EPOS system for a small restaurant: what to buy and what to skip (2026 guide)
Twenty to fifty covers, one or two people on the floor, a chef who also plates. The till that suits a 120-cover brasserie is the wrong till for you. Here is the kit list, the features that earn their place, and what the whole thing costs.
- The kit list for 20–50 covers, with prices
- Courses, split bills and phone orders without extra staff
- Complete systems from £499 + VAT
Written by the Posso team in Leicester · Reviewed by Paul Robinson, Managing Director · Last reviewed
Short answer
A small restaurant of 20 to 50 covers needs one touchscreen till with a table plan, one kitchen printer or one kitchen screen, and a handheld for whoever is on the floor. That is the whole hardware list. Typical UK pricing puts the till at £300–£1,500 one-off with cloud software at £25–£70 a month, so a sensible complete setup lands between £800 and £2,000 before card fees. The features that matter are course firing, split bills by item or by share, and phone and online orders landing in the same kitchen queue as table orders. Multi-station kitchen screens and self-order kiosks solve problems you do not have at this size. Posso restaurant systems start at £499 + VAT, with the handheld at £259.
Key takeaways
- A 20–50 cover restaurant needs one till, one kitchen printer or screen, and one handheld, nothing more.
- Course firing and split bills are the two features that save floor staff time every single service.
- Phone, online and table orders should reach the kitchen through one queue, not three devices.
- A complete small restaurant system typically costs £800–£2,000 up front; Posso starts at £499 + VAT.
Takeaway: Buy the smallest system that handles courses, split bills and every order channel in one kitchen queue, and skip the rest.
Why small restaurants get sold the wrong system
Most restaurant EPOS advice is written for a site with a manager, a head chef, three sections and a pass. A 36-cover bistro where the owner cooks and one person runs the floor has almost nothing in common with that operation, but it gets sold the same system with the same add-ons.
The usual result is a quote with two kitchen screens, a bar screen, a kiosk and a stock module. The owner pays for it, uses the till and the printer, and spends two years paying a monthly licence for screens that sit dark. The second common mistake runs the other way: a card reader with a free app, no table plan, no courses, and the floor staff writing the table number on a pad and shouting the order through the hatch. That works at 20 covers on a Tuesday and falls apart at 48 covers on a Saturday when three tables want to split the bill at once.
The right answer is in the middle, and it is smaller than most quotes. Get the sizing right and the system pays for itself in saved steps: a server who can fire mains from the table instead of walking to the till saves a round trip on every table, every service.
What a small restaurant EPOS must do
Six principles. Judge any system against these before you look at a price.
Fire by course, not by ticket
A table of four orders two starters, four mains and a side. If the whole ticket prints at once, the chef cooks it in the order it arrives and the mains sit under the lamp while the starters go out. Course firing holds the mains until the server taps 'away' from the handheld when the starter plates are cleared. In a one-chef kitchen this is the difference between serving 40 covers calmly and serving them in a panic, because the chef only ever sees what should be cooking now.
Split the bill the way the table asks
Six friends at table 9, one had no wine, two want to pay together, the rest want to split evenly. A system that only splits evenly makes the server do arithmetic on a napkin. Look for split by item (drag the ribeye and the two glasses of Malbec to seat 3), split by share (the remaining £86.40 across four is £21.60 each) and the two combined on one table. Test it on the demo with a real messy case, not a clean two-way split.
One kitchen queue for every order channel
Phone orders taken at 6.15pm, a collection order from the website at 6.20pm and table 4's mains all need to reach the chef in the order they should be cooked. If the website orders print on a separate device and the phone orders live on a notepad, the chef has three queues and no sequence. Every channel should feed the same kitchen printer or kitchen display, with the order type printed on the ticket so a collection does not go out on a plate.
Put the till in the server's hand
With one person on the floor, every walk to a fixed till is a table left unattended. A handheld that takes the order at the table, sends it to the kitchen, fires the next course and takes the card payment removes most of those walks. Read the waiter pad and table ordering page for what the handheld actually does during a service.
