Restaurant technology: the tools you need and how they fit together

On this page

1. Start by drawing two flows
2. 1. The register
3. 2. Payments
4. 3. The kitchen: printers or screens
5. 4. Online ordering, delivery apps and kiosks
6. 5. Tables, the wait list and reservations
7. 6. Recipes, inventory and invoices
8. 7. Staff: schedules, the time clock, tips and payroll
9. 8. The back office and reports
10. 9. The network and security
11. 10. Choosing and switching
12. Where Advantage fits

A restaurant runs on a set of tools: a register, card readers, kitchen screens or printers, an ordering page, a time clock, and a way to handle invoices and reports. Each one can work well on its own and still cost you time if it does not talk to the others. A menu typed into three systems drifts apart. An order retyped from a tablet into the register picks up mistakes. Tips worked out on paper slow down every close.

This guide walks through each tool in the order a meal and its money move through a restaurant: what each one does, what it should connect to, and the questions to ask before you buy. Use it to list what you need and to test every vendor the same way.

Start by drawing two flows

Before you look at any product, draw two simple diagrams on paper.

The order flow. Where does an order start: the counter, the table, a kiosk, your ordering page, the phone or a delivery app? Where does it go: the kitchen, the bar? How is it served or picked up, how is it paid, and how are tips recorded?

The money flow. Invoices come in and set your ingredient costs. Ingredient costs set recipe costs. Recipe costs guide menu prices. Sales come out of the register. Shifts close with the cash and tips counted. Everything ends in a monthly profit and loss statement.

Every place where a person copies a number from one system into another is a place where mistakes can creep in. The goal is to keep those places few.

1. The register

The register, or POS (point of sale), is the center of the order flow. Everything else connects to it.

What it should do:

• Hold one menu, with sizes, modifiers, combos and prices, used by every place you take orders.
• Know each order’s type: dine-in, takeout, delivery or catering.
• Keep tabs open, split and merge checks, and move checks between tables and servers.
• Record discounts, comps and voids with a reason and the name of whoever approved them.
• Give each employee their own login, and limit what each role can do.

Questions to ask:

• What happens when the internet goes down? Can we keep taking orders and cards, and what catches up later?
• What hardware do we need, who owns it, and how fast is a broken device replaced?
• Can servers take orders and payments at the table on a handheld?

The hardware list

Make a list of every device and where it goes before you ask for quotes:

• Counter stations, one for each place staff take orders or payments.
• Handhelds for servers, if you take orders at the table.
• Card readers at the counter and for the table.
• Receipt printers and cash drawers.
• Kitchen printers or kitchen screens, one for each station.
• A customer display, if guests should see their order as it is rung up.
• Kiosks, if guests will order on their own.

For each device, ask whether you buy, lease or rent it, what the warranty covers, and how fast a replacement arrives. Keep a spare card reader and a spare receipt printer on hand if a breakdown would stop service.

2. Payments

Card readers sit at the counter, at the table, or both. Ask your processor:

• What is the pricing, and is all of it in the contract? How long is the contract, does it renew on its own, and what does it cost to leave?
• When does the money reach my bank, and how are tips added after a card is run?
• Who handles disputes and chargebacks, and how?
• What must I do to meet the card industry’s data security standard, known as PCI DSS? The standard applies to every business that takes cards, whatever its size. Ask your merchant bank how you must show that you comply.

If your reader asks guests for a tip, keep a no-tip choice. The IRS treats a prompt that requires a tip greater than zero as a service charge, and service charges paid to staff are generally wages, not tips.

3. The kitchen: printers or screens

Orders reach the kitchen on printed tickets, on screens, or both. A printer is simple, but paper tickets can get lost or smudged on a busy line. A kitchen display shows each order on a screen, sends each item to the station that makes it, runs a timer on every order, and lets cooks bump an order when it is ready.

Questions to ask:

• Do orders from the register, the kiosk, the ordering page and delivery apps all arrive on the same screens?
• Can items go to their own stations, with an expo view of the whole order?
• What happens if a screen fails? Can that station fall back to a printer?

4. Online ordering, delivery apps and kiosks

These take orders without a server, so how they connect is the first thing to check.

• One menu. The ordering page, the kiosk and the register should share one menu and one set of prices. When an item runs out, turning it off in one place should turn it off everywhere.
• No retyping. Orders should land in the register and the kitchen on their own. A separate tablet for each delivery app, with orders typed in by hand, invites mistakes and delays.
• Add-ons. Kiosks and ordering pages can offer a side, a drink or a bigger size at the right moment. Choose the suggestions yourself.
• Accessibility. The Department of Justice says the ADA applies to the goods and services businesses open to the public offer on the web, and its examples include food and drink businesses. Ask each provider how its pages and kiosks work for customers with disabilities.
• Marketing. If you collect emails or phone numbers when guests order, follow the FTC’s email marketing rules and get the consent the FCC requires for marketing texts.

