Restaurant management — the model build-off

The top build — all sixteen lifecycles proven.

Best at

We drove all sixteen workflows from start to finish and nothing broke. Selling a dish actually depletes its ingredients and updates your food cost as it happens, courses fire to the kitchen in the right order, tables clear correctly when parties are split, you can create modifiers without leaving the app, and manager approvals really check the role — a valid cashier password still will not authorise a discount.

Watch for

The only loose ends are ones it flags itself: the demo accounts share a password, and a few menu items have no recipe costed against them so selling them does not reduce stock.

Best when multi-location isolation matters.

Best at

The best handling of multiple sites — we proved a branch manager cannot see another branch's sales, and that refusal happens on the server. It also has the strongest sign-in security of the group, correct money maths, and a durable record of what happened.

Watch for

You cannot create modifier groups inside the app — they have to be loaded in beforehand — and refunding an already-settled bill reopens it rather than leaving it closed.

Choose it when financial controls matter most.

Best at

The tightest financial controls. Nothing can be rung up unless the till is open for today's trading, past days lock so the numbers cannot be quietly altered, and permissions are checked centrally on the server rather than in the interface. Genuine separation between locations, and a food-cost model that compares what you should have used against what you actually counted.

Watch for

When first audited it could only sign people in through its hosting platform, so it could not be moved anywhere else without adding its own accounts.Fixed since audit — it now has its own password accounts and runs anywhere on its own.

The widest feature surface of the four.

Best at

Eighteen screens for staff — till, kitchen, floor plan, reservations, stock, purchasing, recipes, rotas and loyalty, plus accounting, catering, self-service kiosk and delivery-app orders — on a real database with proper sign-in and permissions enforced on the server.

Watch for

Several screens broke at audit: the receipt page went blank after a sale, staff could not clock in, group bills were double-counted, and two exports produced nonsense.Fixed since audit — all five were fixed and re-checked on a clean install — no crashes, working refunds and clock-in, and correct group totals.