How to choose a POS for fine dining

A fine-dining POS has to hold each course and fire it when the table is ready, keep every plate on a seat number, take payment at the table, split a check by seat, share tips by your house rules, talk to the reservation book and find a bottle fast. Toast, Square, Lightspeed, SpotOn, TouchBistro, Clover and Shift4 Dine each print some of these on their own pages.

No feature page shows how a system handles a 12-top on a Saturday night. This guide lists what each vendor says it does, what it charges, and which room each fits. If your room is mostly a bar, our bar POS guide covers tabs and pour counts, and the general POS buying guide covers every service type.

What does a fine-dining room need from a POS?

Need	Why it matters in a fine-dining room	What to test in a demo
Coursing and firing	The kitchen should see the next course only when the table is ready for it	Hold mains while starters go, then fire mains from the handheld
Seat positions	Runners place plates without asking who had what	Enter a four-top by seat and read the kitchen ticket
Tableside payment	The card stays with the guest	Pay a check on the handheld with a tip
Split by seat	Groups pay for their own plates and share the wine	Split a table of six by seat with one shared bottle
Tip pooling	Captains, servers, bussers and sommeliers share by house rules	Run a tip-share report for a mock shift
Reservations link	Guest notes and party size reach the server	Seat a booking and check whether an order opens with its notes
Wine and cellar items	Servers find a bottle by bin and sell by glass or bottle	Find a bottle by bin number and ring a glass of the same wine

How do coursing and firing work on each system?

Toast's course pacing example sends every course to the kitchen at once, fires only the first, and shows the others marked HELD on the expediter screen. In that set-up, each course fires when expo finishes the one before.

Lightspeed's table service guide puts items on the first course by default; servers tap Add a course for the next, and can add items by seat within a course so tickets show both. Shift4 Dine's menu coursing assigns items to courses that can go on hold automatically, and Shift4 notes that fine-dining locations often use it. Its Quick Coursing lets servers build courses on the ticket and tap Fire Next Course. Shift4 lists it as a pilot feature.

Square's restaurant pricing page lists coursing and seat management among Square Premium's features. Clover's full-service pricing includes tableside ordering and firing on the Standard and Advanced bundles. SpotOn's fine dining page says its POS handles complex modifications and coursing. TouchBistro's fine dining page lists prix fixe and event menus you can schedule; ask to see coursing in the demo.

How do seats, splits and tableside payment compare?

• Lightspeed splits a check with Distribute by seat, once advanced check splitting is on. Its check splitting guide warns that shared items ordered one at a time divide across every seat: four beers at a table of four become a quarter of each beer on each check. Order and pay at table is on the Essential and Premium plans.
• Shift4 Dine offers Auto Split by Seat on the Workstation, handheld and tablet, for merchants with at least one handheld. The handheld costs $29.99 per device per month.
• Square splits a check by items or seats, and lists tableside ordering, on Plus and Premium.
• TouchBistro says staff can join and split seats, bills and items on its tableside ordering page.
• Toast lists splitting and combining checks and its handheld on its fine dining page. Clover lists bill splitting on every full-service bundle and the Flex handheld on Standard and Advanced. SpotOn lists handhelds for tableside ordering.

How do tip pools, reservations and wine lists compare?

Tips. Toast's fine dining page lists Tips Manager for pooled tips. Square's Plus and Premium plans divide each card tip equally across tip-eligible staff clocked in at the time. SpotOn says its tip tool calculates, splits and pays out tips by your rules. Shift4 Dine's tip share rules suggest a percentage from one job to another, based on total, gross or net tips, and show it on the end-of-shift report.

Reservations. Toast sells Toast Tables for reservations, waitlist and table management. TouchBistro's reservations page lists guest notes for allergies and occasions, automatic reminders and optional card fees for missed bookings, for a flat monthly software fee with no per-booking charge. Lightspeed sells its own Reservations add-on and, per its integration settings guide, connects to OpenTable, SevenRooms, Aleno, TheFork and Resy, with an option to open a POS order when a booking is marked seated. Shift4 Dine's reservations sit in its Customer Hub; parties over 10 must be entered on the Workstation.

