CAKE POS Reviews

Pros

I like that I can access it anywhere remotely to make changes, add menu items, and view sales.

Cons

I don't like the new update. I feel the original version is easier to use.

Pros

We switched to CAKE from another POS system in 2016, after being in operation for 1.5 years. We have been impressed with the way CAKE constantly tries to provide new features. As a farm-to-table quick-service restaurant, our menu changes weekly and we find it simple and straightforward to make updates each week. Due to COVID-19, we recently activated the online ordering and we believe it has saved our business. We were able to activate and integrate it quickly and we love the reporting capabilities the system gives us. Our customer service has been top notch--from our sysco rep to our CAKE customer support manager, we have received a quick response to any question we've had. We feel very comfortable requesting new features and integrations based on our needs and we feel like they really listen to us and try to incorporate our ideas quickly and simply. We did not have this level of customer support with our previous POS system and we really value being able to get a live person on the phone quickly and easily when we have an issue. We love the intuitive, easy-to-read sales analysis reports and use them each week with our management team to evaluate our menu items and determine our next round of specials. We really like that we can make menu edits both on the POS and with the online platform---hoping for a mobile app next for very quick and simple edits!

Cons

We first purchased in Spring 2016. The software felt a little sluggish and honestly, we were not sure if it would easily keep up with our pace. But we have been very impressed with CAKE's constant evaluation and roll-out of new features and integrations--they haven't missed a beat! We don't use all the features yet, but because of the recent success with our online activation, we are now considering two more apps. I would prefer a tiered/capped monthly pricing system depending on how many apps/additional software platforms we integrate (like accounting, customer management, 3rd party delivery apps, etc)--rather than installing each a-la carte, but hopefully that will be an option in the future. The additional monthly fee per app has made us hesitant to try new ones. We would also like to have more control over the look and feel of the online ordering page--functionally it meets our needs, but would love to integrate it into our own website and select the background color, text color, etc, to make it feel like a seamless integration rather than making our customers feel like they are "leaving" our site to go to another. There are some features/edits that are only available from the POS system (not menu items, but system preferences/settings categories) In the future, I hope they make those features editable from the online access platform as well, because sometimes I want the flexibility of making certain adjustments from home on my computer during off-hours.

Alternatives Considered

Aloha EPOS and Toast POS

Reasons for Choosing CAKE POS

Our Sysco rep at the time was very knowledgeable about different POS systems based on her career in several restaurants prior to Sysco---she was straightforward with us about her experience with multiple systems, their price points, and value. She suggested we consider CAKE and we followed her recommendation. We are so glad we did. We prefer it over our previous system, but as a small rural restaurant, we were not able to afford the much more expensive systems.

Reasons for Switching to CAKE POS

CAKE had the right combination of value, ease of use, and features. We have recommended CAKE to several of our restaurant owner friends in the region. It has a simple interface, the customer service is stellar, and the constant addition of new apps and integration makes us feel like we are getting the best value in a price range we can afford.

Pros

It is a simple product but it is not for a table-service restaurant. Best for a simple counter service operation.

Cons

Customer service has been horrible. Bad attitudes, lack of help, and terrible at resolving issues.Tripled charged me for additional POS system.TERRIBLE installation strategy. Self-Installation with no assistance if it doesn't work. WHAT?Fabio blamed ME for the installation not working. It is a simple plug and play but what happens when that doesn't work. They shrug and say it is your fault. Wow. I've had much better experiences with LightSpeed/Upserve and SpotOn at my other restaurants.Avoid this at all costs.

Alternatives Considered

Lightspeed Restaurant, SpotOn, Revel Systems and Toast POS

Reasons for Choosing CAKE POS

Sometimes you make mistakes with your decisions and they have minor impacts. Choosing CAKE POS is a MAJOR negative impact that has resulted in LOST SALES for the restaurant in a tough environment.Anyone can contact me to discuss my experience more. Cake does not care about the customer and has never cared about my negative experiences.

