Order terminals have invaded fast food concepts, with more or less effective and more or less adapted solutions. To better navigate the jungle of ordering terminals, here is a quick overview of existing solutions, their advantages and their weaknesses, based on my humble experience in the catering field.

Tabesto, the leader with feet of clay

Tabesto was the first French player to position itself on the restaurant terminal market at an affordable price. Their solution integrates an administration console to manage its menu, the provision of control tablets running on Android, a TPE attached to each tablet, an installation carried out by them, and it is also possible to be implemented relationship with a craftsman for the installation of terminals on the carpentry plan.

To choose, it will be better to buy the equipment if the cash is there rather than rent it via a banking organization like LOCAM, because in the long run, it will cost you very expensive and in addition, you will have to remember to send the famous registered letter in order to end the leasing otherwise you will be automatically rehired, which is almost like a scam, also practiced by Nespresso elsewhere. Indeed, the job of a restaurateur is not to send registered mail reminders but to produce and serve food.

Fortunately, Tabesto can very kindly take care of this administrative aspect at your request, and it is also remarkably kind of them to do so, unlike Nespresso which preferred to say nothing, forcing the restaurateur to pile up again over a year .

Price-wise, Tabesto generally costs around €70/terminal/month (but this can vary depending on the number of terminals used), which is largely correct.

The +:

• a well-polished design on the client side;
• a system used by most restaurateurs, and therefore a habituation on the part of customers regarding the use of their ordering;
• a connection with most cash register systems like Zelty or Tiller;
• a caring accounting service.

THE - :

• No promo code, no integrated loyalty;
• Reactive but ineffective customer support, outdated and with sometimes ludicrous responses;
• Many bugs, and this is where the problem lies (tedious TPE terminal connection, timeout at the end of the order process which does not work, payment refused even though it has been successfully completed, which pushes the customer to pay twice times and which leads to customer complaints subsequently by email, etc.);
• Too long a latency time between the order and arrival at the checkout;
• A latency time between the order and the printing of the ticket that is too long, which means that customers never wait for their ticket, leaving it for the next customer;
• Generally speaking, a slow and tedious customer journey;
• A heavy system that runs on wifi with the installation of a Tabesto router, therefore easily bugged in the event of unstable wifi;
• An archaic menu editing dashboard (too many limitations on the weight of a photo, loading too long, no photo thumbnail in the product list, no multi-site management so one menu per restaurant, and no responsive version for mobile therefore impossible to make a price change from a smartphone).

Conclusion: a good pioneer, but totally buggy, without updating for years, unstable and inefficient in practice.

The Zelty terminal

The Zelty cash register software also offers its own tablet system, which runs on iPad, for an inexpensive subscription of €39, to which must be added the subscription to the TPE solution, of €20 excluding VAT / month / TPE.

On paper, for those who have the Zelty checkout, it is the ideal tool, since the use of the terminal by the same service provider makes it possible to avoid the interaction of several service providers, with the misunderstandings that this can cause. , additional costs, cumulative interlocutors and a relative fluidity to say the least.

Except that in practice, it's something else... Let's see this together.

The +:

• Unrivaled fluidity when taking orders (finally!);
• In theory, good value for money, and I mean in theory, you will understand right after;
• The use of an ethernet connection (VS Wifi for Tabesto), which allows you to avoid problems linked to unstable Wi-Fi, so here too in theory, it is much more professional, even if in fact, it still bugs (we're getting there);
• One and the same place to modify the menu, in Zelty, which avoids many complications, and this is the major point, because the fact of making a modification in one and the same place saves time and above all errors. On Tabesto, you must first change the product in question on Zelty (basically), then modify it in Tabesto for the restaurant concerned, then modify it in each Tabesto menu for each restaurant concerned, and finally launch a product synchronization between Tabesto and Zelty, you might as well say an obstacle course.

