Grafterr Alternative: The Best Grafterr Alternatives for Restaurants
What is Grafterr?
Grafterr is a UK hospitality POS and self-service kiosk platform. You'll find it in cafés, bars, restaurants and quick-service venues, where it takes orders and payments at the counter and handles basic menu management.
This guide is for operators who have outgrown it, or who are comparing POS systems before they sign anything. It covers five options for restaurants in the UK and Ireland, Grafterr's closest competitors included.
Why restaurants look for a Grafterr alternative
Online ordering is the big gap. Grafterr has no branded website or mobile app for direct customer orders, so a restaurant that wants to depend less on Just Eat, Deliveroo and Uber Eats has to find that somewhere else and connect it to the till.
Multi-site is the next one. Managing menus, prices and reporting for several locations from a single dashboard is more limited than in systems built for restaurant groups.
Then there's what's missing on the marketing side. Grafterr has no AI phone ordering, no automated marketing and no AI-driven upselling. It has no built-in loyalty programme either, and nothing that automatically brings lapsed customers back. Busy restaurants and groups also tend to want better cost analysis, sales forecasting and labour reporting than it gives them.
If you run a single café or quick-service counter with simple needs, Grafterr may be all you need. If you want one system for the whole operation, read on.
The best Grafterr alternatives for restaurants
1. Flipdish - best overall
Flipdish is a platform built for restaurants, takeaways, cafés, QSRs and multi-location groups. It covers restaurant POS, online ordering, self-service kiosks, AI phone ordering, restaurant marketing and integrated payments, and all of it runs as one connected system.
Here's where it beats Grafterr:
- You get restaurant websites and branded mobile apps made for your business. Customers order from you, not from a shared marketplace listing.
- The kiosks come as hardware and software, with AI-driven upselling, tipping and loyalty already in them.
- The AI Phone Agent answers the phone and takes orders. That means fewer missed calls on a busy Friday and less staff time spent on the phone.
- Loyalty, automated campaigns and SMS marketing are part of the platform. There's no third-party tool to wire in.
- Menus, group-level reporting and per-location controls are managed centrally, which is what chains and groups need.
- The Kitchen Display System takes orders from every channel, online and in the restaurant, onto the same screen.
- Payments for the POS and for online orders sit in one system, with one set of reports.
Flipdish is used in thousands of restaurant locations across the UK, Ireland and further afield. If you want POS, ordering, kiosks and marketing under one login, it's the best fit on this list.
Kiosks and the KDS are the two places where Grafterr is closest to Flipdish, since it has both. The gap is what sits around them. A Grafterr kiosk order and an online order don't share a menu or a customer record unless you add separate tools and connect them. With Flipdish they do, so a customer who orders at the kiosk on Monday can get a loyalty text on Wednesday without anyone building that link by hand.
Best for takeaways, QSRs, restaurant groups, multi-location operators and anyone who wants to own the direct ordering channel.
2. Lightspeed Restaurant
Lightspeed Restaurant is a cloud POS with good table management and reporting. Most of its users are sit-down restaurants.
Online ordering and loyalty come from third-party tools that plug into it, not from Lightspeed itself. Multi-location management exists but needs a higher-tier plan.
Against Flipdish, the difference is scope. Lightspeed is mainly a POS. Flipdish is the whole restaurant platform, so online ordering, kiosks, AI phone ordering and marketing are already there rather than being add-ons you buy and connect yourself.
3. Epos Now
Epos Now is a UK cloud POS used in both retail and hospitality. It has a large app marketplace and handles basic restaurant operations at a low price, which is why smaller operators like it.
The catch comes later. Multi-location controls, a dedicated KDS and AI tools all need third-party apps, and those cost extra.
Epos Now is a general hospitality POS. Flipdish was built for restaurants, so menus, ordering, kitchen management and customer retention go deeper.
4. Square for Restaurants
Square for Restaurants has a free tier and cheap paid plans, so it suits new businesses and small single-site operations.
It takes orders and payments. Multi-location management, AI features and built-in marketing are limited.
Square is built to be simple and cheap. Flipdish is for restaurants that want to grow direct orders, cut their reliance on marketplaces and build loyalty across a lot of customers.
5. Tevalis
Tevalis is a UK hospitality POS for full-service restaurants, bars and hotel food and beverage operations. Its table management is strong and it has been in the UK market for years.
