Toast point of sale alternatives: what a quote really covers

If you are shopping for a restaurant register in the United States, Toast point of sale will be on the list. It is an all-in-one platform from a US company: counter and handheld hardware, the software that runs on it, and card processing, sold together as one relationship.

Comparing it to a rival brand is the obvious move and rarely the useful one. Every all-in-one quote in this market is built from the same four parts, and the brands differ less than the way those four parts are packaged. Read your quote as four purchases instead of one and the comparison becomes possible. Then there is a second question underneath, which is whether the thing costing you money last weekend is a counter problem at all.

The four parts inside any all-in-one quote

Whether the letterhead says Toast, Square, Lightspeed or a local dealer, a restaurant technology quote is made of these four things.

Hardware. Terminals, handhelds, kitchen displays, printers, cash drawers, card readers. Bought outright, leased, or bundled into a monthly figure. Ask which, because a bundled price and a lease behave very differently in year three.

The software subscription. Usually priced per terminal or per location, per month. The number of terminals is the part that quietly grows.

Card processing. The percentage and per-transaction fee taken on every card your guests present. Over a year this is normally the largest of the four in a busy room, and it is the one operators compare least carefully.

Add-on modules. Online ordering, loyalty, gift cards, payroll, scheduling, inventory, marketing. Each with its own monthly line. A demo shows all of them switched on. A quote may not include them.

The single most useful thing you can do before signing anything is ask for those four numbers separately, then rebuild the total yourself. Two quotes that look far apart often turn out to be the same money arranged differently, and two that look identical sometimes are not.

Five questions to ask before you sign

None of these are accusations about any particular company. They are simply the terms that decide how a restaurant technology purchase feels two years in, and every one of them has a clear answer that a salesperson can give you in writing.

1. How long is the term, and what happens at the end? Ask what renewal looks like and how much notice you have to give.
2. If I stop using the software, what happens to the hardware? Owned, leased or returned changes the true cost of switching later.
3. Is card processing tied to the software? If they travel together, you are choosing a processor for as long as you keep the register, so compare that rate as carefully as the subscription.
4. What is the price per extra terminal, and per extra location? Growth is the normal reason a bill doubles.
5. How do I get my data out? Menu, sales history and the customer list. Ask for the export format before you need it, not after.

Do this with every quote on your desk, including the one you are inclined to sign. Owners searching "Toast POS system" against "Toast Inc POS" against three local dealers usually discover the differences that matter were never in the feature list.

One more habit worth having. Ask each vendor which of the four parts they make money on. A company that earns most of its margin on card processing will price the software attractively, and a company that earns it on subscription will do the opposite. Neither is wrong. Knowing which one you are sitting across from tells you where the negotiation actually is.

The problem a register does not reach

A point of sale system exists to ring in a sale, split a check, print to the kitchen, and reconcile a drawer at close. Modern ones do that well. Here is the awkward part: for a lot of small restaurants, none of the money leaking last weekend was leaking at the counter.

It was leaking where orders arrive. The phone ringing during a rush with nobody free to answer it. The third caller asking where the driver is. The delivery apps taking their share of a regular's tenth order. A dish that kept selling for forty minutes after the last portion left the line.

The National Restaurant Association's Restaurant Technology Landscape Report 2024, its first look at restaurant technology since 2016, makes the point in its own way: what customers want from technology varies sharply between full service, limited service and delivery, and the report's advice to operators is to match the investment to what their own guests actually want. That is a harder question than which terminal to buy, and it is the one worth answering first.

Where an ordering layer sits beside the register

An ordering layer is not a register and does not try to be one. It handles the part that happens before an order reaches your counter, and the part that happens after the guest leaves. Get Menu is one of these, and this is what it puts in place.

Your restaurant gets its own ordering page on a web address of its own, included from day one, with layouts and colour themes so it looks like your restaurant. Guests open it from a link or from a printed code. There is nothing for anyone to install.

Orders travel over WhatsApp, using the WhatsApp Business Platform Meta documents publicly. One checkout produces 3 messages: a confirmation to the guest with the estimated delivery time you set, a ticket to your managers' group, and a dispatch note to the riders' group with the GPS pin attached. Nobody retypes anything. Every message is logged, and you can see whether it arrived.

