TouchBistro Reviews

Pros

The TouchBistro POS system is a very easy to use. I don't find myself to be the best at POS systems, but the setup process was basically idiot-proof. Getting everything to work took way less time than I anticipated. Also, I have yet to see this POS system crash, even during busy hours.

Cons

Sometimes there can be a little lag when putting in certain orders. It seems like the POS system is sometimes just trying to play catch up with itself. We have noticed that moving from page to page oftentimes will slow it down. We have learned to not click as quickly now though.

Pros

User friendly, great tech support, does a lot.

Cons

Need training to buyers, better then they give. There’s video you can watch, but hands on learning is much better. You have to pay for each service, other POS’s the services come with it. Expert to have more then 1 bill….

Pros

Table side ordering. Menu flexibility. Expandability.

Cons

The more they add features, the worse it gets. I highly doubt that the development people have any restaurant experience. Refunding a cc that has been wrung in is ridiculously difficult. To top it off, they have just recently started to move EVERYTHING to the cloud. Including the server end-of-day reports which makes it extremely hard to check credit cards, voids, comps, etc. It's ridiculous at best. No thought whatsoever on user friendliness.

Alternatives Considered

Revel Systems

Reasons for Choosing TouchBistro

Tableside ordering.

Reasons for Switching to TouchBistro

Not really sure...wish daily I hadn't.

Pros

I love that it is so easy to navigate through my menu. Payment options are made simple and easy for the employees and customers. You don’t need to be tech savvy to understand how the program works so it’s great for all age employees.

Cons

Sometimes it takes a while to reach support

Pros

The ease of switching over from our old system to the TB system

Cons

Nothing . Everything works exactly they way we wanted .

Pros

The functionality of the POS with our iPad minis for order taking is great, and saves our staff time that was traditionally reserved for having to go directly to a work station.

Cons

Reporting is horrific. Daily reports do not provide all information needed (comps, promos, takeout vs. dine in totals,etc.) and also does not subtract cash payouts from total cash on report. When creating EOM reports, we have to look at 5-7 separate reports to get all the data needed.Labor reports do not consolidate tip reporting with labor, nor does it populate total earned for each employee with different job types/rates of pay. I had to create my own spreadsheet so our accountant can actually navigate our payroll.When trying to drill down numbers for a certain menu item and create an Excel report, it will not let you isolate. Onboarding is horrendous. The training materials provided are cursory at best, and support is minimal. We had to figure out how to use the system through trial and error, and I had to write a user's manual for our staff myself. What was promised as functionality/support by the sales team turned out to be patently false.Since the second to last TouchBistro software update, we have had a total breakdown on payment processing with our iPad Minis and V400m. I have called to work this out I think 6 times now? It is still an issue and no one has any answers. The V400m freezes, does not connect to the iPad, cancels payment, takes double payments, and a whole myriad of other issues. Nightmare is putting it gently. All systems are updated and WiFi connectivity is perfect. DO NOT USE WE PAY OR CHASE AT ANY COST!There's so much more that is awful.

Alternatives Considered

Heartland Restaurant and Toast POS

Reasons for Choosing TouchBistro

Our Aloha system was no longer supported.

Switched From

Aloha Cloud

Reasons for Switching to TouchBistro

Oh, you know, the song and dance. Which turned out to be Cats or Xandau the films instead of Singin' in the Rain or Cabaret.

Pros

Easy to use when it works, for the functions that are set up.

Cons

1) Customer service is TERRIBLE. We have had open trouble tickets for over a MONTH with no resolution. Important tickets, like payments for online orders appear to be received in the POS and yet no money ever hit our bank. So we can't rely on taking online orders, which is critical.
2) Software and hardware crashes. A lot. Like 6+ times per shift.
3) Inventory adjustments have no value associated with them, which makes it little better than a chalkboard for inventory tracking. (If I am missing product, the value of that loss should show up somewhere in a report as inventory losses. Yet it doesn't).
4) Basic reports missing, such as balance sheet/inventory on hand by category.

