Point of sale systems for full service restaurants in Arkansas
Table service is a hundred small decisions made at speed. Here's how we set up seats, coursing, checks, tips and shift close for an Arkansas dining room.
Table service asks four things of a point of sale. Seat numbers, coursing, split checks and a clean shift close, all of it fast enough that a server never stops moving. Shift4 SkyTab and Clover both handle those four. The difference shows up in who built your menu and who picks up the phone at 7:40 on a Friday. We program the menu, install in person, and stand in your dining room on go live night.
In this article
01Six people, one table, one card each. How bad is that?02Can a server hold the entrees until the table is ready?03Server banking or one drawer? Pick before we program.04The internet drops at 7:15 on a Friday. Then what?05How soon can a table service restaurant be running on this?06Questions restaurant owners askSix people, one table, one card each. How bad is that?
Split by seat, by item, or evenly across the table. On SkyTab a server does it at the terminal or on the handheld, so nobody walks back to the station to rebuild a check while five people wait. Clover's dining app does the same work, and moving single items between checks there costs a few more taps.
What breaks a split is almost never the software. Blame a menu where items were never tied to seats. Every six way split then turns into a hunt through one long ticket with the table watching. We build seat assignment into the ordering flow while we're programming, then walk your servers through a live table before you open the doors.
Can a server hold the entrees until the table is ready?
Yes. Every item carries a course. Appetizers print the moment a server sends, entrees sit until she fires them. Nobody drops salads and steaks on a four top in the same minute. Printers or a kitchen display split by station, so the grill sees grill tickets and the fry side sees its own.
Neither platform is a fine dining coursing engine. You don't get seat by seat pacing or several fire holds inside one course. Running a tasting menu or a chef's counter? Tell us in the first conversation and we'll say straight out that you need something else. We would rather lose the sale than put the wrong box in your dining room.
Server banking or one drawer? Pick before we program.
Two models, and you pick one. Server banking gives each server a bank, her own checks and her own drop at close. Cashier banking means one drawer, one person counting, cash handed off through the shift. SkyTab and Clover run either. Decide before we build the menu, because switching later means reworking roles, permissions and every close of day report.
A real person calls you back within two hours, Monday to Saturday, 8am to 7pm Central.
The internet drops at 7:15 on a Friday. Then what?
Tickets keep reaching the kitchen. Your terminals talk to each other over the local network, so ordering doesn't stop. Cards are where you're exposed. Both platforms capture card payments offline and submit them when the line comes back, which means a decline lands in your lap after the guest has finished dessert and walked out.
Each platform caps how much you can capture that way. Get the number from any dealer before you sign anything. We put ours in writing for whichever system you pick, and we walk your closing manager through the offline screens during training, so the first outage isn't also the first time anybody has seen them.
How soon can a table service restaurant be running on this?
Menu programming is our job, not yours. Send us the menu in whatever shape it's in. We build items, modifiers, prices, tax groups and printer routing, you review the whole thing on a screen share, and we fix what's wrong. Then we install it on your floor and train the people who have to use it.
Install day we mount, cable and test. Then we train the closing crew and the opening crew separately, because they need different things from the same system. We're in the building on go live night. Judd Alsup runs the Arkansas installs and you'll have his number, not a ticket queue.
Where SkyTab and Clover hold up in a dining room, and where they don't
Both run table service properly. Both carry limits you deserve to hear before you sign, and most reps will never say them out loud.
What works
- Handhelds take the order and the payment at the table, so a server never leaves her section to run a card.
- Splits go by seat, by item, or straight down the middle, from the handheld or the terminal.
- Coursing with hold and fire, and kitchen routing split by station.
- Menu, tax groups and printer routing are built and tested before hardware ever ships to you.
What does not
- Processing is welded to the platform. You cannot shop your card rate later without ripping the system out, and card fees will cost you more every month than the software does.
- Neither one does seat by seat pacing or multiple fire holds. A dedicated fine dining platform beats both, and if that's your room, buy that instead of this.
- On Clover, several dining features are separate apps with separate monthly fees. The price on the quote is not the price on the statement.
- No native reservations or waitlist on either. You bolt on a third party and live with a second login.
- Custom reporting is thin on both. Anything unusual ends up as a spreadsheet export you build yourself.
Questions restaurant owners ask
Can I keep my current credit card processor?
No, not on either one. SkyTab runs on Shift4 processing, and Clover devices are locked to the merchant account they were sold under. Call that what it is, a real trade off, and a reason to compare the total monthly bill instead of the hardware sticker. Card fees dwarf the software line every month, so make every dealer show you total fees divided by total card volume. We put that number in writing before you decide.
Do I have to program the menu myself?
No. Menu programming is part of the install, not homework you finish at midnight after a double. Send the menu in any form you have it, a spreadsheet, a file, a photo of the printed one. We build items, modifiers, prices, tax groups and printer routing, and you review all of it with us before you run a live ticket.
What happens if a terminal dies on a Saturday night?
You call, and a real person calls you back within two hours, Monday through Saturday, 8am to 7pm Central. We keep spare hardware in state, so a failed terminal is a swap and not a wait on a freight carrier two time zones away. Judd and the Arkansas team make the swap in person when the job needs hands.
Can servers clock in and out on the point of sale?
Yes. Both platforms carry a time clock with roles, pay rates and cash tip declaration at clock out, and the reports export for payroll. Neither is a scheduling platform. If you build next week's schedule in a separate tool today, you'll still be building it there after the switch.
How does the system handle tip pooling?
The point of sale records charged tips by server and cash tips as declared. Distribution for a pooled house happens outside the system, because neither platform includes a pool calculator. Arkansas tipped wage and tip pooling rules carry real weight here, so read our Arkansas page before you write your policy.
Rules and rates change. Confirm anything that affects your money with the agency itself or with your accountant. General guidance, not legal, tax or accounting advice.