EPOS system for fast food: the UK buyer's guide (2026)
In fast food the till is not a cash register with a menu on it. It is the first link in a production line, and every second it adds at the counter is a second the fryer stands idle. Here is what to look for.
- Speed as the whole design brief, from counter to kitchen
- Kiosks, kitchen screens and the order ready board
- Fast food EPOS from £499 + VAT; kiosks from £699 + VAT
Written by the Posso team in Leicester · Reviewed by Paul Robinson, Managing Director · Last reviewed
Short answer
The best EPOS system for a UK fast food shop is the one that takes a meal deal in one tap, moves the order to the kitchen as a production total rather than a ticket, and lets customers order and pay without a member of staff. A counter doing 400 orders a day saves 400 × 5 = 2,000 seconds, over half an hour of counter time, for every five seconds cut from an order. Look for combos built as single buttons, self-order kiosks that take card payment themselves, kitchen screens that show the fryer "14 portions of fries" instead of fourteen tickets, an order ready board, and delivery platform orders landing in the same queue. Posso fast food systems start from £499 + VAT.
Key takeaways
- A meal deal should be one tap, with the drink and side chosen inside it, not three products.
- Kiosks that take card payment themselves remove the till from the queue entirely.
- Kitchen screens with production totals let the fryer see portions, not tickets.
- Delivery platform orders must land in the same kitchen queue as counter orders or the kitchen runs two systems.
Takeaway: Design the whole system for seconds: one tap at the counter, production totals in the kitchen, and a kiosk taking the payment.
Why speed is the whole design brief
A fast food shop sells the same thirty items hundreds of times a day. The margin on each is small, the queue is the sales forecast, and the kitchen can only cook as fast as orders reach it in a form it can use. Every part of the system, from the button layout to the kitchen screen, either shortens the time between a customer walking in and a bag being handed over, or lengthens it.
The mistake buyers make is treating the till as the system. In fast food the till is one of four places an order can start (counter, kiosk, phone, delivery app) and one of three places it can go (fryer, grill, pass). A till that rings a burger in two seconds but prints a ticket the fryer has to sort and stack beside twelve others has moved the bottleneck, not removed it.
The third mistake is leaving delivery orders on a separate tablet. The Just Eat tablet chimes, somebody types the order into the till by hand, the kitchen gets it four minutes late and the driver arrives before the food. For a counter doing 50 delivery orders a night at four minutes each, that is 200 minutes of re-keying. Our EPOS problems hub covers the related failures; this guide is about building for speed from the start.
What a fast food EPOS has to get right
Build the meal deal as one button, with the choices inside it
A large chicken burger meal with fries and a Coke is one thing to the customer and should be one tap at the till. The combo button opens a short prompt (which drink, which side, regular or large) and prices the whole thing as the deal, so the server is not adding three products and hunting for a discount. Build the top ten combos as the first row of the home screen. Upgrades (large fries at 60p more, a milkshake instead of a soft drink at 80p) are priced inside the prompt so the upsell happens every time, not when the server remembers.
Let the kiosk take the payment so the till leaves the queue
A self-order kiosk only removes the queue if the customer finishes there. A kiosk that builds the order and then sends them to the counter to pay has added a step, not removed one. Look for kiosks that run card-only and unattended, with the reader built in, an attract screen when idle and an order number at the end. Two kiosks and one till process three orders at once with one member of staff, and the "make it large?" prompt appears on every order rather than when the counter is quiet enough to ask. Typical UK kiosks run £700–£3,000+ per unit; our guide to self-order kiosk cost breaks the range down.
Show the fryer portions, not tickets
A kitchen printer gives the fryer fourteen tickets. A kitchen screen with production totals gives the fryer one number: fourteen portions of fries, six large, dropping as each is bumped. The grill sees how many patties the next ten orders need and drops them in a batch. The pass sees each order assembled item by item. This is the biggest single kitchen change in fast food, because it lets the kitchen cook to demand rather than to the order of tickets. Our kitchen display system guide covers routing and station setup.
Put the order number on a board, not in a shout
Shouting numbers across a shop works until the shop is loud. An order ready board is a screen facing the customer area that lists numbers in preparation and moves them to ready when the pass bumps the order. Customers stop crowding the counter asking if theirs is done, so the server serves instead of answering. Pair the board with the order number on the receipt and kiosk ticket, and a text for collection orders, so the customer in the car park gets the same signal as the one by the counter.