Pros

SO easy to use - programming buttons, menus, integrating payment, splitting bills - everything about it is so easy

Cons

In person set up would have been alot easier but that's the only con I can think of

Pros

Touchbistro is capable for sure as it has all the features, but is a bit awkward to use. We have to integrate several apps to get what we need and of course each one cost more money.

Cons

Support is not great. There are way way too many touches involved in a purchase or we have it set up all wrong! We suggested that to support, but no action. The different menu pages, items, etc are not intuitively set up. It honestly does not make sense in so many ways.

Pros

The most impactful feature is the ability to use an IPAD to service guest at their tables. TouchBistro is easy to use with the ability to send orders to our Kitchen staff eliminating paper orders.

Cons

There are no Cons using TouchBistro, integrated easily with our business processes.

Pros

I thought this would have a better interface than what I had been using. And while it is a little sexier and the touchscreen is handy, but those small benefits our out weighed by the other problems with their lack of competent support and other functionality.

Cons

The biggest problem is that they oversold and under delivered. They told me that all my current printers would work with their requirements. Opps get ready to go live, go live and then find out you have to purchase a $350 printer bc your visa printer isn't "actually compatible" after all. Print all of your visa slips to a boh printer and run to the kitchen to retrieve them for a week while the new printer arrives- so much fun!!! They didn't explain that each device must have it's own Moby Visa device, no problem, that's only about $200+ to get another one of those. Sales person sold me on how they set up your menu, oh not that costs $800, even the promotional video they sent says the same thing.

It is not reliable, there are constant glitches in the system. They roll out updates with out thoroughly testing them. I'm not paying them $120 per month to be QA for their shitty updates. The interface with the Mobi CC machine from Chase it completely intermittent. For at least half the transactions of the day, you have to send the info to the machine twice bc it automatically craps out an error on you. During one painful update, the system stopped communicating our visa terminals altogether. Really fun to ask customer if I can write down their info and run it later, that didn't make us look ghetto or anything.

Alternatives Considered

Toast POS

Reasons for Choosing TouchBistro

Because the Sapphire system was not very user friendly and had limitations that we were constantly trying to work around. It looks like an old dos program from 1999, for the most part.

Reasons for Switching to TouchBistro

They start up cost was supposed to be much cheaper.

Pros

The first year went well! I actually liked it.
Then according to their own tech support.. the company took on way too many customers than programmers or tech support could keep up with creating a domino effect of pure frustration and no support.

Cons

Many issues.
Tech support is hit or miss sometimes can take up to an hour get someone. Often they can not fix problem. They "escalate it" which means you will never hear back from them. Remote report app for phone rarely works and full of problems. If its a hardware issue no phone tech support. Have to email and wait for email which takes days.
Would not recomend.

Pros

The system seems like it should be great. The loyalty options seem great. They problem is they lie about features and the onboarding support is basically zero. To quote the onboarding rep, "As soon as you process your first transaction, my job is done". It doesn't matter that over 80% of the features aren't working and we don't have any online menu working, once one transaction is processed, you are on your own.

Cons

At this point, I have personally spent over 200 hours of my time to get this system running and I have 50% of the system running at one store and 25% at another. The system has zero support for multi-units and everything has to be repeated numerous times to make any changes. For example, for two stores, every change has to be done 4 times: 1 for instore, 1 for online and then the exact same changes again for any other location, every with the exact same menu. This is a terrible system for multi-units.

Pros

The only area I am happy with is the reporting. Everything else is truly terrible, time consuming, frustrating and a detriment to my ability to focus on my restaurant.

Cons

They may claim to have 24/7 customer service but that has only worked for us for two of our more than 30 issues in the past two years. The vast majority of issues must be sent off to a different department that does not work nights, weekends, or apparently ALL the holidays that exist in the US or Canada. There are issues on average every week, I have made six calls this week alone. On average I probably spend three hours a week dealing with issues, some weeks over 10 hours spent. There also seems to be issues with the hardware. We used to payment devices at our restaurant, so far 10 have failed. When these issues arise that also results in hours on the phone and days of communication to resolve. I

Pros

There really isn't much at all to like about the software. It's very basic. When it actually worka.

