Worst customer support - EVER

This is one of the most arrogant company's I've ever encountered. All along they've been treating me like they're doing me a favor and I'm bloody fortunate to pay them every month for a service that has now cost me in the thousands over the purchased hardware and rented software thousands. Soon as possible, I'm off to another provider -- one that actually answers the phone before I have to shave again.

Pros

When it works, which is usually right up to the latest and greatest new "software update", its highly intuitive, its easy for the staff to handle, its easy for me to program, and has quite useful analytics attached.

Cons

It breaks A LOT - and always at the worst possible time, and their customer support would have to be five or six times better to just suck. First time it took them 7 HOURS to return my urgent tech support call - lost a dinner service. Next time it was 9 HOURS -- not only lost dinner... but we lost a lunch service too!!!

Then they started getting better... next time it was only 4 hours... called 10 minutes into the 7th game of the Stanley Cup finals [I missed the rest of the game]. To their credit, I had their support person call me back in 15 minutes [the time it takes to get from my house to the restaurant] - and he was able to fix the problem in just a tick over 90 minutes. Tonight it was 3 hours and 10 minutes before the call back came. I was on my motorcycle [don't talk or text while riding]... called back the number on the voicemail... only to find myself back in a queue. Its been 40 plus minutes so far... but fool that I am, I'm still hopeful.

Silvercreek has benefited in many ways from using TouchBistro.

Pros

The most popular opinion from our staff is the ease of use with TouchBistro. The program needs barely any training assistance, staff picks up the location of menu items quickly, customers are impressed with the technology, and in a small space like our coffee house the size of the unit compared to our grandfather of a cash register we can host more treats for our customers.

Cons

We struggle with getting prompt response when in a stressful or urgent situation. Restaurant business is fast paced and requires immediate help, especially if we are stalled in being able to take payment or assist a customer in another way. Guests don't appreciate being asked to wait while we try to contact Touch Bistro unsuccessfully. Email response time is reasonable. We also struggle to offer emailed invoices directly from touch bistro without having to switch over our wifi, slowing down service. We are also struggling to have reliable synching on our online account to view sales reports.

Easy to use, intuitive with excellent stats and dashboard.

After researching the market for new POS system for my newly established Cafe/Bar I found Touch Bistro to be superior to many products in the market. It is cost effective, easy to use, doesn't require specialized equipment (Only Ipad, printer and cash till), easy to install and learn on your own and requires minimum training for new staff. One of the most important feature that many other POS don't provide is the dashboard and cloud reporting. I rely heavily on these data to manage my business effectively and efficiently. It provides a breakdown of sales performance over any period of time, connects to my accounting system and load sales data directly into my accounting system, has excellent integration with 3rd party apps such as 7Shifts for scheduling and Shogo for accounting. I'm truly impressed with this product and it's robustness. I have recommended the product to many other business owners and I always get the same reaction of amazement when they see the reporting it provides compared to the POS systems they currently use.

Pros

Dashboard and cloud reporting. ease of use.

Cons

Technical support seems to be overwhelmed and you can rarely connect with them when you need them most. They try to get back to you within 24 hours, but in most cases that's too long and have significant impact on our business.

Room for improvement

First off: TouchBistro seems to be the best option out there for a full-service restaurant POS. We looked at everything we could find (that's available in Europe) and trialed the three leaders, and TouchBistro came out on top. We moved from an outdated local POS and have generally been happy. It works as expected, it hasn't had any catastrophic failures, and represents OK value for money. That said, there are some problems, both with the software and with the sales/support: - Frequent crashes when printing tickets (more than once per day). You have to restart TouchBistro, find your now-closed table, and reprint the ticket. - No way to print invoices. This is required in most European countries and TouchBistro offers no way to do this. It causes us a big delay to have to generate one in Word and print it out for the customer. If they are going to sell in Europe they need to have this core function that other, more basic, systems offer. - No way to print and charge part of a table. Missing is the ability to select various items, regardless of which seat they are at, and let me print a ticket and charge for those items. We literally lose 30 minutes a day moving items between seats for large groups when they want to pay. - No menu support for multiple locations. Even though they have a page on their web site dedicated to franchises and multiple locations, the capabilities aren't there. Menus have to be painstakingly typed in by hand on the iPad (no cloud/web support) and while you can eventually move a menu from one location to another, it is a convoluted procedure involving a call to tech support. This was one of the selling points that attracted us to TB and they haven't delivered. - No reporting support for multiple locations. You have to log in, view one report, then log out and log back in with a different username to see the other report. - The localization (Spanish at least) is horrible. It's like Peggy Hill did it. They seem to have just run all the strings through Google translate and much of it is nonsensical. - Impossible to update menu during service. If something runs out or a beer tap changes, you have to wait for everyone to log out. We are going to stick with TB for now, but there is room for improvement.

