iPad POS Systems

[m0w]

Hi everyone,

I know this question has been asked 100+ times over the past few years but I still need to read few feedbacks.
We are opening a microbrewery in Canada (Vancouver Island) -should be opening Spring 2016. Our patio/lounge is about 100+ seats and we will also have a retail area to sell our branded merch.

I have been looking at A LOT of POS systems for the past few weeks. I don't want to sound cheap but we clearly don't have the budget to go with the big companies, sign contracts for X years or pay monthly fees > $200, spend few thousands in hardware, etc...
I was looking at both Square and Shopkeep. It seems like both might be a really good fit for us. It's fairly cheap (no monthly fee for Square and $49/terminal for Shopkeep), easy to install/manage and we don't need a full "restaurant-type" of POS with seating options etc... most of their features seem great, up-to-date and matching our needs -especially Shopkeep allowing us to track raw ingredients.

I guess my question here is... Have you being or are you currently using Square or Shopkeep as your POS system? If so, would you recommend it? Any bad surprise? If you're using Shopkeep, which payment processor are you using?
If you have any other POS recommendation, please let me know .

Cheers!

Morgan

[GlacierBrewing]

Hi Morgan,
I'll throw a plug in for TouchBistro. We got into it, including hardware, for under $700. There is a monthly subscription fee but I don't recall it being crushing. We've been using it for awhile now and have found it to be intuitive to setup and easy to run. Give it a look.

Prost!
Dave

[Raleighbrew]

Pos

Check out BreadCrumb (https://breadcrumb.com/). $100/month with hardware included. I believe its a two year deal, but you keep the equipment after that.

[mswebb]

We are using Square for our retail store. We don't have a taproom or patio but that will change after our expansion. Square is fine for basic retail; multiple screens of items you can enter into an order, some discounting options, etc. We don't use the Square payment service as they don't accept debit. When we close out each sale we enter it as cash or "other" which means we have to match up sales to our credit terminal receipts but it's not that cumbersome. We don't seem to have the options for tabs available to us which will limit us going forward.

[jbrewer]

non-Ipad

Morgan, this does not answer your question exactly, as I have not used either Square or Shopkeep. But here is what I found in my own research on these two - which seems to be true for most of the ipad pos systems. They are very slow, servers tend to hate them unless you have a very low volume taproom. I have seen 6 people in a taproom bog down a square system. They do give some reporting features, but some don't have simple things like the ability to run tabs by swiping and pre-authorizing a card (to me, very important). Some don't have a very good gift card function (also important, especially if you plan on having a couple levels of gift cards/loyalty cards). And, with all them, you pay and pay forever. I decided I would rather pay once and own my software and hardware. Check out http://www.semicron.com/rpe2001.html . It is a restaurant POS software that runs on your windows computers (which are cheap). Their website is awful, but the software is solid and at $600 for the software and less than a grand for the hardware, it seems to me to be a better option than spending $100+ a month (or paying huge merchant fees). Just my thoughts on POS.

[Brandjes]

2 years with Square. No issues and they keep adding new features.

Do the math carefully when you compare CC processors. Monthly fees, processing fees, swipe fees all add up ($0 for Square). And the varying rates for different types of cards will drive you crazy. Very few cards get the preferred rate (the rate they sell you on). Square is 2.75% for all cards (it works with debit cards also) and includes AmEx and Discover.

Square allows for card swipe to create a tab -but it doesn't authorize the card. They say that feature may be coming - but with the new chip cards I think that option may disappear for everyone eventually.
The Square Gift Cards work great and they have a lot of options for the look of the card.

I may switch over to their payroll feature. Employees use square to clock in/out. Square processes payroll, pays taxes and files all forms. $20/ month plus $5/employee. This is less expensive than my current program but not currently available in all States - not sure about Canada.

I payed about $800 for all the hardware - iPad, Square Stand, Cash Drawer, receipt printer - I don't use the bar code scanner option. The iPad is the most expensive part.

I will be meeting with someone from SilverEdge next week to see what they offer, but it will take a great product at a great price for me to consider switching.

Merry Christmas
Eric

[claponsie]

Hi Morgan,
I'll throw a plug in for TouchBistro. We got into it, including hardware, for under $700. There is a monthly subscription fee but I don't recall it being crushing. We've been using it for awhile now and have found it to be intuitive to setup and easy to run. Give it a look.

Prost!
Dave

I second touchbistro. We've been using it for a year. In fact, we are planning to purchase a second iPad and cash register for a waitress station/2nd bartender. It includes all of the features you would expect a commercial restaurant pos to have. It can print tickets to a kitchen printer, or it can actually have another iPad function as the kitchen display. You can run multiple iPads with ease. You can open tabs by credit card, which greatly speeds up the cashout process and reduces risk of error on tabs (not to mention ensures that every tab gets paid). Excellent reporting features. Data can be exported to excel and mined. You can choose to include tax in the price or tack it on. The best thing I can say is that it is routinely updated. There are new features added all the time and bugs/glitches usually get fixed pretty quickly. It would take a lot to convince me to switch to a different POS.

My only recommendation is that you avoid using an apple air express to network the printer and cash register. we had issues with our building where the wifi was dropping out on the apple air from time to time. We ran an Ethernet drop to the pos, which is better for security purposes anyway.