Cons

The app crashes a lot. It's wifi based so if your wifi goes down your credit cards readers won't work. If you close down your apps during an internet outage, you are screwed. Many, many glitches and system outages over the years. Customer service is slow and they don't have a system service statues website so when you call with an issue, you'll have to wait a long timeto talk to someone. Then by the time they call you back the issue will have resolved itself.
The back end is not easy to navigate. There is no search bar for items on the cloud. There is no way to mark modifiers out of stock. No partial refunds on online orders. No good support for menu builds and start up. You are basically on your own to figure it out.
They also sold me on a loyalty and gift card program and lied that it would soon integrate with online orders. It turns out they were weeks away from rolling out their own branded program. But it was too late for me.
Just so very many many problems over the years that I am finally fed up and switching to Toast. So far an amazing experience with them that makes me realize how horrible TouchBistro actually is.

Pros

colors on the menu buttons
unlimited software and hardware for a set price

Cons

-horrible customer service
-long processing time
-confusing reports
-false advertisement

Pros

Absolutely nothing. It took almost 4 months to onboard, nothing but problems ever since.

Cons

Constant glitches, several redundant aspects of table service, no signature line on credit card receipts, they made several unauthorized charges to my credit card for services I wasnt even able to use then I had to fight them for refunds, sales man lied to me about what the POS could and couldnt do to get me to sign on then another lengthy battle to get out of the contract. They claimed they cannot give refunds, which they can and did, and they claimed they never cancel contracts, which they can and did. Not IM just stuck in my main locations contract.

Pros

TouchBistro has been an amazing tool for our cafe. I love the ease of use, how easily we are able to get an overview of the cafe at any one time, along with performance, financial reporting, and all the rest. We keep discovering new features that allow us to be more and more accurate and efficient behind the counter. Support is also always really helpful and available whenever we need them!

Cons

Some of the features seem weirdly incomplete, like reporting having some types of reports available and not others. Also, we have had to source a secondary POS system to use for our retail inventory, as despite having the capability for things like barcode scanning, there is no way to quickly or easily update our inventory--with a stocklist of over 2000 items, having to create each item individually and update them manually is too much of a headache to bother with.

Pros

Easy to use set up and teach staff to use

Cons

I may not know about it, but would be great to have a text feature for guests to order from our pool side that can alert server to an order

Pros

It connects with our accounting software so that our daily sales are uploaded automatically.
The app is easy to use and our new staff can be trained quickly and efficiently.
The billing features are really great and allow our servers to manage tables the way the customer wants, not the way the POS wants.

Cons

Adding menu items is time consuming and a general pain. We would love to have a web based site that allows easier uploading .

The reporting features are a bit clunky - for example we cannot check on single item sales totals. Instead we have to download a entire report with ALL items.

Pros

Price point is great for a small independent business.
Ease of use: very easy to train new staff on the software.

Cons

Limitations for custom reporting as well as the frequency of updates - trying when all your programs are constantly changing, albeit for the better many times, tough to keep up with when all (not just touch bistro) your tech is constantly evolving faster than one can keep up.

Pros

I have been using touch bistro since we open on 2015 and still using it. The POS is easy to navigate and easy to use. I would not try any other .

Cons

When they download new info or upgrade, sometimes it takes so long for the other support to figured it out themselves.

Pros

-Easy to use (for the most part)
-Easy to setup
-Replaceable hardware (Apple products)
-More features than many similar competitors

Cons

-Poor customer support
-No setup options
-Some functions difficult to access/not intuitive
-Bugs/issues when iOS updates - unreliable

Pros

The upgrade in the equipment seemed fair .

Cons

No ability to create invoice
no accompanying app for off site management, or no site back up
unable to control print settings

Pros

price, ease of use and support system in place

Cons

lacks some of the functionality of the big POS systems but frankly independent businesses do not need all that horsepower