The 4 Best Pizza POS Systems Reviewed By Pros

Running a pizza business can bring great joy alongside the usual stress of business management. Feeling free to focus on and appreciate the joy doesn't come easily when you regularly run out of stock, need to search for missing finances, and spend hours trying to tidy up mistakes made by the team.

It's difficult to overstate your POS system's significant role in every part of your business. By ensuring you're using the best pizza POS system, you can simplify and automate business operations, speeding up transactions, and taking pressure off the team.

As the manager of a pizza shop, you'd be justified in any frustration at how difficult it is to understand the point-of-sale industry. There's a lot of competition out there, and many point-of-sale providers look very similar, at least on the surface.

However, when you spend enough time running a business, you see the difference small changes can make to create success. The same is true for POS systems, with some providers having stronger or weaker online ordering systems, offering the best inventory management, or even none.

So how can you spot the difference between the best pizza restaurant POS systems and those you should steer clear of? Read on to find out more.

What is POS?

Point-of-sale or POS are electronic tills, including business hardware and software, designed to use all the modern features to help companies serve their customers. Most companies will use them alongside payment processing devices to ensure they can quickly take payments for their products from credit or debit cards.

A POS system can be anything from a simple computer program with a list of products, a transactions page, and a receipt printer or the foundation of all business operations, from accounting to online sales.

Point-of-sale hardware for pizza restaurants

A pizza business might purchase any or even all of these devices as part of a POS system:

• POS terminal screens. A POS terminal usually sits behind the bar or at a checkout kiosk to help servers process transactions quickly and easily. This also lets staff access business software to clock in and out and perform stock takes and other routine tasks.
• Receipt printers. Though some businesses have begun the switch to offering email receipts only, receipt printers are still a staple of the POS system. These can be linked to POS terminals and MPOS (mobile-point-of-sale) devices to offer quick ways of providing proof of purchase.
• Cash drawers. Like receipt printers, some businesses now opt not to use cash drawers and to operate as a card-only service. Nevertheless, in most cases, cash drawers are an essential part of a POS system, often auto-firing when transactions are complete to help staff safely store card printouts and daily takings.
• Order printers. When orders come in through your POS terminal, some of the products sold (namely pizzas and other food dishes) will need to be prepared in the kitchen. In days gone by, waiting staff would jot orders down and run them through. Now, order printers can link up to the POS system, and when food is sold, order tickets can be printed in the kitchen immediately so preparation can begin immediately.
• KDS (Kitchen display screens). Speed of service is so essential in the pizza market. A KDS can create instant communication between the front and back of the house by putting orders up on a screen in the kitchen. Kitchen display system technology is gaining popularity in the hospitality industry as a quicker, more sophisticated device than an order printer.
• Card processing devices. Most POS systems can integrate with card processors, but many providers now offer credit card processing services in-house as part of a complete restaurant POS. This means choosing whether to get in-house card processing or use one of the older providers and deal with two separate companies.
• Customer display screens. Display screens atop or next to a POS terminal show customers the price of every item as they're added to a basket. This provides transparency to customers and can save time during transactions as customers do not need to ask for confirmation on individual prices.
• Display screens. POS systems are adapted computers capable of playing media through a dedicated advertising screen should a business desire and acquire one. These can advertise your latest deals, display your menus, and digitally show any other marketing materials.
• Swipe Card readers. Epos Now offer swipe card readers that easily attach to the side of their terminals. These can read staff cards, speeding up login times and increasing security. But they can also read customer cards to bring up accounts, help customers engage with loyalty programs, and access purchasing history.

As you can see, point-of-sale hardware is expansive, and this list isn't exhaustive. There's a lot of hardware that different businesses incorporate into their system, which makes planning for your purchase vitally important. It's advisable to plan which hardware you'll get and, equally importantly, what software and functions you'll use it for.

Point of sale software and how it can help pizza shops

So much business software exists on POS systems that the best pizza POS software can speed up every process to do with your business.

In 2021, the pizza delivery industry reached a staggering $19.8 billion[1]. This makes developing a quick and easy delivery service for your pizza shop as essential as having a pleasant eat-in service. Bringing online ordering, eat-in and takeaway together into one hybrid POS system is something POS providers do exceptionally well. But whether it's delivery management, employee management or any other area, we'll need to look in detail at specific parts of POS software to understand the benefits it can bring.