Take the deposit before the no-show
A 30-cover restaurant that loses a table of six on a Saturday has lost a fifth of its covers for the night. Bookings with a card hold or a deposit, taken when the customer books online, cut that down without a phone call. The booking system should talk to the table plan, so the 7.30pm six-top appears on table 9 when they arrive and the deposit comes off the bill. See the guide to reducing restaurant no-shows for how deposits change booking behaviour.
Keep working when the broadband does not
A small restaurant usually has one consumer broadband line and no IT support. When it drops at 8pm on a Friday, a cloud-only till either freezes or falls back to a limited mode. Ask whether orders, kitchen printing and card payments carry on from a local database, and what syncs when the line returns. The guide to what happens when an EPOS goes offline covers the questions to put to a provider.
What a small restaurant EPOS costs
The kit list for 20–50 covers against typical UK pricing. Add card processing on top; it is quoted on your turnover rather than listed.
| Item | Typical UK range | Posso |
|---|---|---|
| Touchscreen till with printers and cash drawer | £300–£1,500 one-off | £499 + VAT, includes kitchen printer, receipt printer, cash drawer, menu build and training |
| Software licence | £25–£70 a month (£100+ enterprise tiers) | From £25 + VAT a month |
| Kitchen display screen (optional at this size) | £300–£800 per screen plus £0–£30 a month | £399 + VAT, no per-screen licence |
| Extra kitchen or bar printer | Included to £150 | £99 each |
| Handheld for the floor | Varies by provider; often a tablet plus a licence | £259 |
| Table bookings with deposits | £0–£60 a month or per-cover fees elsewhere | TableMaestro from £5 a week, zero commission |
| Installation | £0–£300 elsewhere | Setup (menu build + configuration) is free; on-site installation for larger sites is priced on application. |
| Warranty | 1–2 years | 2 years |
| Finance | Varies | From £24.92 a week, subject to status |
Ranges are typical UK figures at October 2026; Posso prices are published on EPOS pricing.
What to ask a provider before you sign
Can one person run the floor with this on a Saturday night?
Ask the provider to demo a full table from the handheld: order with a modifier, fire the mains, add two drinks, split the bill three ways, take two card payments. Time it. If any step needs the server to go back to the fixed till, that is a round trip on every table, every service. The answer should be yes, with the fixed till used only for collections and cashing up.
Where do phone and website orders appear?
The right answer is on the same kitchen printer or screen as the table orders, with the order type marked, and in the same sales reports. The wrong answer is a separate tablet from the ordering platform that the chef has to glance at. If you take 15 collection orders on a Friday alongside 45 covers, a second queue is where the mistakes happen. Ask how a phone order is keyed and whether it can be timed for a later slot.
What is the monthly total once I add the things I need?
A £25 licence can become £90 once the booking module, the online ordering add-on, the handheld licence and a second screen are added. Ask for the monthly figure with everything you intend to use, written down, and ask which of those items carry a per-order or per-cover fee. The guide to EPOS hidden costs lists the lines to check, and the EPOS cost hub collects every pricing guide in one place.
The Posso approach to small restaurant EPOS
Posso is a hospitality-only EPOS, built in the UK and supported from Leicester, and the small restaurant setup is the one we sell most often. The £499 + VAT system includes the touchscreen terminal running Windows 11 Pro, a kitchen printer, a receipt printer, a cash drawer, your menu built for you and staff training. Software is from £25 + VAT a month. For a 20–50 cover room that is usually the whole counter.
The floor runs from the Posso waiter pad at £259: order at the table, course firing, split bills by item or share, and card payment at the table through Posso Pay, Posso's own merchant service, with rates from 1% + 10p quoted on your card turnover. Teya and Dojo terminals are also supported if you already hold a contract. Phone orders keyed at the till, orders from your own online ordering website and Just Eat, Uber Eats or Deliveroo orders all land on the same kitchen printer, or on the £399 kitchen display if you prefer a screen, with the order type on every ticket. The system runs offline-first from a local database, so a dropped line does not stop service.
For bookings, TableMaestro takes reservations with deposits or a card hold from £5 a week with zero commission, and shows the booking on the table plan. If you would rather spread the cost, finance is available from £24.92 a week, subject to status, and you own the hardware outright.