Gift cards and rewards

Gift cards and rewards should work the same at the counter, at the table and online, and their balances should show up in your reports. Federal rules generally do not let the money on a gift card expire for at least five years after it is issued or last loaded, and they limit inactivity fees, so ask any provider how its cards follow those rules and your state’s.

5. Tables, the wait list and reservations

For table service, a floor plan on screen shows each table’s status: open, seated, check printed or paid. Hosts seat from it, servers work their sections, and managers see the whole room. Ask whether the check moves when a party moves, whether a server can hand a table to someone else at shift change, and whether the wait list and reservations live in the same place as the floor plan.

6. Recipes, inventory and invoices

This is where the money flow starts.

• Invoices. Supplier invoices should arrive electronically where possible, and their prices should update your ingredient costs without retyping.
• Recipes. Each menu item’s recipe, costed from those ingredient prices, gives its cost and its margin. When a price moves, you want to know which items it touches.
• Counts. Regular counts of costly items, plus a waste log, show the gap between what your food should have cost and what it did cost. Our food cost guide explains the math.

7. Staff: schedules, the time clock, tips and payroll

• Time clock. Staff should clock in and out under their own login. Federal rules call for keeping payroll records for at least three years and time cards for two, so make sure the system keeps them or lets you export them.
• Tips. The system should record card and cash tips by person and by shift, and split tip pools by your written rules. Federal tip pool rules limit who can share, and managers and supervisors may not keep employees’ tips. Your state may add rules of its own.
• Payroll. Hours and tips should flow into payroll without retyping. Staff must report their tips to you, and you withhold taxes on them, as the IRS explains.
• Scheduling. Build schedules from sales by hour, and compare labor cost with sales every week. Our labor cost calculator does the math.

8. The back office and reports

The back office is where all of this comes together. Look for:

• A shift close with the cash counted, tips recorded and the over or short shown.
• A day report that adds up the shifts.
• Sales by item, by hour, by channel and by server.
• Food cost, labor cost and a monthly profit and loss statement.
• Every location under one login, with live sales and alerts on your phone.

An owner is not always in the building. Ask what you can see and do from your phone: live sales, the day’s reports, and alerts for the things you care about, such as voids, comps or a shift closed short. Make sure each manager can choose their own alerts, so the phone buzzes for what matters to them and nothing else.

Ask how long your data is kept and how you get a full copy. The IRS says to keep most tax records for at least three years, and employment tax records for at least four. Make sure you can export your sales and payroll data at any time, including after you leave a vendor.

9. The network and security

• Internet. Check which providers serve your address on the FCC’s National Broadband Map. Plan a backup connection for the day the main one fails.
• Wi-Fi. Keep guest Wi-Fi apart from the network your register and card readers use. The FCC’s cybersecurity tips for small businesses cover securing Wi-Fi, firewalls and payment cards.
• Logins. Give every employee their own login and use strong passwords. The FTC’s cybersecurity guide for small business covers passwords, multi-factor sign-in, updates, backups and scams such as phishing.
• A starting plan. CISA’s Cyber Essentials is a free guide written for leaders of small businesses.

10. Choosing and switching

• One company or several. One company for the register, payments and back office means one contract and one support line. Several specialist tools can each be stronger, but only if the connections between them work. Ask each vendor what it connects to today, not what is planned.
• Test with your own menu. Ask for a demo built on your menu, with your modifiers, following a real order from the table to the kitchen to a split check with tips.
• Read the contract. Check the length, automatic renewal, cancellation fees, who owns the hardware, and whether you can export all your data at no charge.
• Support. Restaurants run nights, weekends and holidays. Ask who answers at 9 p.m. on a Saturday, and how fast.
• Go live at a quiet time. Avoid holiday weeks. Train staff on the new system before the switch, and keep the old one ready for a day or two.

The short version

Tool	The question that matters most
Register	Is there one menu for every way we take orders?
Payments	Is every fee, and the contract length, in writing?
Kitchen	Do orders from every channel land on the same screens?
Online and kiosk	Do orders reach the kitchen without retyping?
Tables	Does the check move when the party moves?
Recipes and invoices	Do invoice prices update recipe costs on their own?
Staff and tips	Are tips split by our rules and shown at the close?
Reports	Can we export all our data at any time?
Security	Does every employee have their own login?

Where Advantage fits

Advantage POS builds the menu once with modifiers and combos, takes dine-in, takeout and delivery orders, keeps tabs, splits checks and sends each order to the kitchen. The kitchen display shows orders from the register, the kiosk, your ordering page and delivery apps on the same screens, by station, with timers. Tips records card and cash tips by server and shift, shares them by your pooling rules, and puts each payout on the shift report.