Lightspeed Restaurant vs Slant KDS

Lightspeed Restaurant is restaurant management software built around a point-of-sale and payments platform. It supports customizable menus, screens and floor plans, with online, tableside and QR-code ordering. Restaurants, hotels and multi-location operators can use the system for operations including inventory, reservations, tables, staff scheduling and sales reporting. The cloud-based POS can keep working offline, saving entered data locally and uploading it when connectivity returns; master-data maintenance and eCloud evaluations still require internet access. Its front end requires the Lightspeed Restaurant iPad app, while the back end can be managed on desktop and iPad. Lightspeed also says the POS can run in a browser on Mac, PC, Apple or Android devices. The Restaurant Integration Hub includes hundreds of third-party integrations, and accounting sync can send sales data to QuickBooks, Xero, Sage and other software. Plans start at $69/mo. Restaurant has no free plan or free trial listed; a demo option is presented instead.

Slant KDS is a kitchen display system that helps restaurant staff organize and fulfill orders. It shows ticket times and uses color-coded statuses to distinguish orders being cooked from those ready to go. Staff can inspect detailed tickets, including modifiers, use timers and alerts, oversee fulfillment, and filter orders by new, preparing, or done. Reports cover completed and cancelled orders. The system works with Slant’s restaurant platform; no third-party integrations are named. Slant lists customers across several food-service settings, including fine-dining and QSR restaurants, cafes, bakeries, food courts, dessert shops, food trucks, pizza and burger shops, and bars. It is cloud-deployed and offers offline mode. The display platform is web, and listed platforms include Android, macOS, Windows, and web. For the Android app, Slant recommends a 10-inch tablet or Android POS device and sets an 8-inch minimum screen size. The Free Forever plan is free and allows 100 orders per month. Paid access is $32 a year, billed per month per outlet annually, and a 14-day trial is available.