It's a POS and little else. There's no native online ordering, no AI features and no built-in marketing platform.
Tevalis does the enterprise POS job well. Flipdish goes further along the customer's path, from the online order itself through to the loyalty offer that brings them back next week.
Which one fits which restaurant
A sit-down place with a lot of tables and not much takeaway will get on fine with Lightspeed or Tevalis, because table management is what they do best. A small café that just wants to start taking card payments cheaply can use Square. Epos Now suits a restaurant that already has a bit of retail on the side, say a deli counter.
A takeaway, a QSR or a group with several sites is a different case. Those businesses live or die on direct orders and repeat customers, and that's the work Flipdish is built around. The other four will take the order at the till. They won't help you get it in the first place.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Flipdish | Grafterr | Lightspeed | Epos Now | Square |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud POS | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Online ordering (native) | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Branded mobile app | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Self-service kiosks | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| AI phone ordering | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Built-in loyalty | ✓ | Limited | Via integration | Via integration | Via integration |
| Multi-location management | ✓ | Limited | ✓ | Limited | Limited |
| Kitchen display system | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Via integration | Via integration |
| Integrated payments | ✓ | ✓ | Via integration | Via integration | ✓ |
| Automated marketing | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
How to choose the right Grafterr alternative
Start with online ordering. If you want it alongside your POS, Grafterr can't do it natively. Flipdish gives you a website, an app and marketplace orders, all feeding the same till.
If you run several sites, or plan to, pick something built for that. Flipdish has central menus, cross-site reporting and group-level controls, and none of the others here match it on multi-location.
Marketplace fees are the other big reason to move. Say a marketplace takes 30% of a €25 order. That's €7.50 gone on one basket. Your own rate will differ, so check your contract, but the sum is worth doing on your busiest delivery day. Every order that comes through your own website or app skips that commission.
Look at reporting too. Ask each vendor to show you a sales report for one site and then for the whole group, with labour and food cost next to revenue. Some systems can only do the first.
If AI matters to you, Flipdish's AI Phone Agent takes phone orders for you, and no other system on this list has that built in.
If budget is the only thing that counts, Square or Epos Now cost less to start with. You give up the restaurant-specific features to get there.
Questions to ask before you switch
Whichever system you pick, put these to the vendor in writing.
What happens to your existing hardware? Some printers, card terminals and tablets will work with the new system and some won't, and replacing them is a real cost. Ask for a list of what you can keep.
How long is the contract, and what does it cost to leave? Ask about card processing rates too. A cheap monthly fee can sit on top of expensive payments.
How do Just Eat, Deliveroo and Uber Eats orders reach the kitchen? If staff have to retype them or juggle several tablets, you haven't fixed anything.
Who builds the menu? Modifiers, combos and allergen information take the longest to get right, so find out whether the vendor does it or you do.
What does support look like at 7pm on a Saturday? Phone, chat and email hours matter more than the sales pitch.
Switching from Grafterr
Changing POS is a project, and it goes smoother with a plan.
- List everything connected to Grafterr: printers, payment terminals, third-party integrations. You need to know what has to be replaced or reconnected before you pick anything.
- Export the full menu with modifiers, categories and prices. Check it in the new system before launch day, item by item.
- Give staff at least two weeks to practise on the new system. Don't leave it to the first Friday night.
- If the kitchen is busy, run the old and new systems side by side during a quiet stretch.
- Tell regular customers if online ordering is changing. A short message on social media and a note on the old ordering page will do.
Flipdish has an onboarding team that handles implementation, menu build and staff training for operators coming from systems like Grafterr.
Why Flipdish is the best Grafterr alternative
Grafterr stops at the counter, like most standalone POS systems. A customer who wants to order online, use a kiosk or get a loyalty offer on their phone sits outside what a standard POS covers.
Flipdish takes the POS out to every ordering channel. Online, kiosk and phone orders all land in the same kitchen queue, use the same menu and show up in the same reports. Your marketing team gets real purchase data. Your finance team gets one set of numbers.
You can try to copy that by bolting Grafterr onto a separate online ordering tool, a separate loyalty tool and a separate marketing platform. Plenty of restaurants do. The numbers rarely match, the integrations break now and then, and you end up dealing with three vendors instead of one.
If you're consolidating, Flipdish is the one to choose in the UK and Irish market. For more restaurant technology comparisons, see restauranttech.co.uk.