How to choose a restaurant POS in Canada (2026 buyer's guide)

Start with total monthly cost, not the sticker price

The advertised software fee is rarely what you'll pay. To compare vendors fairly, build one number: everything you'll pay per location per month once you're actually running.

That means software (per location and per terminal — some vendors charge both), hardware (purchase amortized or the monthly lease payment), payment processing on your real card volume, and every add-on you'll genuinely use: online ordering, kitchen display, loyalty, reporting. A "free" or cheap entry tier that gates QR ordering and the kitchen display behind a higher plan is not cheap — it's a teaser.

For reference, Waitery is a flat $14 CAD per location per month for the whole platform, with free setup. Whatever vendor you're evaluating, make them give you the equivalent all-in number in writing.

Check the contract before you check the features

A great POS on a bad contract is a bad deal. Three things to nail down before any feature demo:

• Term and exit — month-to-month, or a multi-year commitment? What does cancelling early actually cost?
• Hardware terms — buy outright or lease over a defined term (Waitery offers buy or a 48-month lease), and what happens to leased hardware if you leave?
• Data ownership — can you export your menu, sales history, and customer data when you go, in a usable format?

Is QR ordering included, or an add-on?

QR table ordering has become one of the highest-leverage features a POS can ship — it lets guests order and pay from their phones, which speeds up turns and frees servers for hospitality. But many vendors sell it as a separate module with its own monthly fee, or hand it off to a third-party partner that bolts onto the POS.

Ask whether QR ordering, the kitchen display, and online ordering are part of the core platform or priced separately. Per-feature fees are how a $69 plan becomes a $250 reality. With Waitery, QR ordering and the kitchen display are part of the one flat price.

The Canada-specific checks most guides skip

If a vendor's pricing page is in USD and their support hours are listed in Pacific time, dig deeper before signing. Specifically:

• Per-province tax handling — GST/HST/PST/QST configured correctly for your province, and for each location if you operate in more than one.
• Bilingual EN/FR — can the guest menu, kitchen tickets, and receipts run in French? In Quebec this isn't optional; verify it in the demo, not the brochure.
• Hardware shipped and supported in Canada — who fixes a dead terminal on a Friday night, and how fast?
• Support hours that match your service hours — restaurants break things at 8 p.m., not 10 a.m.

Red flags that should end the conversation

Some patterns reliably predict an expensive relationship:

• Quote-gated pricing — if a vendor won't publish prices, assume the price depends on how much they think you'll pay.
• Long contracts pushed hard at the demo stage — confidence in a product doesn't need a three-year lock to hold you.
• Per-feature fees stacking up — a separate charge for online ordering, another for KDS, another for reporting.
• Setup and onboarding fees — installation charges on top of hardware are a choice, not a necessity. (Waitery's setup is free.)
• Vague answers about data export — if they're cagey about how you leave, that tells you how they retain customers.

A 10-minute evaluation checklist

Put every shortlisted vendor through the same questions, in writing:

• What is my all-in monthly cost per location, including hardware and the add-ons I'll use?
• What is the contract term, and what does cancelling cost?
• Are QR ordering and the kitchen display included, or extra?
• Is the full guest and kitchen experience available in French?
• Is provincial tax handled correctly for my locations?
• Can I export my data if I leave?
• What are your support hours, and is hardware replaced from within Canada?

Where Waitery fits

Waitery is built for exactly this checklist: $14 CAD per location per month for the whole platform, free setup, no lock-in, QR ordering and kitchen display included, bilingual EN/FR throughout, and modern smart POS hardware shipped and supported Canada-wide — buy outright or lease over 48 months.

Book a 20-minute demo and bring the checklist above. We'll answer every line on the spot.