For a dining room, every table gets its own printed code from a card designer, delivered as a print pack ready for a printer. The table number rides with the order automatically, so a dine-in ticket knows where it came from. A whole table can order into one bill from their own phones.

The menu behind all of it is one menu. Upload it from a spreadsheet in a single pass rather than typing it in. Photos are compressed for you. Options and add-ons carry their own prices, and required choices are enforced before an order can be placed. Stock counts fall per item and per option as orders come in, and a sold out dish greys itself out at zero without anyone watching.

Delivery gets what delivery needs. A GPS pin dropped at checkout, a building and unit chosen from a list, a delivery fee set per building, and a free delivery threshold you choose. Your driver taps a link to mark the order delivered and needs no account.

Then the returning-guest side. Stamps are added per order automatically, tiers carry their own discounts, and the loyalty card lives in Google Wallet on the guest's phone and updates itself, its colours and logo set in a designer you control. Coupons, bundles and ten kinds of upsell sit alongside it, and the best single discount always wins, so nothing stacks by accident. Marketing messages ride in their own queue that can never hold up a real order, capped weekly per customer.

Sales come back as a dashboard broken down by day, by item and by channel, and it exports to a spreadsheet whenever you want it.

"We kept meeting owners who had been sold a bigger register when what they needed was somewhere for orders to arrive. The counter was fine. The evening was the problem."

— Anzul Aqeel, founder of Get Menu

What Get Menu is not

This is the part most comparison articles skip, so here it is plainly.

Get Menu is not a point of sale terminal. It does not run a counter station, a cash drawer, check splitting at the register, or card processing of any kind. If you need a register, you still need a register.

There are no online payments. Guests pay cash or through your card machine, at the table or at the door. Many owners like that, because it means no card details exist in the system at all. If taking card payment up front is essential to your trade, weigh that here rather than later.

And nothing here replaces payroll, scheduling or accounting. Get Menu is ordering, menu, stock, WhatsApp messaging and loyalty. Most restaurants that use it keep the register they already have.

That combination is common enough to be worth stating: an older register that still rings sales fine, plus an ordering page carrying the traffic the register was never built for.

How to decide in one week

Write down the last four things that cost you money in service. Sort them into two piles: things that happened at the counter, and things that happened before or after it.

If the counter pile is longer, buy the register. Compare the four parts, ask the five questions, and take your time.

Most lists come out mixed, and that is fine. The point of sorting them is that the two piles are bought from different aisles, and a demo that answers one pile will make you feel it answered both.

If the other pile is longer, a bigger terminal will not touch it, and you can test the alternative cheaply. Get Menu's trial runs 15 days with no card details required, then a flat monthly price with 0% commission on your orders. Load the menu, connect the WhatsApp group your kitchen already reads, print the table codes, and watch two weekends. Setup for most kitchens is same day work, and briefing staff takes about 10 minutes.

Detailed order contents clear themselves automatically after 120 days, and the customer list is exportable on any day, including the day you decide to leave. That is worth checking on every product you are comparing, this one included.

Frequently asked questions

Is Get Menu an alternative to Toast point of sale?

Only for part of the job. Get Menu covers online and dine-in ordering, WhatsApp order messages, menu and stock, delivery details and loyalty. It does not run a counter terminal or process cards, so it replaces an ordering add-on rather than a full register.

Can I keep my current register and add an ordering page?

Yes, and that is how most restaurants use it. Your register keeps ringing walk-in sales. Orders placed from a phone arrive as WhatsApp tickets in the group your kitchen already reads.

Do guests pay through the ordering page?

No. Payment is cash or your card machine on delivery or at the table. Nothing is charged online, so there are no card numbers stored anywhere for anyone to steal.

What does it cost to try?

The trial is 15 days and starts without card details, so nothing can be charged by accident. After that it is a flat monthly price with no commission on sales. Current prices are on the pricing page, which is why none appear here.

Does my restaurant need to install an app?

No. Your menu is an ordinary web page, opened from a link or a printed code. Your team reads orders in WhatsApp, which they already have. Loyalty cards go into Google Wallet.