Start with your format, not the feature list
The best system for a food truck is not the best system for a three-location full-service group. Before you look at any product, write down how you actually operate: your order mix (pickup, delivery, dine-in), your volume, how many locations, and whether you have staff to manage complex software. Your format narrows the field faster than any feature comparison.
Separate “must-have” from “nice-to-have”
Vendors win by making every feature feel essential. It isn’t. For most independents the must-haves are a small handful: reliable order intake, payment processing at a fair rate, a customer-facing ordering experience that doesn’t lose carts, and hardware that works. Loyalty, marketing automation, kiosks and AI features are genuinely useful — but rank them as nice-to-haves unless one of them is core to your concept.
Total cost, not sticker price
The monthly plan is only part of the cost. Add per-order commissions, payment-processing fees, hardware (bought or included), setup fees, and the cost of any layer you’ll have to buy elsewhere. Two systems with the same headline price can differ by thousands a year once hardware and per-order fees are in. Model it against your real monthly volume.
Ownership and lock-in
Ask what you keep if you leave. Do you own your domain and website, or does it disappear when you cancel? Do you get your customer list? Is there a multi-year contract or is it month-to-month? Systems vary enormously here, and it matters most at exactly the moment you want to switch — which is the worst time to discover you can’t.
Try before you commit
Whenever you can, place a real order through a demo, watch how it lands on the staff side, and see how the customer experience feels on your own phone. Marketing pages hide friction; a live test surfaces it. The system you’ll be happy with in a year is usually the one that felt clear and reliable in that first hands-on test.