Epos Now vs Flipdish: Which POS Is Better for Restaurants?
Epos Now vs Flipdish: the short answer
Flipdish is the stronger choice for restaurants. Epos Now is a general-purpose retail and hospitality POS system. Flipdish is built specifically for restaurants, takeaways and multi-location food groups, with online ordering, branded apps, self-service kiosks, AI phone ordering and loyalty all included on the same platform.
What is Epos Now?
Epos Now is a cloud-based POS system headquartered in Norwich, UK. It serves both retail and hospitality businesses, which means its feature set is designed to be broad rather than deep in any one sector.
For restaurants, Epos Now handles order taking, payments and basic table management. It connects to third-party apps through its App Store marketplace, which means features like online ordering, delivery and loyalty typically require additional integrations from third parties.
Epos Now is widely used by small independent hospitality businesses and general retail operations across the UK and Ireland.
What is Flipdish?
Flipdish is a restaurant technology platform built specifically for restaurants, takeaways, cafés, QSRs and multi-location restaurant groups.
Where Epos Now serves both retail and hospitality with a general platform, Flipdish has been designed exclusively around restaurant operations. Online ordering, self-service kiosks, branded apps, loyalty programmes, AI phone ordering and a kitchen display system all come as part of the same integrated platform.
Flipdish is used by independent restaurants, takeaways, franchise networks and large multi-site groups across the UK and Ireland.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Epos Now | Flipdish |
|---|---|---|
| Restaurant POS | Yes | Yes |
| Kitchen Display System | Via app marketplace | Yes, included |
| Online ordering | Via third-party | Yes, included |
| Branded restaurant app | Via third-party | Yes, included |
| Self-service kiosks | No | Yes, included |
| AI phone ordering | No | Yes |
| Loyalty programme | Via app marketplace | Yes, included |
| Multi-location management | Limited | Yes, built for it |
| Delivery management | Via third-party | Yes |
| AI marketing | No | Yes |
| Retail use | Yes | No |
| Restaurant-specific design | Partial | Yes |
Online ordering: a key difference
Epos Now does not include its own online ordering platform. To take orders online, you need to connect a third-party service through the Epos Now App Store. This means additional monthly fees, a separate dashboard to manage and a more complex integration to maintain.
Flipdish online ordering is built into the platform. Orders placed through your website, branded app or Google Food Ordering flow directly into the Flipdish POS and kitchen display system. There is no separate dashboard, no third-party to manage and no additional integration to maintain.
For restaurants where online orders account for a significant proportion of revenue—which includes most takeaways and a growing number of dine-in restaurants—this is a meaningful operational difference.
Self-service kiosks
Epos Now does not offer a self-service kiosk product. If you want to add kiosks to your restaurant, you would need a separate provider.
Flipdish self-service kiosks are part of the same platform as the POS and online ordering system. Kiosk orders appear on the kitchen display screen alongside every other order type. Menus, pricing and promotions are managed from one place.
For quick-service restaurants, fast casual operators and any site with high footfall, kiosks can meaningfully increase average order values and reduce queue times without adding labour.
AI phone ordering
Neither a retail POS system nor a general hospitality POS will have AI phone ordering built in. Flipdish does.
Flipdish AI Phone Agent handles inbound phone orders automatically, integrating those orders directly into the POS and kitchen system. For restaurants that still receive a significant number of phone orders—particularly takeaways and pizza operators—this reduces staff time spent on calls while keeping phone orders in the same order management system.
Pricing
Epos Now charges a monthly software fee per terminal, with hardware purchased separately. Additional integrations from the App Store carry their own costs. Epos Now hardware includes countertop terminals and peripherals; the pricing model is broadly typical of a general POS system.
Flipdish pricing is structured around the modules you need—POS, online ordering, kiosks, apps. Because Flipdish bundles more into a single platform, the comparison with Epos Now plus its third-party integrations is more favourable than headline figures suggest.
For a full picture of what Flipdish includes, see online ordering pricing.
Epos Now and the app marketplace model
Epos Now's approach to adding functionality is through its marketplace of integrations. For retailers, this is a reasonable model. For restaurants, it creates a layered cost structure.
A mid-sized restaurant using Epos Now with online ordering, a delivery integration and a loyalty programme will be paying:
- Epos Now base software fee
- Online ordering integration fee
- Delivery management integration fee
- Loyalty integration fee
- Hardware costs
- Payment processing fees
Each of these is a separate vendor relationship. Separate support contacts. Separate monthly invoices. And when something breaks at 7pm on a Friday—as it will—you are calling multiple providers to find out whose system failed.
Flipdish takes a different approach. The platform is designed so that POS, online ordering, kiosks, apps, loyalty and AI tools share the same data layer. A customer who orders online, collects in person and uses a loyalty reward is one customer in one system—not three records across three integrations.
For restaurant groups managing multiple locations, this unified data model is operationally valuable.
Multi-location restaurants
Epos Now has multi-site functionality, but it is a general platform and its centralised management tools were not built specifically around restaurant group operations.
Flipdish is widely used by franchise operators and multi-location groups. Centralised menu management, location-level reporting, group-level promotions and unified customer data are core to what Flipdish does rather than an afterthought.
Support and implementation
Epos Now offers support through its standard customer service channels. Implementation support is available for larger deployments.
Flipdish works with restaurant operators through a dedicated onboarding process. Given the complexity of deploying POS, online ordering, kiosks and apps as an integrated system—particularly across multiple locations—structured implementation support is more important than with a simpler single-terminal POS.
Which should restaurants choose?
Choose Flipdish if:
- You need online ordering, a branded app or kiosks as part of the same system
- You are a takeaway, QSR, fast casual or multi-location group
- You want AI phone ordering or AI marketing tools
- You manage multiple sites and need centralised control
- You want one vendor and one support relationship rather than multiple integrations
Epos Now may suit you if:
- You run a mixed retail and hospitality business and want one platform across both
- Your ordering is entirely in-person with no online component
- You already have preferred third-party integrations you want to keep
For most restaurants in the UK and Ireland that take online orders, manage customer loyalty or operate more than one site, Flipdish offers a more complete solution from a single platform.
The verdict
Epos Now is a capable general POS system. For restaurants that need more than a till—online ordering, apps, kiosks, loyalty, AI—Flipdish is the stronger platform. It was built specifically for restaurant operations, covers more of the technology stack within one system and is designed to grow with restaurant businesses rather than requiring additional integrations at each step.
Explore Flipdish for your restaurant or learn more about the Flipdish POS.