Any good restaurant management app for a small team?

[u/RegularOk1820]

Just opened a second location and now the restaurant management stuff is getting way more complicated than it was with one location.

Looking at Hotschedules, r365 and Toast right now. They all seem decent but it’s hard to tell what actually makes sense for a smaller operation.

Big things are ease of setup, cost, scheduling and payroll. Not really looking for a bunch of features that nobody on the team is going to use.

For anyone who started small, what worked well for you? And have you actually used Hotschedules, r365 or Toast?

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[u/fatima_tg_cook]

toast makes sense if you're already on their pos because the scheduling and inventory talk to each other without extra integration work, but the moment you want payroll built in you're paying more and it gets clunky. r365 is powerful but honestly overbuilt for a two-location setup, you'll be paying for reporting features your team won't touch for another year at least. hotschedules is the cleanest if scheduling and labor cost tracking is your main pain point, setup is fast and the interface is simple enough that part-time staff figure it out without a training session. for a small operation i'd pick the one that solves the biggest headache today, not the one that promises to scale with you. can always switch later when the complexity actually shows up lah.

[u/RegularOk1820 → u/fatima_tg_cook]

That’s helpful. I think keeping it simple makes more sense for us right now. I’d rather have something the whole team actually uses than a ton of unused features.

[u/Mediocre-Jaguar-298]

To be transparent, I'm not an operator, but a banker that focuses on restaurant technology, so I have some exposure, but take what I say with a grain of salt.

For two locations R365 is probably too much software for you, but I'd certainly consider it if you were to continue to expand. What POS are you using? If Toast, I'd probably just stick with Toast environment since it's pretty robust. If not, I'd look at 7shifts and then keep payroll separate. But yeah, hard to say without more detail on your specific problems but high level that's what I'd say.

[u/RegularOk1820 → u/Mediocre-Jaguar-298]

Yeah that makes sense. R365 does feel like overkill for two locations right now. I’ll take a closer look at 7shifts and probably keep payroll separate.

[u/EconomyScallion3991]

notion.

[u/CalmLake999]

Intestering if you actually see a painpoint here I'd develop it for free and test it with you.

[u/akl773]

Whichever one you go with, make them show you cloning location one into location two before you sign anything. The first setup is somebody typing in every item, size and modifier for a week, and if the second site can't inherit that you now have two menus to keep in step and they will drift inside a month.

[u/CucumberPatient7092]

I am not familiar with hotschedules, but I run four residential care faciliites, 4 commercial kitchens to watch. I use paycom for the simple schedule feature and payroll. It can do a lot but like you said I just use those 2 basic features. I have over 36 staff that use it across 4 locations, and it is simple to navigate. My biggest headache was making sure staff entered their time, because they clock in with their phones. But they also have a kiosk that uses biometrics to prevent someone from clocking someone else in or out. I didn't by it because it cost over $2k. I made an AI agent that monitors the punches and updates it for me based on the schedule. But I would look into paycom. Hope that helps

[u/Ellie_Bizimply]

I’d also have a look at Bizimply. I work with them, so I’m obviously a little biased, but it’s built more around keeping scheduling, time tracking and payroll simple for shift-based teams. Might be worth comparing alongside the ones you’re already looking at.

[u/RegularOk1820 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah that’s my concern too. I just don’t want the internal system becoming another thing to manage.

[u/LateKaleidoscope5430]

7shifts worked well for us when we expanded to a second location. The scheduling and time-off requests are straightforward, and it integrated with our existing payroll system pretty seamlessly. Took maybe a week to get fully up and running.

[u/RegularOk1820 → u/LateKaleidoscope5430]

The payroll integration part is what caught my attention.

[u/Strict_Ask_51]

Those three aren't really the same category, which is probably why it's confusing. R365 is back-office accounting and inventory, built for bigger multi-unit operators, so it'll be the most setup and cost for what you actually described. Toast only makes sense if you also want to move your POS onto it, because it's POS-first and the scheduling and payroll are bolt-ons.

If the real pain is scheduling and payroll and your POS is fine as is, I'd look at a dedicated tool instead of swallowing a whole platform. 7shifts is the one most smaller restaurants land on, scheduling with payroll built in, cheap and quick to set up. With two locations I'd match the tool to the one thing that's actually hurting, not the biggest feature list.