Transaction software

Of all the POS features, the transaction software is the most basic but also the most used. No matter how your company's orders are coming in, your POS system takes payment, distributes data for order processing, tab and table management for unpaid products, and creates business reports.

The above processes start with sophisticated software solutions to help the restaurant industry serve diners faster and more reliably. It also expanded the point of sale system's role to simplify management work and provide busy restaurants and small pizza shops with similarly detailed business data to help them make better choices.

This means that transaction software can now aid servers and staff in the following ways:

• Speed up the sales process through well-planned hotkeys, scanners (where appropriate), integrated payment processing services, and easy-to-use checkout pages.
• Improve sales reliability and security with automated cash and card sales calculations, role-based staff restrictions, cash-drawer restrictions, and employee sales history.
• Informing even new staff on allergen and ingredient information with product detail options and quick-access business data.
• Provide simple ways of finding and opening tabs and closed transactions to streamline even the most complicated customer requests.
• Offer bespoke end-of-day reporting to ensure managers see the data they want during the close-down process, with sales information instantly sent to the back office during trading hours.

All of the top pizza POS systems will offer these functions as part of their transaction software, and while many companies look a the offerings of free POS software, these systems will lack many of these functions.

Missing any of the above functions will cost the business a lot of money. For instance, a pizza point of sale that doesn't offer product information will slow sales. Staff must go to the kitchen to confirm product ingredients, allergen information, or other product details. The result is fewer sales, reduced customer satisfaction and business reputation, not to mention a more difficult job for staff.

Inventory control

With orders coming in from all corners of the business, and so many different ingredients going on innumerable varieties and sizes of pizza, inventory management is tough for pizza shop owners. That makes automating this process as much as possible an essential role for the restaurant POS software.

The pizza POS you employ ought to be able to automate inventory by allowing you to input an amount of supply you use of every ingredient to produce a product. For instance, a small Margherita might consume 300g of pizza base, 150g of tomato, and 100g of cheese, which can be removed from your inventory every time you sell one, no matter which channel the sale comes through.

Most, if not all, inventory systems can also reduce stock due to other means with a front till (the transaction section) feature so your team can input wastage, lost, or damaged stock.

The Epos Now inventory management software also offers a stock alerts feature to simplify the resupplying process. The stock alert produces an email each morning to the business with a list of products that have reached minimal levels. Pizza shop owners and managers can set each product at a minimum, so the system knows when you want to resupply, allowing you to manage inventory on your terms.

Employee management

In any industry, workforce management is key to the business's success. Whether the difficulties come in employee scheduling, staying on top of payroll and hours completed, or creating morale, motivation, and clarity of vision for the team.

Your pizza POS system should therefore incorporate employee management into its software. The best POS systems do this through clock-in and out options on the terminal, automating the calculation of hours worked. A POS system can calculate monthly wages when combined with an inputted hourly wage without management needing to lift a finger.

Depending on the training and responsibility staff members have, the company can adapt the best POS system into a simpler or more complex one. For instance, new staff won't be allowed to change settings, but others will. When the team uses a login process, the system will know who is using it and can restrict access from newer staff just to allow them to process sales.

Meanwhile, larger businesses can appoint employees to specific locations to ensure only relevant employees appear at each site.

Online ordering and takeaway

Online ordering sites such as Uber Eats and Deliveroo dominate the delivery industry. Many delivery apps supply their delivery drivers, leaving your company to produce the food and pay them their cut. However, your POS company must have taken on this partnership to automate the process and ensured their software works with the delivery companies.

It's worthwhile to research which delivery platforms you'll be able to use before committing to a pizza POS system. A provider might be able to set up an in-house online ordering site as well, such as Epos Now Online, which provides a simple means of accepting online orders without needing to pay commissions to delivery companies.

In most cases, takeaway can be incorporated with an in-house feature. Your service may have different prices depending on the dining method. Epos Now have solved this potential problem with a simple action button that adapts your menu to settings you've set up for takeaway or eat-in customers.