Switched From

SpotOn

Pros

Customer Service- [sensitive content hidden] is the best, give him a raise

Cons

all good can't think of a reason right now

Alternatives Considered

Toast POS

Reasons for Switching to CAKE POS

not sure

Pros

The POS is very intuitive - very little training is needed before staff have it figured out. It's also very customizable so we've been able to get tickets and receipts to print exactly how we want them to.

Cons

Editing the menu is pretty arduous. There are a lot of steps involved in changing just one item and there still seem to be a few bugs to sort out. The reports are also more limited than we would like and present the data as lists of numbers rather than charts, which would be easier to digest.

Pros

Ease of use, ease of configuration, affordable

Cons

Back office / admin settings get a bit complicated and some are configured on POS and some through Admin Portal - I wish they were all in the same place!

Pros

Helpful and polite staff, always there to answer questions.

Cons

Setting up the orders pad and credit card payment system.

Pros

Options & Functunality make this POS a nice engine for our restaraunt.

Cons

I think because of the many options and functions, it is difficult to just "dive in"

Pros

The customer service. [sensitive content hidden] was amazing.

Cons

inconsistent reporting. [sensitive content hidden] had to open some tickets to fix my issuews.

Pros

The representative was OUTSTANDING, through out the process, she was very professional the whole time

Cons

everything was OUTSTANDING.

Pros

Easy to use, 24 hour support, customer services is exceptional, constantly working on improving the system and uses the customers feedback in assisting to redesign and implement changes

Cons

With the support team so far away it is sometimes difficult to pin point the base of the system problem. Especially through phone conversations. Recently we had a Pos terminal go and it would enter things units own. It was extremely difficult to capture the incidents while it happened. Sometimes you can't capture the problem through a video or it just would stop when on the phone with support team. The problem went on for a month. Cake was outstanding and replaced the terminal free of charge for a one time customer courtesy.

Pros

The CAKE POS was very easy to use and I loved the detail it provided for us. As a restaurant and bar, we needed a lot of detail in orders and the ability to print to different stations was amazing vs. having to walk each order back. The reports were easy to use as was the changing of the menu and adding/removing items. It was also great for training staff because it was very straight-forward and step-by-step.

Cons

Table numbers being required would be great. The signature pad being a little more sensitive to picking up finger signatures. Split checks were sometimes burdensome and could use a little improvement to speed things up when it's busy. I would love it if the creating of subcategories would be easier (say you have several of one brand of wine so you have less tabs to have to look for items).

Pros

This system has Easy to add & Change Menu Items, which works awesome for our daily specials. It is VERY user friendly & Easy to train any age group. This system works great for reports, menu items such as what you are or are not selling, payroll, ect. I am so glad we chose this System!!

Cons

Cannot adjust the pricing after the order has been sent back to the Kitchen. I also wish there were some things you could have print in a different color that goes back to the kitchen. Our ribbons are red and black, but the printer only prints black. I also wish, there was a different way to have the orders print to the kitchen, but we are working through some of those issues. The cooks have to remember that they have to learn a different way to read the tickets as well. There are a couple of other things, but actually they are being implemented in the near future.

Pros

We were using an older text driven system before that ran on an older OS on XP and we needed something that was Windows-oriented, vendor supported, and took support off of management's hands and handed it over to the people who are actually on the floor doing the work. Frankly the old system also broke a lot, and we needed something more technologically advanced. CAKE has been fantastic. Developing and managing the menu has been surprisingly easy, like the easiest thing I've ever done. Working with the categories and modifiers was just a piece of cake. All of the people working here love it. They came off a system they were already used to, and the conversion was completely painless and extremely fast. When we went from tickets to our old system it was a 6 month nightmare, it just took forever, and I was concerned switching to CAKE would be the same, but it was instant. The system was so intuitive, it's been really nice. It operates exactly how you think it should work, which is probably why staff took to it so readily. The way you can purchase it was also a huge factor for a small independent company like ours, so you can do a small down payment instead of a big cash outlay. It just works for us.