Pros

Easy to use and train.

Cons

There's a huge list in my review.

Easy to Program POS

Touchbistro is an easy right out-of-the-box solution for all sorts of styles of restaurant service. It's fairly quick to set-up and support is excellent. You can easily throw new staff to it and have them come out on top feeling like they understand how to use it very quickly. Intuitive as an iPad/iPhone program should be to new users. Reporting is very good unless you're expecting TouchBistro to do a lot of the heavy lifting - it's good, but not quite amazing on the back end quite yet. Be aware of how you organize your products early on for the reporting that you do get. It's only as good as the input and thought you put into it while your business is just a baby - that can come back to nip you once you have a better feel for both the software and your establishment.

Pros

Ease of putting in products + costs, assigning staff, third-party integrations (ie. 7Shifts)

Cons

Some of the reports lack in what they return, Reports should be fully automated, Crashes happen (though not frequently), hard to run in a building with no dedicated network

For iPad soulution for busy restaurants, this is your answer!

I have a higher volume seafood restaurant in Key West Fl called The Stoned Crab. We wanted a system where wait staff could service multiple tables while taking orders with out having to go to a main terminal. After trying another system and seeing others that relied upon cloud support and internet we were left with a crashed system and back to basics. A good resturantuer recommended Touch Bistro, I can tell you things are now amazing, the systems works incredible off its own network(yes you loose internet and never skip a beat) it's fast, reliable and the customer support and tech can't be beat. I really lost faith in entering the market with iPads after a big faluire, but Touch Bistro made me a believer and goes out of there way to find new ways to give us data and programs that we want. To sum it up, if you want to increase service, business, effiency and have happy staff.....You just found the right system, take it from me who found then latter than sooner, you won't regret. Paul Menta

Pros

Customer support, fast system, no internet needed to run, menu photos and special items to show to customers at table, data to watch your bottom line and a ton more.

Cons

No chip card swipe yet, I would say more program features, but when I asked for more they made more. I am having trouble with this part as the programming can be a bit tech, but they help you and then your good.

Over all Good just Bad Support

Over all my experince has been good, I am just very frustrated with support. The tech support is on call all the time, it is the support from other depatments like billing etc. I have have on several occasions left messages for someone to call and have had no response at all, not even a call back or a support ticket to say they have heard my message. I waited up to one week before I called again. I live on the West Coast and support areas are east Coast so at time if I need someone they are gone for the day around 2 pm my time, and no one to help us in the west later in the day as needed. Voice mails don't say when person is available or best times to call or to call between certain times. No mention that other then Tech support the rest are off over weekends, if your catering to restaurant you need more support over weekends, would be nice to only be Mon-Fri as a restaurant owner, but never going to happen. it is all very frustrating and very much a huge hassle to get anyone when needed beyond tech support. I have been very unhappy in this area with Touch Bistro.

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

I Doubt There's Better

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.

Best decision ever

We embraced touch bistro over 3 yrs ago in that time they have continued to upgrade and make it better and better. That said the only down side is as technology changes so does your need for newer faster iPads and that is something we did not budget for. I would never go back to a stand alone POS Just remember that if you make the jump to tableside ordering wirelessly you will be amazed at how much faster your table Turns are and effective your servers become . Less staff required because they carry the POS with them no lines at a station. Smoother flow in kitchen Just take .25 per bill And put it in a gotta get newer IPad fund and you'll be happier then you have ever been Bill Justus Owner chef EKs Grill Kelowna BC

Pros

Just about everything

Cons

Cash layout for required new iPads to retain full functionality

Good for dining room restaurants

Touch Bistro is very easy to use in adding new menu items or editing existing items and also retrieving any multitude of reports available. Pricing is on the lower end of competitive. We are a quick serve restaurant and there are several important features that we can not customize which is why we rate it low on functionality; for instance when we have a credit card transaction we can't turn off the customer's receipt copy and in a QSR most do not want their receipt so we waste a lot of paper. Sales experience to training transition to installation also did not go smoothly for us. Sales is anxious to sell but is not there for you afterwards. But if we didn't have these, as well as other issues, we'd rate it a very good system. You just have to really