TouchBistro Reviews

Pretty good have had some issues with constant updates

I first started using it at a restaurant during 2019. I was so impressed by this product that I started using it at my current restaurant too. Few problems here and there but this time it has been 7 days and they haven't been able to fix my issue.

Great. "Callback" feature for customer support is invalueable.

Used to be great. Now terrible. Will probably end up switching companies if this is not resolved. Obvious fraud.

Getting us through

I am not one who usually shares my experience when it's bad but I am leaving these reviews in hope that TouchBistro will reach out to me so I can resolve some issues. We purchased the system and went live back in October of 2019 for our new restaurant. The interface looked good but as far as the system being customizable to whatever you want it to do...It's not that. During our time the system lost orders, had issues updating the menu from the cloud to the POS and ultimately cost us around $750.00. The card readers continue to lose connection, the printers print to different locations randomly, and when the POS updated, it messes up because the Main Hub has not updated yet. We have a fairly small location so to attach a screen to our iMac Mini every few days is pretty challenging and if we don't, we start shift with these problems. That is what lead me to look for another POS and we found one that is far exceeding our expectations. Toast has been amazing! I called TouchBistro to cancel and the rep stated that he would send me an e-mail of cancellation and someone would reach back out to me to finish it up. I was on hold for around 1 hour and 20 minutes the first time I tried to cancel. I did get the e-mail but no-one ever called me back to wrap this up. Today I tried to reach out and was waiting on hold for 42 minutes before getting a rep who said he had to transfer me to the care team to get everything done. I was transferred, waited for about 15 minutes on

Faulty printer! the only printer they support has third party ink, the ink strips the part inside the printer... solution? buy another $500 printer so I can spend money to get the other one fixed and will be a reoccurring break every nine months! SHOULD BE CALLED 24/7 SUPPORT TO HELP YOU FIND YOUR OWN ANSWER. Every time I call in I am either dropped, have to wait 4 hrs for a call back or lied to. One rep even told me my email had been updated... fast forward to an update and I wasn't notified again. Called in and next rep says oh we can't even update that kind of info through call centre!

Where do I start? Have been using it for less than 3 weeks and it has been a complete nightmare.
First, the sales person sold us equipment that "we didn't need" as per the install guy. Over $300 in equipment still in their box... the initial onboarding guy said we didn't need that for the size of the venue. Second, the second iPad does not connect to the touch bistro network. Third, was basically told we had to switch our payment processing to Chase because the integration wasn't going to work with other providers for much longer. After lots of time and paperwork ended up switching to Chase for TouchBistro and guess what? the integration doesn't work. We have had to switch to the stand along mode to be able to take payment from our customers. We have spent hours and hours on the phone with customer service and no one seems to be able to figure it out. Yesterday I was on the phone again for over 2 hours, first with one guy who tried everything he could and finally said he had to transfer me to a senior department because he didn't know what else to do. After having to explain everything again to the "senior" agent, then she tries to follow all the same steps that I had just gone through with the previous guy and still couldn't figure it out. After basically turning everything off and back on 10 times, it worked once so I ended the call!!! Then today, we get to work and guess what? It doesn't work again. I wasted over 2 hours of my day for nothing!!!

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.

Average

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.

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.

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

It has cost us money and slowed us down. It was suppose to save us money and speed things up.

I is more efficient than a regular cash register and allows us to track our sales and tax instead of trying to calculate it after.

Basically, works okay. This is our first restaurant so our only experience with a POS. For the amount of money this costs, I feel it falls short on the reporting side as it relates to accounting. Changes seem to happen very slowly if at all (only 1 year). Customer services getting better. Whenever I have the need to speak with a live person I've expressed my frustration as well as the issue which initiated the contact. TB prefers emailing their tech support team.

you need to be able to authorize users to delete items without granting them void permissions. Also sometimes the POS accepts a tipout amount and passes it to the credit card processor but then forgets that it already processed the tip amount. At that point it refuses to accept any tipout amount and forces us to do an override on the preauthorization, which in turn means manual calculation of total tipout for the server and understates their tip income on wage reporting....

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 know what you need POS to do for you and ask detailed questions and document your answers.

Gets the job done.