts at $49 per month.
GloriaFood
Let’s talk about GloriaFood, which is another cloud-based food ordering and delivery platform that lets restaurant owners handle POS, manage orders, reserve tables and run promotional activities. Its full-fledged administrational panel lets you set up multiple delivery locations, put minimum orders, specify delivery fees based on delivery zones, and so on.
GloriaFood has an inbuilt menu builder module that allows you to create restaurant menus digitally; by adding food item categories, their price details, and images. It can seamlessly integrate with all the third-party apps such as QuestTag, Orderlord, Tookan, GetSwift, ItsaCheckmate, Ordermark, and more.
Moreover, businesses receive updates about new orders, and they can accept or decline requests depending on food availability. Besides, it can also be configured to enable users to reserve tables using web forms. GloriaFood has a dedicated module to help target potential customers by offering them promotional coupons and discounts.
GloriaFood offers several features in the free version. But, it is possible to upgrade to the premium versions that start at $29.
Toast
Toast is a cloud-based POS, hardware, software, and payment processing solution tool that lets restaurant owners cut down the business expenses, improve staff efficiency and enhance the customer experience. It is a perfect choice for businesses offering food services such as food outlets, fine dining restaurants, bakeries, pizza chains, bars, and more.
The menu management module comes in handy to design the menu and categorize cuisines into groups and sub-groups. Further, you can also offer different menus to different customers(online/offline) and even design a special menu for a time range. Currently, Toast can only be synced with Android tablets and not iPads.
The ordering module lets you accept order requests and send them notifications when the order is ready for takeaway. Moreover, it has integrated features that allow customers to split bills and food items among themselves. It also includes real-time sales monitoring capabilities so that businesses have an idea about how long the stock will last.
The Starter version of Toast offers limited capabilities and is perfect for small restaurants. However, the essential version is the apt choice for large food outlets.
7shift
7shifts is a restaurant management platform that empowers customers to schedule staff and improve the efficiency of team members. Its drag and drop scheduler allows you to craft shift schedules for the next week and publish them with just a few clicks. This makes sure that your restaurant has ample staff members so that you can concentrate on other aspects of business growth.
7shifts offers pre-build schedule templates that have build-keeping factors like availability, time-off, overtime, and labor compliance in mind. These templates can be customized to adjust department size, staff members, and the schedule type of your restaurants to offer an easier and faster way of scheduling.
This platform also includes other features like in-built chat and announcement tools that come in handy to communicate with the staff members on the go.
7Shifts offers limited features for restaurants up to 10 employees for free. For restaurants that have more employees, the plans start at $17.99.
CAKE
CAKE is a Point of Sales software that caters to all your business needs and helps speed up the restaurant operations in a full-service restaurant. This straightforward and intuitive software can handle demand at peak hours, thanks to its in-built OrderPads that streamline the incoming orders.
This way, restaurants can serve their customers faster, avoid human errors, generate quick receipts to provide superior customer service. An interesting thing about CAKE is its Customer-facing display that encourages guests to pay bills, give tips, and sign receipts while employees are occupied with other tasks. CAKE can be upgraded to add more features like taking orders and payments from customers from the table itself using the mobile OrderPads.
It also provides you with features like creating Guest Manager profiles and updating table status updates automatically for your customers. It also enables you to quickly customize the menu and track the inventory to ensure it is stocked. CAKE offers different hardware and software bundles at an affordable cost beginning as low as USD 69.
Restaurant365
Restaurant365 is a cloud-based solution that assists restaurants in managing inventory, supervising business operations, processing payments, approving multi-level flows, and more. The accounting module accumulates data from POS and then transfers it to the connected payroll processor. It can also be used to chalk out budgets for several locations and regulate the inventory cost. The ordering module enables optimization of the inventory and monitoring of stocks.
Restaurant365 also has a report module that generates customizable reports based on different cost factors, including sales, menu items, labor, inventory, food, and more. Moreover, it also assists the managers in generating profit and loss reports in real-time, and that’s not it. The integrated automation tool can be used to convert paper-based invoices into digital form so that they can be routed through several channels to seek approval.
Restaurant365 offers pricing plans starting at $289 per outlet per month.
Sapaad
Next in line is Sapaad, which is a web-based restaurant management system with integrated POS suitable for food outlets of all sizes, including cafes, fast food ordering, fine dining restaurants, takeaways, and others.
It can be configured to handle single or multiple locations to cater to your business model needs.
Sapaad includes inventory management tools to manage stock by location, receive and transfer stock, and more. Likewise, the recipe management module allows users to design and modify recipes, note down ingredients and even analyze the effect of the ingredient cost on item price.
Sapaad’s dashboard is loaded with tons of tools to provide insights on sales and marketing and alert you about the low running stock. Besides this, several add-ons are also available such as loyalty programs, SMS modules, and more. Sapaad also has partnerships with third-party vendors to provide functionalities, like accounting integration, food ordering module, and kitchen display.
Sapaad follows to pay-as-you-go price model, and its plan starts at $53.99 for one outlet.
