Aldelo POS is a restaurant POS for smaller entities, emphasizing simplicity, from the company of the same name in Pleasanton.
N/A
SkyTab POS
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
SkyTab POS (formerly Harbortouch POS) delivers a touch-screen point of sale system that will streamline your business operations and automate your management activities. SkyTab is a product from Shift4.
Aldelo POS is great for small to midsize single location restaurants. Unless you go with the cloud model you're limited to that. Aldelo is great for limited menus and places that do not track inventory in their POS. Once you go with a very large menu, be prepared to spend a lot of time getting it entered and working properly! Multiple stations are no problem and it runs well on older hardware too. Overall, a pretty solid system!
Harbortouch is a powerful and robust POS system. After using other methods and training on a couple of different designs, Harbortouch is far ahead of the rest regarding functionality, ease of use, and error-free transactions. It has an excellent reporting tool that is easy to use and "item" editing features that make using the system quick and easy. As checkout is in process, and the customer keeps changing their mind, or the cashier makes errors, the system makes it very quick and easy to edit to keep the transaction in process.
Reports: Live up to the minute data is something that any restaurant manager/owner wants. Aldelo does this well.
Backend store setup (for techs like me) is very easy once you know the system. Setting up the peripherals, station-specific settings and the like - all very easy and intuitive
Support: calling into support has always been a great experience, and perhaps the biggest sell point. I've even received help with expired support contracts. Their team is always at the ready to login or just offer the right advice driven solutions for the current support needs. Great job here!
Credit cards: we've all seen it with the EV revolution. Once that happened, using whatever merchant/payment processor went out the window. Aldelo - to my knowledge - only integrates directly with 4 processors. They need to add a lot more than that IMHO!
Menu setup/rollout: this can test even the most talented veterans. Depending on the menu and the modifiers - this can go easy or be an outright nightmare to setup. A more intuitive process is direly needed here.
Inventory: Well, none of my clients use it. Make it a value addon? Just get rid of it and leave to another solution? Inventory is a job I and of itself. Most restaurants I've dealt with are way too busy and shorthanded to do this properly anyway.
From the list above Aloha POS would be the closest to a restaurant POS, it's actually a very good one. As with any software, it does the same basic things, and in all likeliness, this has improved as a platform. It's been a while since I used it, so I don't want to provide out of date info. I listed Counterpoint because I currently manage a busy retail store that uses CP and they are opening a second location that will add bar and restaurant-style services to the CP system. That said, CP is retail first but looks like it will handle the restaurant/bar side of things nicely. Hard to recommend this solution for anyone other than high (HIGH!) end retailers as the upfront and overtime costs can be big. I wouldn't recommend for restaurants.
We currently use Harbortouch and TouchBistro at our restaurant. We were going to switch to just using TouchBistro because Harbortouch's customer support and technical team were having trouble believing we were having ongoing issues with our system. Unfortunately, it took us telling Harbortouch that we were leaving them for them to get to the root of the system's problems. Finally, they worked three days straight to fix all of the issues. We decided to keep both systems for now as Harbortouch has a much more robust system. Still, each uses different credit card processing companies, so hopefully, we can avoid downtime during our three-month, hectic tourist season. Now that Harbortouch fixed all of the issues, their system is much more robust and powerful.
Never been a loss to invest in Aldelo. It pays for itself very fast (software licensing).
If you do the hardware right it can get expensive and take a little longer to see the ROI. All in one touchscreens are pricey, especially for the better brands. The peripherals are specific too: thermal printers, specialized impact printers for the kitchen, etc. They all add up quickly.
The ability to monitor sales and adjust menus accordingly has to be priceless to an owner.
