Restaurant Technology Systems Checklist

FSR, fast-casual, QSR, and bar-forward concepts each pull a different feature set from a POS. List the must-haves: coursing and seat-level checks, bar tab handling, modifier depth, split-check rules, and tip-pool logic. Note any state-specific needs (CA, OR, WA, NV bar the tip credit and need different gratuity flows).

Demo Toast, Square for Restaurants, Lightspeed, TouchBistro, and Aloha against the requirements list. Get effective rates (not headline rates) on card processing — interchange-plus vs. flat — and the all-in monthly per-terminal cost. Operators routinely miss hardware-financing markup and KDS license fees buried in the contract.

Verify native or middleware integrations to your accounting (R365, QuickBooks, Xero) and payroll (Gusto, ADP, Toast Payroll). Watch for one-way sync that drops modifier-level sales mix — accountants need that for COGS-by-category, not just a daily sales total.

Start with the top 30 SKUs by spend — proteins, dairy, oil, alcohol — which usually drive 70%+ of food and beverage cost. Set pars by daypart cover counts pulled from the prior 8 weeks of POS data. Skip the long tail until pars on the cost drivers stabilize.

Build the recipe BOM in MarginEdge, R365, MarketMan, or Crunchtime so every menu item deducts the right grams or ounces from inventory on sale. Include sub-recipes (house sauces, stocks, doughs). The theoretical-vs-actual variance is only meaningful once the BOM is right.

Route alerts to the sous chef and the GM. Tighten thresholds on TCS items (proteins, dairy, eggs, cooked grains) — a missed use-by on these is a food-safety violation, not just a cost variance.

Resy and OpenTable carry the largest diner networks; SevenRooms wins on guest CRM depth; Tock fits prepaid and tasting-menu concepts. Confirm cover-fee pricing, no-show enforcement tools, and how BNB notes (allergies, regulars, anniversaries) sync back to the host stand.

Third-party marketplaces (DoorDash, UberEats, Grubhub) carry 15–30% commission and dilute margin, but reach diners first-party can't. Model contribution margin after fees against your current daypart capacity before signing.

Stand up first-party ordering through Toast Online Ordering, Square Online, or ChowNow so you control the guest and avoid marketplace commission on repeat orders. Route tickets directly into the POS so the kitchen sees one stream, not three tablets on the pass.

Use an aggregator (Otter, Chowly, Deliverect) to push menus once and receive orders into the POS. Negotiate marketplace pricing rather than accepting the default — most reps will move on commission rate for restaurants with proven volume.

Kiosks lift average check (modifier upsell rates run 15–30% above counter ordering) and cut front-counter labor — but they're a fit for fast-casual and QSR, not full-service. If the concept is FSR, skip kiosks entirely.

Specify floor-mounted or counter-mounted units, confirm ADA reach-height clearance (the operable parts must sit within ADA-compliant range), and run dedicated power plus PoE. Test the card reader against your processor's certified device list before go-live.

Configure breakfast, lunch, happy hour, and dinner boards on a schedule so the kitchen and front counter don't have to flip them manually. Calorie counts must display per FDA menu-labeling rules for chains of 20+ locations; smaller operators can opt in but aren't required to.

The GM or AM pushes 86s from a single console so digital boards, online ordering, third-party marketplaces, and the KDS all reflect the same out-of-stock state. Mismatch here is the most common source of guest complaints after an out-of-stock at the table.

SevenRooms, Toast Loyalty, Square Marketing, and Marsello all tie identity at the check level. The test: can a server pull up a regular's last three visits — entrée, allergens, wine — at the table from the POS? If not, the CRM lives in marketing's tool and not in service.

Decide between visit-based, spend-based, or hybrid. Visit-based fits coffee, fast-casual, and bars; spend-based fits FSR. Model the redemption rate against contribution margin so a 10% reward doesn't eat the food cost on a sub-30% gross margin item.

Pick a low-occupancy night (typically Tue or Wed) and segment to guests who've visited 2+ times but not in the last 60 days. A targeted win-back beats a blast every time; track redemption against control to confirm.

Prime cost (food + beverage + labor) is the operator's weekly steering wheel — target under 60% of sales for FSR, under 55% for fast-casual. Pull from R365 or MarginEdge and review every Monday for the prior closed week, not monthly when it's too late to correct.

Sales mix shows which items move and at what margin; per-person average (PPA) shows whether servers are upselling apps, sides, and dessert. Both drive specific coaching at the daily pre-shift, which is where the lift actually happens.

Multi-unit operators need same-screen comparison across locations. Restrict edit rights — read-only for owners checking from home, full edit only for the GM and DO. Audit access quarterly; old GMs with active logins is a common security gap.

Route grill, sauté, garde manger, fry, and pastry to their own screens; expo gets the consolidated view. Items that fire across stations (a composed entrée) should hit each station's screen simultaneously so the expediter calls one pickup time.

Set yellow at 8 minutes and red at 12 (adjust by concept). Allergen tickets must show a flag the line cannot miss — most KDS platforms support a high-contrast badge plus an audible alert. Allergen handling is the single highest-stakes path on the line.

Pick a low-volume shift — typically a Monday or Tuesday dinner — and run KDS-only with paper tickets as a backup. Watch median ticket time and station-level hold time. Pass criteria: median ticket time within 10% of the prior paper-ticket baseline.

Walk the line through bump-bar handling, recall, and the allergen-flag escalation. Re-run the soft launch the following slow shift before going live across all services. A second failure points to a station-mapping problem, not a training problem.

Walk with a signal-strength tool from the host stand to the walk-in and back patio. Dead spots near the walk-in (where temperature-log sensors live) and the patio (where servers run handhelds) are the two most common rollout failures.

Use a Ubiquiti, Cisco Meraki, or Aruba deployment with three SSIDs minimum: POS (isolated), back-office, and guest. Guest traffic must never touch the POS VLAN — that's a PCI-DSS scope problem and the easiest way to fail a quarterly scan.

Firewall rules, default-password changes on every device, quarterly ASV scans, and an annual SAQ filing. Most small operators qualify for SAQ B-IP or SAQ C; confirm the right SAQ with the processor before signing the attestation.

Once POS, KDS, online ordering, and CRM are all live, run a Friday or Saturday peak with everything connected and measure card-auth latency. Anything over 3 seconds at the reader means guests wait at checkout — fix with a wired drop to the POS terminal before adding more wireless devices.