Other software features a POS system offers

Just as there's every manner of POS hardware to help you in your business, the best pizza POS systems for pizza companies will have software that helps all areas of business. So here are a few other ways POS software might make trading easier:

• Marketing and customer relationship management. Any good pizza POS system will have customer data storage that helps run a loyalty program, contains purchasing history, and will help you market to them to retain their custom through integrations with marketing software like Mailchimp.
• Accounting and reporting. POS software can generate hundreds of reports on employee and customer behavior, inventory, product performance, and business performance at different times. But it should also help you in your tax returns by adapting sales data into reports you can use to file taxes. This might include integration with accounting software like Xero.
• Spreadsheet software. As you run your pizza restaurant, you'll need to update information regularly. Some POS providers offer spreadsheet integrations that allow you to export and import your data into spreadsheets so that you can update information far quicker and easier than if you were to update each product one by one.
• Running promotions and deals. Most pizza businesses offer some kind of promotional offer to encourage more sales. Even small pizza shops might have a meal deal to help build wet sales by including a drink with a pizza. Your POS system should help implement these automatically and store historical promotions to save time reproducing your favorite deals.

Now that you know how extensive and effective a pizza POS system can be let's look at some providers in closer detail to see which best suit pizza restaurants like yours.

The Epos Now pizza POS system

Epos Now was founded in 2011 by Jacyn Heavens, a former bar manager who grew frustrated at the existing POS market, feeling it didn't meet the needs of his business.

"I started Epos Now because I was a frustrated business owner. It's just not enough for POS systems to accept transactions, print receipts, create poor reports and yet be ludicrously expensive.

It should be affordable, make your life easier, your customers happier and be accessible from anywhere" - Jacyn Heavens, Epos Now founder.

The philosophy behind the development of Epos Now technology reflects Jacyn Heavens' principle around accessibility, affordability and making business simple. The Epos Now package brings many choices that allow users to select which of the many features they need to create a bespoke system that suits them.

Epos Now has partnered with business software leaders to offer integrations with accounting software such as Xero and Quickbooks, loyalty programs with LoyaltyDog and Loyalzoo, online ordering with Deliveroo, Yoello, Ubereats and Grubhub, and web builders such as WordPress and Wix.

The inventory management features on Epos Now include exporting inventory figures to "Bulk Import", Epos Now's spreadsheet software option. The stocktake option appears on the front system for regular staff but can also be accessed more extensively on the office software. The front till option makes inventory flexible, and the data input can be delegated to team members without extending office access.

Epos Now have an in-house payment processor, Epos Now Payments, which offers a simpler way for pizza shops to manage card payments. This, alongside Epos Now's "make life easier" approach, allows users to train new staff on the system in as little as 15 minutes and gives them the freedom to focus on customers not the technology they're using.

Creating an Epos Now pizza POS system

To demonstrate the practicality of the Epos Now pizza restaurant system, it might be useful to run through the implementation process of setting up a business. The Epos Now team appoint a specialist support agent for all new customers in the first month, which means users are never left alone to set themselves up but are fully aided and advised during this intense period. Epos Now also have published support guides and video media on Youtube to help customers that prefer to set up by themselves.

Data transfer

Epos Now send new users a spreadsheet to speed up the initial upload of products, prices, inventory, and customer data onto the system. This means splitting your menu into the categories you'll use to find them during sales. You can add a cost price and a sale price to allow the system to calculate each product's profits and separate takeaway prices.

If you plan to use one of the numerous online ordering and delivery integrations, you must step into the expansive Epos Now AppStore. Once you've got an integrated online ordering system you wish to use in your Back Office, you can add your menu to the systems, and you'll have in-house and online sales ready to go.

Product and inventory setup

Earlier in this blog, we discussed the difficulty of managing inventory in pizza restaurants because of the mix-and-match nature of pizza toppings. With onions, cheese, tomato, olives etc., on some pizzas and not others, almost at random, setting up a pizza POS to stay on top of inventory and take orders in a simple but effective way requires some useful features.

Fortunately, Epos Now has several useful features to help with this. One of these is the Master Products feature. These are often useful when selling alcohol, where different measures and sizes of drink often come from the same source. Users can set up, for instance, 125ml, 250ml, and bottles of wine. These will all draw inventory from a "master" product which then helps maintain accurate inventory despite being sold in multiple forms.

Master products offer a similar solution to kitchen staff keeping track of ingredients using the feature in reverse. One product, the pizza, can affect stock levels for multiple products, from flour, eggs, and milk, to parmesan cheese or the toppings themselves. The only question pizza restaurants have to decide is how in-depth they'd like to go with inventory management.

