ShopKeep vs Toast POS

March 01, 2025 | Author: Sandeep Sharma
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ShopKeep
Feature-packed iPad point of sale. Reporting, analytics and support that will take your business to the next level. Track and manage stock all in one convenient place. Build your database and drive repeat business. Track hours worked and identify star performers.
18
Toast POS
One Platform to Power Your Restaurant Operations. Simplify your operations by combining POS, front of house, back of house, and guest-facing technology on a single platform.
There are many ways to take money from people and ShopKeep and Toast POS have both decided to make it their life’s mission to do so with dignity, efficiency and an alarming number of cloud-based features. Both keep track of inventory, sales and customers, presumably in the hope that the customers will return rather than vanish into the void of consumer forgetfulness. They also allow business owners to wander around with tablets, looking terribly important while their POS systems handle the boring bits like payment processing and making sure the numbers don’t rebel.

ShopKeep, being the older and slightly more worldly of the two, arrived in 2008 in the United States, focusing on small shops and cozy cafés where people sip things with unpronounceable names. It was originally designed for iPads, because what better way to sell artisanal bread than with a device that costs more than an oven? In 2020, it was absorbed into Lightspeed, where it presumably sits in a large digital armchair, reminiscing about the good old days when it wasn’t part of something bigger.

Toast POS, on the other hand, popped into existence in 2012, also in the United States, but with a singular and undying devotion to restaurants. It stubbornly runs on Android devices, possibly out of sheer contrariness and comes with all sorts of restaurant-specific wizardry, like menu engineering and kitchen display systems that attempt to keep chefs from setting things on fire. It even dabbles in payroll and team management, because if there’s anything more complicated than cooking food for a hundred impatient diners, it’s making sure the staff actually gets paid.

See also: Top 10 Retail software
Author: Sandeep Sharma
Sandeep is a marketing expert with a wealth of knowledge in various domains: customer relationship management, social media management, advertising, search engine optimization, website building, Sandeep has established himself as a multifaceted professional. He honed his skills while working at Salesforce and Hubspot, where he gained invaluable insights into the industry. Now, as the proud owner of a small advertising consulting agency, Sandeep continues to provide innovative and effective strategies to businesses, helping them thrive in the competitive landscape of digital marketing. You can contact Sandeep via email sandeep@liventerprise.com