Bring delivery platforms into the same queue as the counter
Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo orders should arrive in the till and the kitchen screen exactly as a counter order does, tagged with the platform and with the prep time accepted automatically. Typing from a tablet costs three to four minutes an order and introduces errors. Integration elsewhere typically costs £0–£60 a month per platform, almost always less than the re-keying it replaces. Check whether a menu change is pushed from the till or made three times. Our delivery integrations page explains how one queue works.
Think about outdoor service early, because it needs different hardware
A drive-through, a trailer at a festival or a hatch onto the street needs a kiosk or order point that survives rain, cold and direct sun, which indoor kiosks do not. Outdoor units are typically a special order with a weatherproof enclosure, a brighter screen and a heater, with a longer lead time. If a drive-through lane or a trailer is in the plan, say so when you buy the main system so the order flow is set up for it.
What a fast food EPOS costs in the UK
Typical ranges for a single counter. Fast food spends more on hardware than most hospitality because the screens and kiosks are where the speed comes from.
| Item | Typical UK range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Counter till (terminal, drawer, printer) | £300–£1,500 one-off | Purpose-built terminal at the top of the range |
| Software | £25–£70 a month | Up to £100+ a month for enterprise tiers |
| Self-order kiosk | £700–£3,000+ per unit | Check it takes payment itself |
| Kitchen display | £300–£800 per screen plus £0–£30 a month elsewhere | One per station: fryer, grill, pass |
| Delivery platform integration | £0–£60 a month per platform elsewhere | Versus re-keying from a tablet |
| Card processing | 1.5–1.75% flat on readers; 1–1.5% plus pence on merchant accounts | The pence matter on a £7 meal |
| Installation | £0–£300 elsewhere | Kiosks and screens need cabling |
| Posso | £499 + VAT till; kiosks from £699 + VAT; Fast Lane kiosk £399 + VAT with a £199 + VAT order tablet; kitchen display £399 + VAT; delivery integration £45 a month for all platforms; Fast Food Growth package £1,250 + VAT | Software from £25 + VAT a month; Posso Pay from 1% + 10p; two-year warranty |
Ranges are typical UK figures at October 2026; Posso prices are published on EPOS pricing.
What to ask a provider before you sign
Does the kiosk take the payment, or send the customer to the counter?
Ask to complete an order on the demo kiosk from attract screen to receipt without touching the till. If the kiosk prints a ticket that is then paid at the counter, it is a menu board with a touchscreen. Ask whether it runs card-only unattended, what happens on a declined card, and whether the order reaches the kitchen screen the moment payment clears.
Can the kitchen screen show totals by station, not just tickets?
Stand at the demo kitchen screen while they ring five orders with fries on each. Five tickets is a printer on a screen. "5 fries" with a count that drops as each is bumped, and a grill station that sees only grill items, is production totalling. Ask how an item is marked complete and what the screen does if the network drops mid-service.
Do delivery orders land in the same queue, and who updates the menu?
Ask them to place a test order on a delivery platform and watch where it appears. It should hit the till and the kitchen screen without anyone touching the platform tablet. Then ask what happens when you change the price of a meal deal: does the till push it to the platforms, or do you log into three portals? The honest answer varies by platform, and a good supplier will say which.
The Posso approach to fast food EPOS
Posso is a hospitality-only EPOS, built in the UK and supported from Leicester. The counter system is £499 + VAT, including a Windows 11 Pro touchscreen terminal, kitchen printer, receipt printer, cash drawer, menu build and staff training, with software from £25 + VAT a month and a two-year hardware warranty. The terminal is offline-first with a local database, so a broadband fault does not stop the counter. For fast food we build the top combos as single buttons with the drink, side and size prompts inside them.
Self-order kiosks start from £699 + VAT, run card-only and unattended with an attract screen, and take payment through Posso Pay so the customer finishes at the kiosk. The Fast Lane kiosk is £399 + VAT with a £199 + VAT order tablet and runs standalone, which suits a shop adding a second order point without rebuilding the counter. The self-order kiosks page describes both. Outdoor units for a drive-through lane or a trailer are a special order.
