TouchBistro
Restaurant-only, and a full-service specialist. Three published tiers: Point of Sale starting at $69/mo with hardware bought separately, an Essentials Bundle starting at $119/mo that includes restaurant-grade hardware and integrated payments, and a quote-only Custom Setup adding front-of-house, back-of-house and guest-engagement modules. Both published prices are floors: the footnotes read "Hardware, payment processing, and additional fees apply" and "Payment processing and additional fees apply". TouchBistro offers hardware financing for venues with two or more terminals. Processing is bundled into the payments offer and not published as a rate. Strong in full-service dining.
Contract length is set per deal, not fixed. TouchBistro's merchant terms define the Initial Term as "such number of months following the Effective Date as is specified in the Sales Quote", auto-renewing for an equivalent period unless either party gives at least thirty days' written notice, and the merchant "may not terminate this Agreement prior to the expiration of the then current term". So the number that matters is the Initial Term on your quote. Ask for it in writing.
What this POS actually costs in Year 1.
*Representative buyer: 1 location · 2 terminals · $40K/mo card volume · ~600 transactions/mo.
Both published prices are floors. Point of Sale starts at $69/mo with hardware bought separately, so $828 of software in year 1 before any hardware or card fees. The Essentials Bundle starts at $119/mo and includes restaurant-grade hardware and integrated payments, so $1,428 in year 1 with the hardware line already inside it. TouchBistro publishes no card rate, which is the missing term: at $40K/mo of card volume a single percentage point is $400 a month, eight times the $50 gap between the two software tiers. No year-1 total until the rate is on your quote.
Why this POS is priced this way.
TouchBistro is a Canadian full-service restaurant specialist, and the product depth is genuinely strong for that case: table mapping, course pacing, tip distribution to back-of-house, allergen tracking. The $119 Essentials Bundle is the interesting construction, because it folds hardware and payments into one monthly figure, which is easier to budget and harder to compare. The bundling is the business model: payments revenue underwrites the hardware you are not paying for upfront.
What first-time buyers miss.
The two things that decide the cost are the two things not on the pricing page: the card rate and the Initial Term. TouchBistro's merchant terms set the Initial Term in the Sales Quote rather than at a fixed length, auto-renew it for an equivalent period unless either side gives thirty days' written notice, and state that the merchant may not terminate before the current term ends. So the term is whatever your quote says, and you are held to it. Get the number, and get the card rate, before signing.
Who this POS fits.
Full-service restaurants that need table-management depth. Independent operators rather than chains. Operators who would rather pay a bundled monthly figure than buy hardware outright. Not for quick-service, retail or mobile vendors.