A second very useful feature of Epos Now is multiple choice products. If your customers wish to select specific toppings to go on a pizza, you can create products with unique selections by having each topping appear as an option for your customer to choose one-by-one.

Multiple choice products can be grouped to make them quicker and easier to attach to your products. For instance, you may have thin, thick, and cheesy crusts as options on your pizzas. Creating a multiple-choice product group that appears each time you select a pizza makes a simple, effective way of notifying your kitchen, adapting the price and inventory (when required), and ensuring staff always ask the key questions to correct the order.

Employee setup

Regarding employee management on pizza POS systems, Epos Now makes it very straightforward. The Epos Now Back Office has several features allowing management to allocate access and restrictions to different staff roles. Each staff member can then be assigned a role allowing them to perform their role without seeing features they aren't trained to use.

POS security is equally simple for staff. Each staff member created on the system can be given a personal login code when clocking in or serving customers. This also means management can be confident in the accuracy of employee reports on performance, payroll, and transaction history.

An alternative to codes, pizza restaurants can use swipe card readers and personal staff cards to save using codes to access the system.

Optimizing the Epos Now system

If the Epos Now system has unique selling points, they're the user-friendly interface and the flexibility it offers users. The AppStore is a key part of this, with dozens of partnerships with leading software providers and in-house app extensions. But flexibility has been drilled into all the system features, from hardware to adjustable settings, to the reports that help you learn about your business.

One previously unmentioned option is mobility. Epos Now software runs on iOS, Android, or Windows devices. Larger restaurants looking for table service can use pre-owned tablet devices or Epos Now's mobile device options. The only proviso is the need for a strong internet connection across the site to allow you to take orders smoothly and easily no matter where your customers are; this helps boost customer engagement and upselling.

For managers, the cloud-based system adds some key security and freedom that helps them stay on top of trade even when away from the business. While connected to the web, daily reports update in real-time, accessible from the back office anywhere in the world, with employees clocked in and out, inventory updates, and product prices.

The result is that remote management of the business is absolutely possible. This is a key option on systems for pizza restaurants with multiple sites, as managers and owners cannot always be at every site.

Toast POS systems

Toast is an American POS company that focuses solely on the hospitality industry. Like Epos Now, their system operates on a cloud, which brings several advantages. Unlike Epos Now, they are an Android-only system, so those that prefer iOS or Windows point-of-sale systems will struggle to get on with the interface.

Toast payment processing

Many POS companies conveniently double as payment processors. Toast is no different. Their devices integrate smoothly with their system, though they don't offer standard rates for their customers, meaning you'll need to negotiate with them to get the best offer you can. Depending on the size of your business, and your current payments deal, Toast might not give you as good an offer as another company would.

It's unclear if Toast will offer other third-party integrations in the way Epos Now will, so it's difficult to research options given that they deal with payment processing on a case-by-case basis.

Toast pricing and in-house functions

Evaluating Toast pricing and its value for money aren't easy due to its tiered pricing scheme. They claim their lowest offer is a free version following hardware purchases.

They then have memberships from $69 and $165 per location. Their full software is not included with lower memberships, with features such as employee management behind a paywall and only basic inventory control available at some rates.

Toast is, therefore, a reasonable option for larger pizza restaurants, but for businesses seeking affordable pizza POS software with up to two terminals, Toast may not be the best option.

Toast app options

Toast has a long list of app partnerships designed to accompany its system. Many of these will be subscription-based, though they offer the opportunity to bring new features into the system that might help your business.

Like Epos Now, they have an accounting integration with Davo, which can be useful for handling sales tax. They have third-party delivery integrations with Me&u, who Epos Now also work with.

With pricing not mentioned on the website and the issues with Toast's tiered pricing and paywall for some necessary features, it is difficult to tell how many apps Toast customers might need to run their pizza business. This makes Toast a potentially expensive option for businesses.

Square POS systems for pizza restaurants

The best pizza POS systems are adapted to the specialized needs of pizza restaurants. Square POS are some of the most recognized POS systems in the industry, but how well might they work for pizza shops?

Jack Dorsey's Square began in 2009 offering card processing rather than POS but now offers both together in an Apple style-white, minimalist package. Indeed, like Toast, some of the packages they offer include rather minimalist features.

