SumUp Alternative: The Best SumUp POS Alternatives for Restaurants
Why restaurants outgrow SumUp
SumUp is fine for a market stall, a pop-up or a small shop. Put it in a restaurant and it runs out of road fast.
With SumUp you don't get:
- A kitchen display system
- Table management
- Online ordering
- Loyalty or customer marketing
- One dashboard for several locations
- Much in the way of kitchen and order reporting
A restaurant, takeaway, café or growing QSR group needs more than a card reader and a product list.
The best SumUp alternatives for restaurants
1. Flipdish
Flipdish makes restaurant software for independents, takeaways, cafés and multi-site groups in the UK and Ireland.
SumUp takes payments. Flipdish takes payments too, and adds restaurant POS, online ordering, branded apps, self-service kiosks, AI phone ordering, loyalty and marketing. It's all one system.
Here's how the two compare:
| Feature | SumUp | Flipdish |
|---|---|---|
| Card payments | ✓ | ✓ |
| Restaurant POS | Basic | Full restaurant POS |
| Kitchen display | ✗ | ✓ |
| Online ordering | ✗ | ✓ |
| Branded mobile app | ✗ | ✓ |
| Self-service kiosks | ✗ | ✓ |
| AI phone ordering | ✗ | ✓ |
| Loyalty programme | ✗ | ✓ |
| Multi-location management | Limited | ✓ Full centralised control |
| Menu management | Basic | ✓ Centralised across channels |
Orders from the counter, the website, the kiosk and the phone all land in the same kitchen queue. The kitchen works from one list, not four.
2. Square for Restaurants
A step up from SumUp. You get floor plans, coursing and basic online ordering. It suits independents who are happy going with a big US brand. There's no AI phone ordering, and it isn't built around UK and Irish payment processing the way a local system is.
3. Epos Now
Epos Now is UK-based and has a long list of integrations. It's built for retail and hospitality both, so the restaurant pieces - kitchen display, online ordering - usually mean adding third-party integrations and paying extra for them.
4. Lightspeed Restaurant
Made for full-service restaurants with complicated table layouts. It costs more than the others here and is aimed at bigger operations.
5. Zettle by PayPal
Zettle is closer to SumUp than to a restaurant system: a card reader with basic POS. Fine for a simple setup. Not for a restaurant with a kitchen, online orders or more than one site.
What to look for in a SumUp alternative for restaurants
Ask these before you switch:
- Does it have a kitchen display, and do orders from every channel show up in one queue?
- Can customers order from your own website without you paying marketplace commission?
- Do you own the customer data it collects?
- If you open more sites, can one system run all of them?
- What are the transaction fees, and how do they compare with what you pay SumUp now?
- Is support based in the UK or Ireland, and can you actually reach someone during service?
How to switch from SumUp
- Export your products and menu from SumUp
- Map the items to the new system's categories
- Set up the kitchen display and order routing
- Get online ordering live on your website
- Run both systems side by side for a service or two, until the team is comfortable
- Switch SumUp off
If the new system is built for restaurants, this isn't a big job. Flipdish includes onboarding support as standard.
Is SumUp enough for your restaurant?
If your business is simple, SumUp is a decent place to start. Once you have a kitchen, online orders or plans for a second site, it isn't built for the job.
For restaurants in the UK and Ireland, Flipdish is our pick. It replaces SumUp and adds the POS, kiosks, AI phone ordering and loyalty you'd otherwise be buying separately.
Book a demo with Flipdish and compare it with what you're using now.