THE - :

• Untimely bugs during payment: it happens that in the event of an internet micro-outage (this is in any case the reason given by Zelty, which the Internet service provider denies), the order is validated on the customer but never arrives at the checkout side, which forces the cashier to restart the terminal app to unblock the situation, a completely unmanageable situation in the event of a rush;
• Worse still, sometimes the order placed at the terminal never arrives at the cash register, and no receipt is printed. The customer therefore waits in vain for an order, sometimes more than 15 minutes without anyone attending to him. In the event of a bug, it would be enough for the order to go into a queue, before being sent to the cashier side, but Zelty unfortunately never managed to resolve this bug, despite their good will.
• A visible promo code functionality but which was never functional (what a shame);
• No customer recognition or loyalty;
• Product description display problem, the description is never displayed in full for unique products, which is again eliminatory since the customer is not informed of all the ingredients of the product. It would be enough to open a pop-up for each individual product, but despite this suggestion, that does not seem to be on the agenda for Zelty;
• The “out of stock” functionality does not work unless you restart the terminal app each time it is out of stock, which is, to say the least, disastrous. Imagine that you are out of stock, you deactivate a product, and your 10 terminals continue to display the product until the next “burst” of customers. Total rubbish;
• Nice support but unfortunately did not manage to resolve the problems listed.

Conclusion: if you are in a small premises, you are looking for an inexpensive additional solution and you are resourceful, these terminals may do the trick at the beginning, except that you will have to pay for iPads (very expensive), and once under the cold shower of the countless number of bugs, the salesperson who was initially very motivated to sell you all this expensive solution will be much less talkative afterwards, and devoid of solutions.

Innovorder: the most serious

Innovorder was also one of the first players to position itself on order terminals accessible to small and medium-sized brands, and from what I remember, the support was much more serious than with a player like Tabesto, or in case you should be in full autonomy on the Zelty side.

I was struck by the seriousness of their teams when I visited their premises, and they were the most serious in the way they explained their product, showed their statistical and analysis tools, and their ambitions.

The +:

• an all-in-one solution with cash register software, which avoids laborious mappings (see Tabesto X Zelty);
• hyper-pro terminal designs, which resemble a McDonald's.
• unrivaled fluidity;
• the ability to easily personalize the card;

THE - :

The only limiting side that I see but it is not one because the quality of the pay is the higher price than Tabesto, but if everything works and better, then it is worth it, provided you have a certain volume (at least 60 to 80 orders/service for example).

For my part, I was only able to see the solution in demo and never on site, so I cannot give my opinion on the product, but it seems that customer feedback is positive on their ordering solution.

TastyCloud: the classiest

TastyCloud was also one of the first players to position itself on restaurant ordering systems, and it initially positioned itself on slightly more premium brands than Tabesto, which is more focused on fast food concepts.

As a result, TastyCloud tablets display the menu horizontally rather than vertically, and seem to prioritize the user experience and the increase in the average basket through a well-designed product suggestion during the customer journey.

I have not had the opportunity to test this solution on site, but here is what emerges from my research on the solution.

The +:

• Synchronization with most cash register software;
• No automatic printing of the ticket, unlike Zelty which prints everything for nothing, and uses a lot of paper in a vacuum (hello ecology), and Tabesto which "forces" the user to enter their email to receive a ticket. an impression that has no value;
• A premium design for a better presentation of products, highlighting the restaurant menu in the best possible way;
• A multilingual map;
• Quality photos, unlike Tabesto which forces compression to really small sizes;
• Personalized suggestions;
• The invitation to leave a review by the customer via the tablet.

Having not been able to actually test the tool, I cannot speak about the disadvantages or the bugs, but TastyCloud seems to be the service provider which received the best customer review score. If you have a serious restaurant, and not a concept of donuts on the beach, I advise you to favor this solution rather than a Zelty or a Tabesto, otherwise you risk damaging your credibility.

Belorder: the outsider

Belorder positions itself as an ultra-serious outsider with very interesting cross-functional solutions. For the moment, I have only been able to see the demo, but I will soon test the solution, which integrates both the order terminal part and the online order part.

The +:

• Not necessarily more expensive than another despite a solution that seems very successful;
• A great design and a smooth user experience;
• Advanced statistics;
• Customer pooling with the “online ordering” section;
• A loyalty tool;
• Simple connection with cash register software like Zelty.

THE - :

• For the moment I don't see any, I'm waiting to test, which is planned in the coming days because I'm at the onboarding stage. But so far, everything is very professional on their side and having tested their terminals at Pokawa, it seems to work really well.

The other actors

If you know of any others, don't hesitate to share them in the comments and I won't hesitate to add them to the article!