Toast VS Square: Find The Winner For Your Restaurant

Toast VS Square For Restaurants At A Glance

Toast and Square are both strong restaurant point of sale systems. However, Square offers more free features like a free online ordering platform and Google Ordering integration, while Toast offers more extensive restaurant-specific features like perishable inventory management and menu performance reports.

Toast Overview

Toast is a great choice for busy small to midsize restaurants because there are several restaurant-specific features like customizable ordering, tipping, online reservations, and kitchen workflow features. Toast also offers the most customizable loyalty program builder out of any restaurant POS on the market. Full-size restaurants will appreciate fast and intuitive server table management, while quick-serve restaurants can take advantage of self-serve kiosks and an order-ready screen so customers can quickly pick up to-go orders.

The system’s ingredient-level inventory tracking, easy 86-ing functions, and automated menu item syncing across locations and ordering platforms also allow for easy inventory management, especially for multilocation restaurant businesses.

Plus, Toast’s Android-based hardware can survive spills, drops, and most other restaurant mishaps (while iOS devices may not).

Toast POS online ordering app, PC reporting screen, kitchen display screen, handheld POS, and countertop POS.

Square For Restaurants Overview

Square is overall the best free/low-cost restaurant management system for small food service business owners. Square’s free features, including your own website, online gift card generator, Google Ordering, and social media marketing integrations, make Square a fantastic all-in-one inventory, online ordering, and POS software option for those with a limited budget.

You can use an unlimited number of your own iPads as POS systems (free plan only), purchase a dedicated Square Register stand for countertop and self-serve kiosk ordering, or purchase Square’s new durable Android-based mobile POS kit (starting at the Square Plus plan). Square card readers are compact and affordable, so it’s easy to sell at a restaurant, in a food truck, and on-location at events like farmers’ markets and festivals.

Square For Restaurants kitchen display screen, iPad POS, online ordering app, QR code menu, countertop POS, and handheld POS.

Where Toast Wins

Toast offers more restaurant-specific features like highly custom floor planning, reservation capabilities, and perishable inventory tracking, although with a higher price tag. Here are a few more areas where Toast really shines:

• Extensive floor planning capabilities: If you have a higher-end restaurant or one where you are constantly changing your alignment, Toast is going to be a great choice for you as it has some of the best floor management and menu management around.
• Detailed restaurant analytics: If you’re someone who likes to dig into the numbers and really maximize the efficiency of your menu and your restaurant in general, Toast has you covered with a deep set of reports that tops Square’s offerings.
• Restaurant-specific add-ons: While Square has a very robust app store, Toast has some unique add-ons for things like catering along with built-in reservation management.

Where Toast Falls Short:

• Overall Cost & Commitment: Toast’s advanced features do come at a price and its add-ons can make the software even more spendy. It can also be difficult to get an accurate read on just how much you’ll be paying in processing fees when you’re signing up, which is difficult when you’re forced into a long-term commitment.
• Clunky Payroll Add-On: While Toast has its own payroll software which some other companies offer as well, theirs falls short with users reporting how difficult it is to set up and use.
• Long Wait Times: While customer service has long been a high point for Toast, customers have started to complain that its wait times have increased significantly and customer service has been less than helpful

Where Square Wins:

Square is exceptionally simple software to both use and set up and customers will appreciate that, while not as in depth as Toast in some areas, it doesn’t skimp on features, also allowing you to scale up from its free plan to more advanced packages. Here’s where it shines:

• Free Online Store: This is a huge benefit to Square. It makes its eCommerce platform free to all users and it comes with built-in online ordering.
• Built-In Scheduling: This is a unique features to Square and it makes it great for businesses that cater or who want a simple, reservation system.
• Month-to-month plans: Square’s plans are simple and there is never any long-term obligation. Its processing rates are also simple to understand and they offer discounts for higher-volume sellers.

Where Square Falls Short:

• Expensive For Multi-Location Establishments: While Square is affordable, its costs can add up the more registers and locations you need, which may not make it the most viable option for franchises.
• Perishable Inventory Management: While Square continually updates its services, it lags behind Toast and other POS companies when it comes to this specific inventory management.
• Occasional Fund Holds: Square still has issues with holding funds or freezing accounts at times, particularly with high-risk merchants. These instances are few and far between but do still happen.

Toast VS Square Pricing Comparison

Square and Toast both offer plans that cost $0/month.

However, Toast charges higher payment processing fees on all orders to cover the cost of the “free” plan, especially if you add online ordering to your plan.

Toast is a more advanced restaurant POS system, but it’s quite expensive considering the cost of add-ons like online ordering and eGift cards (which Square offers for free).

Toast VS Square Features

Toast and Square both have strong tipping, check splitting, menu management, online ordering, loyalty program, gift card creation, floor planning, card pre-authorization, and email marketing features. Toast offers more customization in most of these categories, but for the average restaurant, you may not need such granular levels of custom settings.

Toast has a definitive edge over Square in terms of inventory management. Square, on the other hand, has better built-in online ordering, marketing, and offline payment capabilities.

For many restaurant needs, like reservations, Square offers free and low-cost workarounds, while Toast offers either proprietary (paid) solutions or (paid) integrations with third-party restaurant software providers.

The biggest difference between Toast and Square is the way you get (and pay for) your restaurant hardware. You have to use Toast’s proprietary hardware, while Square allows you to bring your own iPad-based devices or purchase affordable Square hardware.

Let’s dig into a more detailed feature comparison so you can decide which POS system you need.

Which Is Best For My Business: Toast Or Square?

Toast and Square are both great restaurant POS systems, but each one fits a certain business type. Here’s how to tell which restaurant POS is right for your business.

Choose Toast If…

• Your larger, full-scale restaurant needs in-depth features and durable, restaurant-grade hardware
• You have several restaurant locations that could benefit from master menu and inventory management
• You fully understand and are comfortable with Toast’s processing fees and contract requirements
• You have a restaurant inside a hotel or your restaurant focuses largely on catering as well as in-person orders
• Your takeout-heavy restaurant could use an order-ready screen to communicate order statuses with customers and delivery drivers

Choose Square For Restaurants If…

• You want a free/low-cost restaurant management solution
• You want affordable, diverse restaurant hardware options
• Your restaurant would benefit from a simple, easy-to-use POS system
• You don’t process a high volume of transactions
• Your restaurant could benefit from helpful add-ons like Square Loyalty and Square Payroll
• You want a month-to-month contract

Toast VS Square Comparison: The Final Verdict

Toast and Square restaurant POS systems both have great feature sets for restaurant owners. Toast features are more in-depth, but can also be much more expensive.

Square’s payment processing fees and hardware costs are consistent and transparent, while Toast’s custom-quoted pricing plans and customer service are anything but consistent and transparent.

If cost and responsive customer service are significant issues for your business, then Square for Restaurants is the better option. However, if you need a true top-of-the-line restaurant management system and are willing to pay for it, then choose Toast for your restaurant POS needs.

If neither of these POS providers sounds like the right fit for you, read our post on the best restaurant POS systems to find the software that will take your food service business to the next level.