Wine. Shift4 Dine can search items by BIN number, the cellar code on a wine list, so a server types the bin and finds the bottle. Shift4 lists it for pilot users. TouchBistro lists menu notes for pairing suggestions and guest profiles that record a favorite bottle. Lightspeed's fine dining page lists switching between menus, including wine. For counting pours by the bottle, see the inventory section of our bar POS guide.

What do fine-dining POS options cost?

Prices below are copied from each vendor's own pages for the United States. Card processing, hardware and add-ons are extra unless a cell says otherwise.

POS	Fine-dining features on its own pages	Published price	Start here if
Toast	Course pacing, split or combine checks, Toast Tables, Tips Manager, handhelds	Toast plans: Starter Kit starting at $0/month for 1 location and up to 2 terminals; Point of Sale starting at $69/month; Build Your Own by quote. Single locations only	You want reservations, tip pools and course pacing from one company
Square	Coursing and seat management on Premium; seat splits, tableside and tip pooling on Plus and Premium	Square plans per location: Free $0/mo., Plus $49/mo., Premium $149/mo.; in person 2.6%, 2.5% or 2.4% + 15¢	You want printed prices and can use Premium's coursing
Lightspeed	Courses and seats, split by seat, order and pay at table, reservation integrations	Lightspeed plans: Starter 69 USD, Essential 189 USD, Premium 399 USD, with no billing term shown; Reservations an add-on	You book through OpenTable, SevenRooms or Resy and want orders to open at seating
SpotOn	Coursing, handhelds, reservations, tip management	SpotOn plans: All-In $0/station per month (2.79% + $0.20, 2-year minimum term); POS Essentials $55/station per month (2.45% + $0.15); handheld $297 each, marked down from $495	You want low upfront cost or per-station pricing
TouchBistro	Wine notes, guest preferences, table transfers, bill splits, reservations with reminders	TouchBistro plans: Point of Sale starting at $69/month; Essentials Bundle starting at $119/month; reservations quoted	You want guest notes and reservations tied to the POS
Clover	Table mapping, bill splitting, tableside ordering and firing on Standard and Advanced	Clover full-service: Standard $239/mo or Advanced $354/mo for 36 months, hardware included; in person 2.3% + 10¢	You want hardware and software in one fixed payment
Shift4 Dine (formerly SkyTab)	Menu coursing, Auto Split by Seat, tip share rules, reservations, bin search in pilot	No plan price printed; handheld $29.99 per device per month	You want handhelds with cellular and reservations in one system

Sources: Toast pricing, Square restaurant pricing, Lightspeed pricing, SpotOn pricing, TouchBistro pricing, Clover full-service pricing and Shift4's Handheld FAQs. For every fee on one system, see our Toast, Clover and SkyTab pricing guides.

How do you test a fine-dining POS before you sign?

1. Send the vendor a real tasting menu and wine list, and ask them to load both before the demo.
2. Seat a six-top by seat with a shared bottle. Hold mains, fire starters, then fire mains from the handheld. Read every kitchen ticket.
3. Split the check by seat and see where the shared bottle lands.
4. Add an allergy note to a booking, seat it, and check the note reaches the server and the kitchen.
5. Find a bottle by bin, then ring a glass of the same wine.
6. Pay two checks at the table with tips, then pull the tip-share report.
7. Unplug the internet and repeat step 2.
8. Ask for a written monthly total: software, each handheld and screen, reservations and processing.

If guests also book by phone, Maple Pro lists booking, changing and cancelling reservations on OpenTable on its pricing page. Maple's integrations page lists Toast, Square, Clover, Lightspeed, SpotOn and SkyTab (now Shift4 Dine) among the POS systems it writes phone orders into.

Published by Maple. This AI-assisted guide combines fine-dining, pricing and help-center pages from Toast, Square, Lightspeed, SpotOn, TouchBistro, Clover and Shift4 with an original needs table and demo test. It does not report hands-on testing of any POS or name a best system.