Square's "free" package removes many basic features required to run a pizza business. To qualify for any of Square's deals, you also need to join Square for your card payments, ensuring they get as much as 2.9% of your card payments.

Square hardware and software

Users on Square's premium plan gain many benefits associated with an Epos Now regular account. Square has customizable table plans, reasonable inventory management software, a KDS system like Epos Now's, order management from delivery services such as Deliverect, Deliveroo and Ubereats, and many other necessary features.

The basic Square package includes one of their terminals, with a receipt printer and cash drawer. This might be enough for a smaller business to start the mobility of an MPOS option, or the use of a pre-owned tablet, can give pizza restaurants the flexibility to offer quicker, better table service.

It's also unclear from the website if Square offer email receipts, as Epos Now do. Beyond saving on paper and the environmental benefits, email receipts are a proven way of expanding a company's marketing database. As customers pass their email over for the receipt, many will consent to marketing emails allowing the business to stay in contact with them after they leave.

The Square AppStore

Square does integrate with some reputable partners, some of which are shared with Epos Now, such as Xero accounting and Loyalzoo marketing. Though many of the apps will be useful options to many businesses, Square does not seem to have the same amount of variety as the competition.

The Epos Now AppStore contains dozens of free apps that can tweak your system, developed in-house or through partnerships, that can operate alongside any other business software you wish to use. Square have some apps for most main areas of business, with good choices for online ordering, but they don't seem to offer quite as much as their customers might have hoped for.

Lightspeed POS system for pizza restaurants

Montreal-based Lightspeed is a little younger than the competition, having only been founded in 2015. Nevertheless, they've grown rapidly, offering retail and hospitality systems, and now operate internationally.

Lightspeed offers basic hardware with their in-house payment processor, with a competitive 1.6% on all transactions, which is worth consideration. They have also broken their hospitality service into three different series, with different advised integrations for each one.

The Lightspeed AppStore is more limited than some of the competition, with only Grubhub integrating for online ordering and many big-names missing, which might limit their users' competitiveness in the delivery industry.

The Lightspeed package

Once again, as it was with Square and Toast, Lightspeed software packages operate on a tiered system. They have an essentials package from $90PM, with Lightspeed plus at $246 and pro from $519.

Using the tiered system, Lightspeed users can pay $90 monthly and be denied access to customer management, floor plan software, pay-at-table software, business reporting, and inventory management beyond a basic stock count.

This makes it look as though Lightspeed recognize and has developed software that the best pizza POS system needs, or at least fills many of those business needs, but will not offer it at a price a small to medium-sized business can afford. This makes it seem as though Jacyn Heavens, Epos Now's founder, remains prescient in his statement that there are no other affordable, effective POS system providers in the industry for smaller businesses.

Regarding support, they have a number and email listed on their website but seem to rely on their live chat function, with "Speeder", the Lightspeed bot, responding until a staff member becomes available. Many businesses do require support on their POS systems, so it's worth researching what support you'll have available on whichever POS package you settle on.

For the best pizza restaurant POS systems, use Epos Now

Epos Now technology brings the flexibility to help you do business the way you want to, with all the latest online ordering options, speedy transaction software, and the very best payment processor deals.

If you run quick-service restaurants, a fine-dining pizza experience, or an exclusively delivered service, Epos Now can help your business achieve its full potential on a POS that grows as you do.

Epos Now customers can:

• Create bespoke transaction setups on secure, speedy software to shave time off the sales process.
• Manage your business stress-free with cloud technology that gives you instant access to the latest business data from anywhere in the world!
• Gain every advantage with hundreds of apps and partnerships with the best software in the restaurant industry.
• Benefit from detailed reporting to adapt your pricing strategy, manage inventory, staff, and more.

Get in touch with our expert team by submitting your details below, and join over 40,000 businesses using Epos Now’s retail POS or hospitality POS.

Make a little bullet point list at the end of the article that says. Curious for more reviews, check out these comparison pieces we prepared:

• Best POS system for grocery store
• Best POS system for convenience stores
• Best POS system for clothing store
• Best POS system for bakery
• Best POS system
• Best POS system for restaurant
• Best POS systems for bars
• Best POS system for retail
• Best POS system for food trucks
• Best POS system for liquor stores