Top 5 Restaurant POS Systems in the UK
The best restaurant POS systems in the UK
Nobody shops for a POS in isolation. You end up looking at one because orders are arriving from the website, the counter and three delivery apps, and somebody is retyping half of them. So the ranking below leans on how each system deals with that mess. It also looks at how clear the pricing is and whether the system still works once you open a second or third site.
This list is published by Flipdish, and Flipdish is ranked first. The reasons are below, along with the cases where one of the other four is the better fit.
1. Flipdish - best restaurant POS system in the UK
Flipdish is a restaurant platform built for restaurants, takeaways, cafés, QSRs and multi-location groups. The POS is one piece of it. The rest covers online ordering, branded mobile apps, self-service kiosks, payments, AI phone ordering and marketing.
The practical difference is that an order from your website lands in the same place as an order typed in at the counter. Nobody keeps a separate tablet for online orders and nobody copies tickets from one screen to another. The Kitchen Display System is part of the product from the start, so the kitchen sees every order on one screen whatever channel it came from.
Menus work the same way. Change a price or mark an item as sold out once, in one dashboard, and it changes everywhere. If you've ever 86'd a dish at the counter and then had a delivery driver arrive for it ten minutes later, you know why that matters.
Delivery marketplaces are handled through order management. Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo orders come into the POS directly, which means the tablet that sits next to the till on most restaurant counters can go.
Flipdish is built for groups of any size, whether that's five sites, fifty or five hundred. Menus for every location are managed from that one dashboard too. It also has AI marketing and an AI Phone Agent in the same system, so phone orders don't depend on whoever is free to pick up.
On cost, Flipdish doesn't charge per-transaction fees on direct orders, meaning orders placed through your own website or app. That's the part that adds up. The pricing page is public, which not every provider can say.
Established UK and Irish restaurant groups use it. If you want one system covering the whole operation instead of four tools stitched together, it's the strongest choice here. If you run a single sit-down restaurant where table plans and reservations are the main worry, read the Lightspeed and TouchBistro sections too.
Best for multi-location restaurants, QSRs, takeaways, cafés and franchise operators.
2. Lightspeed Restaurant
Lightspeed is a cloud-based POS that does table service well. Floor management is its strongest area, and it connects to a long list of third-party tools, so most restaurants can find an integration for whatever they already use. For a UK full-service dining room it's a capable system.
Reporting and labour tools are good. Table and reservation management is strong, which is the reason most sit-down restaurants look at it in the first place.
The problems show up when the business isn't a classic dining room. Online ordering isn't built in, so you need a third-party tool or a separate platform, and that brings back the double-entry problem. Managing several locations gets more complicated and more expensive as you add them. Counter service, QSR and high-volume takeaway are not where Lightspeed is at its best.
Pick it if most of your revenue comes from guests sitting at tables.
3. Square for Restaurants
Square is the easy way in. The base tier is free, setup is quick and the hardware is simple. For a UK restaurant processing modest volumes, that's a practical place to start, and for a small business it's often the right call.
Card processing rates are reasonable at lower volumes. The thing to watch is what happens as turnover grows, because a percentage on every card transaction costs more each month as you get busier, and the free software starts to matter less than the processing bill.
Square also isn't designed for complicated multi-location operations, and its online ordering is limited next to dedicated restaurant platforms. Plenty of owners start on Square and move once they hit those walls. Moving is possible, but it's easier to do it before you've spent two years building habits around the old system.
4. Epos Now
Epos Now is a UK-based EPOS provider that serves both retail and hospitality. The restaurant product covers the basic POS functions and connects to several delivery platforms. Support is UK-based, and hardware costs are reasonable.
The history matters here. The core product started in retail, and the hospitality version was built on top of it by adding features, rather than being designed around a restaurant from day one. You can see it in the reporting, which is less detailed than what purpose-built restaurant platforms offer. Some customers also report reliability problems under heavy volume. That's worth testing in a demo if you do a lot of orders at lunch or on a Friday night.
It makes sense for a business that wants straightforward EPOS from a UK supplier and doesn't need much beyond that.
5. TouchBistro
TouchBistro is a tablet-based POS made for restaurants. It covers table management, staff management and menu engineering, and it's available in the UK. It suits full-service restaurants that want something dedicated to the dining room.
Two things count in its favour. It was built for restaurants rather than adapted from something else, and it works offline, so a dropped internet connection doesn't stop you taking orders at the table.
Online ordering needs an integration with a separate platform, which means another subscription and another system to keep in sync. It's a weaker fit for takeaway-heavy businesses and for multi-location groups. UK support and local payment integrations are also less mature than those of providers based here.
What to look for in a UK restaurant POS
Start with online ordering. Orders from your website and apps should end up in the same queue as counter orders. If they don't, someone on your team is doing the copying, and mistakes follow.
Delivery marketplaces come next. Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo orders should arrive in the POS on their own. Ask whether that's included or whether it's an extra monthly charge.
A kitchen display system is worth having. Paper tickets get lost, get splashed and get misread, and they slow down service when the printer jams.
Groups need reporting across every site without switching dashboards. If you're a single restaurant now but plan to open more, check this before signing, not after.
On the payments side, contactless limits, PCI-DSS and UK acquiring relationships all apply. A provider that's mostly built for another market can get these wrong in small, annoying ways.
Menu changes should go to every channel at once. And find out when support is available. UK-based support is best, UK-hours support is the minimum, and anything less means you're waiting until the next morning when the system goes down during a Saturday dinner service.
How much does a restaurant POS cost in the UK?
Prices vary a lot, and the headline monthly fee is only part of it.
Monthly software fees usually run from £50 to £300 or more per site, depending on features. Hardware is a separate cost. A terminal, card reader, KDS and printer can add £500 to £2,000 or more upfront. Some providers also take a percentage of every card transaction on top of the monthly fee, and some charge extra to connect to delivery marketplaces.
Here's how it adds up. A three-site group paying £150 a month per site is paying £5,400 a year in software alone. If a provider also takes 0.5% on £20,000 of card sales per site each month, that's another £100 a month per site, or £3,600 a year across the three. Hardware comes on top of both. Change the percentage or the volume and the totals move quickly, so ask each provider for the full figure and not just the monthly price.
Flipdish publishes its pricing and charges no commission on direct orders placed through your own website or app.
Questions to ask in a demo
Ask the salesperson to show a delivery order arriving from Deliveroo, going to the kitchen and being marked as ready, without leaving the POS. If they open a second app or a separate tablet at any point, you've learned something.
Ask what happens when you change a menu item. Does it update the website, the app, the kiosk and the delivery marketplaces, or only some of them?
Ask for the total cost for your number of sites over twelve months, including hardware, payment fees and any integration charges. Get it in writing.
Ask what happens when the internet drops. Some systems keep working and sync later. Others don't.
Ask how long a contract lasts and what it costs to leave. A cheap monthly rate on a long contract isn't cheap if the software turns out to be wrong for you.
The bottom line
For most UK restaurants, from a single café to a 50-site QSR group, Flipdish is the strongest option. It puts in-person and online ordering in one system, it removes the need for several platforms, and it's built around how UK restaurants actually trade. Lightspeed and TouchBistro are sensible if you only run a dining room, and Square works well while you're small.
For more comparisons and restaurant technology reviews, visit restauranttech.co.uk.
Ready to see how Flipdish works? Visit flipdish.com/pos-system to book a demo.