Cons

An ad-hoc reporting capability would be nice. The existing reports are substantial and you can download them into excel, but I would like to be able to create my own.

Pros

Our main problem before CAKE was time. It was taking too much time for servers to get something written on paper and get back to the POS to put everything in. If the internet was down everything was down so we wanted something cloud based so we could continue with transactions even if the internet had problems. CAKE meets all the needs we were looking for. We've got a much faster turnover rate on being able to get orders in and back to kitchen and out to the table, and we can continue taking orders even without internet, which have both helped with revenue. We also like using the guest manager system so when we run out of tables we can get numbers and page when tables open up which was an added benefit. I can also do things on the fly like change the menu even when I'm not on the restaurant, someone just gives me a call and I can add it from my personal laptop and it goes directly to the POS system, which has been really helpful as well.

Cons

Touch screen interaction is not instant. There is a half second lag in some of the menu screens. It may not sound like much, but anyone in the restaurant industry knows that every single second counts during the lunch rush. This lag also includes certain unnecessary animations between certain screens.
Certain features such as an on the fly print button from the table layout screen would decrease our table times.
The Split screen is very counter-productive compared to other systems.

Pros

Global modifiers. That's literally the only thing I like about it. If it wasn't for that, we would have gotten rid of this system a long time ago.

Cons

This system is completely not customizable to your specific business. They're constantly updating the software with updates that make the system even worse for my business. There should be an option to not upgrade. Customer service is absolutely useless. I've called them probably 50 times since we've gotten this system. They never have an answer, they're always "working on it". Never a solution. There was a software problem on their end last Wednesday. I still have not had credit card sales deposited into my bank account from Wednesday and Thursday of last week. It's 5:30 on Monday. I have not had a deposit since Tuesday's sales. One entire week ago. They don't provide any solutions except "We're trying to figure out what the problem is. We're working on it.", but you literally never end up with an answer. You just have to wait and wait until you notice it's finally resolved or never get it resolved at all. You're at their mercy because you paid huge for the thing. What am I gonna do? It's disgusting and these people shouldn't be allowed to operate. They do not care. Even on a normal payment schedule, you won't get Thursday's transactions until Monday, Friday until Tuesday and Saturday until Wednesday. If there's a holiday, push that back a day.

Pros

We've had 2 POS systems before we tried CAKE. The very first one we had was already 5 years old so it was running really slow and just couldn't handle what we needed it to do. We upgraded that one to Clover and we had high hopes but it just really didn't work out for us. We had batching issues, the numbers weren't matching, and honestly it ended up making more work for us with bookkeeping. Since we switched, closing and reporting have been so much easier. Everything is a lot easier to keep track of like sales and payroll and it's so much nicer because you can see all that online. It's also easier to add new menu items or move things around and just easier to use in general, especially once we got everything up and running. It's a simple set up and I'd definitely recommend just giving it a try.

Cons

No Big cons really. One minor con, is that we wish we could accept partial payment on our regular customers running tabs. It would make it so much easier.

Pros

we are very behind with the technology equipment and relationship with business and costumers daily base ...kiosk with self selfservise cash out

Cons

yes missing a lot of improved no try to update with the new technology and relationship with costumers daily base

Alternatives Considered

Toast POS

Reasons for Choosing CAKE POS

they have everything that i need

Switched From

Toast POS

Pros

Software is nice easy to navigate, the terminals have a great modern look to them, on the fly adjustments is great.