[m0w]

iPad POS

Thank you all for the feedbacks.
I had a look at Breadcrumbs a while ago and they were not available up here in Canada. Maybe they are now, I'll double check.
Touchbistro is definitely an interesting one. The monthly fee is not expensive and they seem to have pretty detailed reports too -which is definitely something we need. However I'm not sure we need all their features, the restaurant seating display, kitchen printer etc...
Could you guys tell me if Touchbistro has its own payment processing feature or did you guys have to pick a third-party payment processor?

I appreciate reading a great feedback about Square -thanks Eric. I'm willing to give them a try after all the good things I've read about them. They seem like the most affordable/most suitable ipad POS for startups.

I will try to schedule a product demo for Touchbistro and try to know more about their product for breweries.

In the meantime, if you guys have more recommendation, feel free to throw them in

Cheers,
Morgan

[GlacierBrewing]

Thank you all for the feedbacks.
I had a look at Breadcrumbs a while ago and they were not available up here in Canada. Maybe they are now, I'll double check.
Touchbistro is definitely an interesting one. The monthly fee is not expensive and they seem to have pretty detailed reports too -which is definitely something we need. However I'm not sure we need all their features, the restaurant seating display, kitchen printer etc...
Could you guys tell me if Touchbistro has its own payment processing feature or did you guys have to pick a third-party payment processor?

I appreciate reading a great feedback about Square -thanks Eric. I'm willing to give them a try after all the good things I've read about them. They seem like the most affordable/most suitable ipad POS for startups.

I will try to schedule a product demo for Touchbistro and try to know more about their product for breweries.

In the meantime, if you guys have more recommendation, feel free to throw them in

Cheers,
Morgan

Hi Morgan,
We don't use the restaurant layout option. You can upload your own background image and bypass the layout altogether. Use whatever third-party processor you like, but TouchBistro is partnered with Mercury Processing. So far, I have no complaints. Their fees seem to be pretty good.
All in all, Touchbisto is a intuitive, productive platform.
Just my two cents...
Prost!
Dave

[claponsie]

Thank you all for the feedbacks.
I had a look at Breadcrumbs a while ago and they were not available up here in Canada. Maybe they are now, I'll double check.
Touchbistro is definitely an interesting one. The monthly fee is not expensive and they seem to have pretty detailed reports too -which is definitely something we need. However I'm not sure we need all their features, the restaurant seating display, kitchen printer etc...
Could you guys tell me if Touchbistro has its own payment processing feature or did you guys have to pick a third-party payment processor?

I appreciate reading a great feedback about Square -thanks Eric. I'm willing to give them a try after all the good things I've read about them. They seem like the most affordable/most suitable ipad POS for startups.

I will try to schedule a product demo for Touchbistro and try to know more about their product for breweries.

In the meantime, if you guys have more recommendation, feel free to throw them in

Cheers,
Morgan

TouchBistro partners with a couple of different payment gateway options. I went with Mercury because they offered to cover my monthly TB fee for two years.

[Brandjes]

Met with SilverEdge. They have some nice features and apps with their POS and some good marketing add ons too. All the various fees for processing, equipment, etc. add up to $162/month plus .07 per swipe. Their rate is 2% for all cards (except AmEx) at all levels.

If you have enough volume or a high enough average ticket then the rate is OK. At my current volumel and average ticket the total rate ends up being 5.5% - too high for me.

[kererubrewing]

We use Vend for our cellar door. It has worked well for our retail sales.

[m0w]

POS + Management Software?

Hi Morgan,
We don't use the restaurant layout option. You can upload your own background image and bypass the layout altogether. Use whatever third-party processor you like, but TouchBistro is partnered with Mercury Processing. So far, I have no complaints. Their fees seem to be pretty good.
All in all, Touchbisto is a intuitive, productive platform.
Just my two cents...
Prost!
Dave

Hi Dave!
Thanks for the update. Quick question for you. Does TouchBistro allow for a "Raw Ingredient Tracking" feature or anything similar?
I know Square does not handle "deep analysis/report" and I feel like this is a critical feature to track where your beer is going. I was reading a lot of posts earlier today and heard about Ekos Brewmaster as a brewery management software. If we were going to save money on POS and use Square, I think it would be beneficial for us to pay that extra monthly fee (about $100 vs. $500 for O.Beer) and know exactly what we're doing.

I know I'm digressing from the original POS subject but I'd be curious to know what you guys think about Ekos Brewmaster software. Do you think that's a "MUST HAVE" tool? Did you or do you still have a positive/negative experience using it?

Cheers!

Morgan

[GlacierBrewing]

Hi Dave!
Thanks for the update. Quick question for you. Does TouchBistro allow for a "Raw Ingredient Tracking" feature or anything similar?
I know Square does not handle "deep analysis/report" and I feel like this is a critical feature to track where your beer is going. I was reading a lot of posts earlier today and heard about Ekos Brewmaster as a brewery management software. If we were going to save money on POS and use Square, I think it would be beneficial for us to pay that extra monthly fee (about $100 vs. $500 for O.Beer) and know exactly what we're doing.

I know I'm digressing from the original POS subject but I'd be curious to know what you guys think about Ekos Brewmaster software. Do you think that's a "MUST HAVE" tool? Did you or do you still have a positive/negative experience using it?

Cheers!

Morgan

TouchBistro does allow for finished inventory tracking. It had an online cloud reporting with pretty good metrics.

[littlemiamibrew]

Pos

Reviving old thread. What is current thinking of brewery POS systems. Comparing Sales Vu, Square, BreadCrumb. Are all systems a "swipe card and return to guest" type iPad system?

Thanks!