TouchBistro
TouchBistro is an all-in-one restaurant management system that has been hailed as the best POS software by Business News Daily. The POS software is designed for iPad, keeping in mind the suggestions from the restaurant staff to offer better ease of use and meet the tiniest of the needs that arise. TouchBistro is known to provide 24×7 support to its customers.
Regardless of the type of service you offer, the software boosts restaurant sales by helping you provide better service to your customers and make better data-driven decisions.
You can receive tableside orders, manage table and floor layout, process payment, schedule staff members right away using the POS software. It also provides other features like food menu management tools, inventory management, and loyalty program that further enhance the functionality of the software. TouchBistro also has a full-fledged reporting module that lets you access reports and analyzes sales and other data remotely.
TouchBistro offers customizable pricing plans starting at $59.
UpServe
Upserve is an easy-to-use restaurant management software that comprises almost everything you need to grow the restaurant and increase your profits. It is designed to cater to the needs of restaurants, bars, cafes, nightclubs, owing to the tons of features included in the software on the iPad and iPhone optimized solution.
Some of the numerous features present in the software are POS, payment processing, managing table plans, monitoring the turnaround time of customers. Upserve allows the customers to split, merge or share bills or may payments by swiping the card. Its management module comes in handy to track the sales and analyze the trends that help maintain the stock.
It also has an inventory module that keeps track of ingredients and notifies when the stock is about to deplete. Using observation, Managers get real-time insight into the sales made, and they can also keep track of total guests and check-ins made. Upserve has three pricing plans starting from USD 59 to fulfill
the different needs of your restaurant.
Orderable
If you use WordPress to manage your restaurant, then Orderable will be the perfect choice for you
to accept online orders on your website without any added cost. You need to add the food items, process them and assign a delivery process, and that’s it. Orderable will do everything for you; even install WooCommerce. Orderable is an apt choice for small restaurants and cafes that offer delivery and takeaways to create a food ordering platform on WordPress or WooCommerce.
Following are the features that prove Orderable is a perfect choice for food businesses.
- No extra deduction by third-party apps on transaction processing
- Orderable is mobile-friendly, so your customers can place orders from the platform.
- Flawless food ordering process thanks to one one-page design.
- Use flexible templates to design the menu within a few minutes
- Put custom delivery fees and set up your preferred payment methods.
- Receive notifications as you receive orders and send notifications on order
completion
Orderable is a free plugin for your website. However, you can upgrade the plugin to USD 149 to enjoy additional features.
Restaurant for WooCommerce
Restaurant for WooCommerce provides an easy and reliable way to set up your online food ordering menu on WooCommerce. The tons of features in the quick-order solution help convert your website into a full-fledged food ordering solution for potential customers.
It also enables you to design the database of menu items category-wise to let the customers order food items without any hassle. The restaurant Menu plugin for WooCommerce offers the advantages:
- Provide several delivery choices such as free delivery, express delivery, and more.
- Categorize menu items into different categories and sort them in alphabetical order.
- Display opening/closing timings and holidays
- Mini cart widget displays order summary and an option to add and delete items.
- Specify the minimum ordering cost on the cart so that customers cannot check out until they meet the criteria.
Restaurant for WooCommerce pricing plans start at $12.42/month.
BevSpot
BevSpot is an advanced restaurant management software that assists the administrative authorities in managing inventory, setting up orders, creating invoices, and keeping a record of all the essential sales data. Designed especially for Windows operating systems, DevSpot houses the billing & invoicing, inventory management, menu handling, reporting, and analysis tools in one place.
It is also capable of analyzing down-to-the-ingredient data to predict the percentage cost of the recipe after a price increase. Thus, restaurants using BevSpot can intelligently spike the cost of online and offline orders to generate profits to the maximum.
BevSpot can further help by mapping the recipes at different restaurants to stimulate the better performance of recipes. BevSpot can integrate with several third-party apps; Square, Toast, Clover, Micros, and Upserve are some of them. BevSpot offers three pricing plans, and the smallest one costs $99.
LightSpeedHQ
LightSpeedHQ is an advanced Point of Sales (POS) software that includes inventory management features that perform critical yet time-consuming tasks such as inventory management and staff handling. So, you are left to focus on other aspects of your business, such as business scaling and satisfying your customers.
LightSpeed performs the following key functions:
- Encourage customers to participate in the process and make payments online
- Use LightSpeed to track stocks, send purchase orders, and set up the software
to automatically re-order. - Sync your inventory with the in-built web store to step up the e-commerce game
- Set up quality reward programs for the customers as a part of a customer loyalty
scheme.
LightSpeed pricing plans start at $39.
Wrapping Up
That’s all we have in the best restaurant management software roundup. Choosing the best restaurant management software is a tough yet essential choice as it directly impacts your restaurant’s performance. Whether you own a restaurant chain or a pizza outlet, opting for restaurant management software to automate your business will surely give you incredible results. If you want to create your restaurant’s website, here are some excellent website builders.