Support is UK-based, Monday to Friday, 9am–9:30pm, with an urgent out-of-hours line for till-down issues, and the hardware carries a two-year warranty. Setup (menu build + configuration) is free; on-site installation for larger sites is priced on application. Systems are preconfigured and shipped plug-and-play.
Where to look elsewhere
If you are a 12-cover café-restaurant where the owner takes every order personally and the menu is a blackboard, a card reader with a free app will do, and a full EPOS is solving a problem you do not have yet. Revisit when you hire your first floor staff or start taking bookings for Saturdays.
If a significant part of your income is retail (a deli counter selling cheese by weight, a wine shop attached to the dining room), you need barcode stock control and supplier purchasing, and a retail-first platform will serve that side of the business better than a hospitality till will. The same applies if you need an iPad-native system: Posso runs on Windows and Android.
Related guides
Related guides
Restaurant EPOS
The product page: table plan, courses, handhelds and kitchen screens for restaurants of every size.
Read the guideBest restaurant EPOS system UK
How the main UK restaurant systems compare on features, pricing and support.
Read the guideTable ordering systems for restaurants
Waiter handhelds versus customer QR ordering, and which suits a room of your size.
Read the guideOnline ordering without commission
What commission-free really means and the sums on 400 orders a month.
Read the guideHow much does an EPOS system cost in the UK?
Hardware, software and card fees across the market, with the ranges to expect.
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.
Small restaurant EPOS — frequently asked questions
What EPOS system does a small restaurant need?
One touchscreen till with a table plan, one kitchen printer or one kitchen screen, and a handheld for the floor. The software must fire by course, split bills by item and by share, and bring phone, online and table orders into one kitchen queue. Anything beyond that, such as multiple kitchen stations or a self-order kiosk, is built for a bigger room and adds cost and screen clutter without saving you a step at 20–50 covers.
How much does an EPOS system cost for a small restaurant in the UK?
Typical UK pricing is £300–£1,500 for the till hardware and £25–£70 a month for cloud software, so a complete small restaurant setup usually lands between £800 and £2,000 up front before card fees. A Posso system is £499 + VAT including the terminal, kitchen printer, receipt printer, cash drawer, menu build and training, with software from £25 + VAT a month and the handheld at £259. Finance is available from £24.92 a week, subject to status.
Do I need a kitchen display screen or is a printer enough?
For one chef and one pass, a kitchen printer is usually enough: tickets in sequence, torn off as plates go. A screen earns its place when two people cook from the same orders, when you want item-level completion so the server can see the mains are up, or when paper tickets keep getting lost on a busy Saturday. A single Posso kitchen display is £399 + VAT with no per-screen licence, so it is a cheap upgrade later rather than something to buy on day one.
Can a small restaurant EPOS handle split bills and separate payments?
It should, and this is one of the first things to test on a demo. Ask for a six-cover table where two people pay together by card, one pays for only their own items and the remaining three split what is left evenly. The system should let the server drag items to seats, split the remainder by share and take several card payments against one table without closing it early.
Can phone orders and online orders go to the same kitchen as table orders?
Yes, if the EPOS takes the order rather than a separate platform tablet. Phone orders are keyed at the till with a collection time, website orders arrive automatically and both print on the same kitchen printer or appear on the same screen as table orders, marked with the order type. That matters most on a Friday when 15 collections land alongside 45 covers and the chef needs one sequence to cook to.
Should a small restaurant take deposits on bookings?
For Friday and Saturday tables of four or more, yes. A no-show on a table of six is a fifth of a 30-cover room gone for the night. A card hold or a small deposit taken at booking time changes behaviour: people who would not have turned up cancel in advance instead, and the table is resold. Posso's TableMaestro takes deposits or card holds from £5 a week with zero commission and shows the booking on the table plan.
Get Your Free ePOS Demo Today
Tell us about your business and a member of the team will get back to you with a personalised demo, a quote, and answers to anything you want to check before you buy.
Prefer to talk? 0808 175 3956