The 21-inch kitchen display is £399 + VAT per screen with item-level completion, station routing and production totals, so the fryer sees portions and the pass sees assembly. An order ready board faces the customer area and updates as the pass bumps. Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo integration is £45 a month for unlimited orders across all platforms, landing in the same queue as the counter and kiosks. AI phone ordering answers 24/7 at £1 per order taken, and the Posso Dispatch driver app is 30p per delivery if you run your own drivers.
If you want the counter, kitchen and kiosk pieces priced together, the Fast Food Growth package is £1,250 + VAT; the POS packages page lists what each package includes. Card payments through Posso Pay are from 1% + 10p, quoted on card turnover, with the same rate at the counter, on the kiosk and online; Teya and Dojo terminals are also supported. Support is UK-based, Monday to Friday, 9am–9:30pm, with an urgent out-of-hours line for till-down issues. Systems are preconfigured and shipped plug-and-play.
Where to look elsewhere
If you are a single-person kebab van or a market stall doing sixty orders a day with no kitchen screen and no delivery platforms, a card reader and a simple app tier is a reasonable answer; a counter system with kiosks is solving a problem you do not have yet.
If the business is a convenience store with a hot food counter, where the main job is stock control across thousands of barcoded lines, a retail-first platform will serve you better than a hospitality EPOS. Our retail POS guide explains where the line sits.
Related guides
Related guides
Self-order kiosks
The Posso kiosk range, including the Fast Lane standalone kiosk and how payment works.
Read the guideSelf-order kiosk cost
What kiosks cost in the UK, what drives the price and how to work out the payback.
Read the guideKitchen display system
Station routing, production totals and item-level completion explained for a busy kitchen.
Read the guideLong queues at the counter
Diagnosing where the queue comes from and the fixes, from menu layout to kiosks.
Read the guideBest EPOS system for takeaway
For takeaways where delivery and phone orders matter more than the walk-in counter.
Read the guideThis is one part of the Posso EPOS system — the same till, kitchen display, ordering and card payments, set up for your type of venue. Every one-off and monthly cost is on the EPOS pricing page.
Fast food EPOS — frequently asked questions
What is the best EPOS system for a fast food shop in the UK?
The one designed for seconds at every step: meal deals as one tap, kiosks that take card payment themselves, kitchen screens with production totals, an order ready board and delivery platforms landing in the same queue. Time a full order on the demo from kiosk to kitchen screen. Posso fast food systems start from £499 + VAT, with kiosks from £699 + VAT.
How much does a fast food EPOS system cost?
Typical UK till hardware is £300–£1,500 one-off, software £25–£70 a month, kiosks £700–£3,000+ per unit and kitchen screens £300–£800 each. A complete Posso counter system is £499 + VAT including the terminal, printers, cash drawer, menu build and training, with software from £25 + VAT a month. The Fast Food Growth package is £1,250 + VAT.
Do self-order kiosks work in a small fast food shop?
They work where the queue is the problem. A kiosk that takes payment itself lets one member of staff run the counter while two more customers order unattended, and it upsells on every order. Posso kiosks start from £699 + VAT, and the Fast Lane kiosk at £399 + VAT with a £199 + VAT order tablet runs standalone for a shop adding a second order point.
What is a kitchen display with production totals?
A kitchen screen that adds up what each station needs across all open orders rather than showing tickets one by one. The fryer sees fourteen portions of fries with the count dropping as each is bumped; the grill sees how many patties to drop in a batch; the pass sees each order assembled item by item. It lets the kitchen cook to demand instead of to the order of tickets.
Can Just Eat and Uber Eats orders go straight to the kitchen?
Yes, with integration. Orders from Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo arrive in the till and the kitchen screen like a counter order, tagged with the platform, with prep time accepted automatically. This replaces typing from a tablet. Posso's integration is £45 a month for unlimited orders across all platforms.
Does a fast food EPOS need to work offline?
Yes, because a broadband fault at 6pm on a Friday is when it costs most. An offline-first till keeps the menu, prices and orders in a local database on the terminal, so the counter and the kitchen screens over the local network carry on, with sales syncing when the connection returns. Delivery platform orders queue on the platform until you reconnect. Ask the supplier to unplug the network on the demo.
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