Cons

We were told this would be a direct replacement for our PosiTouch system, it is not. The system lacks many basic functions our old system could do, even though we were told it would prior to purchasing. Whenever we contact CAKE about an issue we are met with the same response over and over, "Our system is not currently able to do that function at this time, if you would like us to make a service report to our technicians who will determine if this needs to be implemented in a future upgrade."
We were told prior to purchasing some of our existing hardware would work, after implantation of the new hardware with our old it will not work. After many phone calls attempting to correct the issue we get the same response, "Our system is incapable of operating with that hardware."
We purchased two terminals second hand, but before we purchased them we called to make sure they would work before spending the money, we were told yet again that the would in fact work we would just have to pay to have the software upgraded and they would need the phone number of the original owner to get conformation to wipe out all the data on the hard drives, so that is just what we did. After receiving the shipment we informed CAKE they had arrived, and the gentleman's number we purchased them from, so they could make contact with him in regards of getting them set up for our use. A short time later we were contacted by CAKE a were told they could in fact not be used, the system were to old, even though it's the same hardware they are using now, and there was noting they could do.
Please take my advice, if you are UPGRADING FROM A LEGACY SYSTEM (positouch, aloha, digital dining, ect.) DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY LIKE WE DID.
SYSCO SHOULD BE ASHAMED FOR THE BUSINESS PRACTICE OF THIS BRANCH OF THEIR COMPANY.

Pros

Easy to use for the most part. Screens easy to read.

Cons

Check Splitting is very difficult and involves many steps. Daily Management Reports are not user friendly.
Senior Management Customer Support is horrible. They call them "Customer Success Managers" which is clearly the wrong title. They are horrible at communicating among all customer support. Guest checks are very difficult to read along with credit card slips for the customers. Fonts are very small. Cash drawers are cheap. They do not offer any loyalty programs through their system and only punch card type of discounts. Very old technology.

Pros

CAKE was our first POS for this location. As far as changing menu items or modifiers or printers it's super easy, hands down way easier than any other program I've used. It's also very easy from a user standpoint for staff members to ring things in and find items. Because it's not overly complicated and just very straightforward it was super easy to get the restaurant up and running when we started out. I use the sales reports and also the time and attendance reports for payroll. It's very convenient to have it as well as remote access. We're also able to see if people delete things prior to payment or after being sent to the kitchen to be made, so we were actually able to catch an employee stealing with that information. Overall I think it's great. If you're thinking about trying it I say go for it. The fees are reasonable, it's nice to have credit card processing straight through it, and when we batch out at the end of the month, we can log in and see easily what the fees were and what we received. I'm very happy with it and would definitely recommend it.

Cons

I honestly do not have anything negative to say. However, adding a stylus to the signature pad would be helpful for guests less savvy with tablets.

Pros

The ease of changing and adding items/prices is extremely fast and easy. New employees learn CAKE extremely fast which helps speed up training.

Cons

As an owner I would like to see a dashboard of Sales/Labor at the touch of a button. I do not like typing in my email password for this. I just would like to get a quick glimpse of Sales/Labor.

Alternatives Considered

Toast POS

Reasons for Choosing CAKE POS

Cloud Based. Easy to change/delete/add menu items.

Pros

As the owner I like the analytics and reporting. Easy to find and easy to understand. Everything I need to help make educated business decisions. As for the employees using Cake everyday, very user friendly and they love it!

Cons

Occasionally there are random little silly things that come up but there is literally nothing that we don't like about the system.

Pros

We're coming up on our one-year anniversary with CAKE and I can't think of a single bad thing to say about it. Before CAKE, all of our systems were really hard to upgrade or make any changes. With CAKE, I can do it from home, review reports, and it's so easy for the servers and chefs as well as our customers to read and use. The set up was so easy, we've hardly had any problems, and unlike other places where we've had to make tons of calls and emails without even hearing back from anyone, the CAKE team gets us back up and running immediately, they have never missed a phone call, and they walked me through step by step in a way that was easy to understand. We looked at two other products before choosing this one and have absolutely no regrets. I feel really tied into the core of the restaurant, and they have a lot to do with it. Thanks for making my restaurant run better!

Cons

We had some trouble with splitting tickets. After help from CAKE and their customer service department we implemented additional training in house and the problem has been solved.

Cons

When doing monthly bookkeeping you cannot export a sales report broken down for each day, only one day or a selection of days lumped together into one sales totals, so I have to copy each days sales individually into my bookkeeping software, seems like it would be an easy fix for them but no one has listened to my suggestion to make the change.