Restaurant tech, written by people who’ve run restaurants
Operator playbooks, product deep-dives, and the data behind the shifts shaping how restaurants run today.
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No commercial card program carries an interchange cap
The same $6,000 invoice: $150.10 on a corporate card, $105.10 with Level 3 data, $5.00 by Stripe ACH, $3.22 on a regulated business debit card.
Caterers cause 14% of outbreaks but 29% of the illnesses
California requires departure and arrival temperature logs, kept 90 days. The Food Code gives temporary events just three exemptions.
Planners' ethics code requires disclosing supplier payments
Venues sell placement three ways: flat monthly fee, per booking, or performance. Reported outside-caterer buyouts run $500 to $2,000, and none is published.
Union banquet contracts set 20 plated covers per server
A lunch-then-dinner double is a California split shift with its own premium. New York guarantees three hours of call-in pay per shift.
Form-to-email capture ranked worst in the lead-response data
Federal law lets you email an inquiry lead with no prior consent. A marketing text to that same couple needs prior express written consent.
Ordered before January 20, 2025? Your bonus rate is 20%
Delivered but still crated on December 31 is next year's deduction. Roofs and HVAC take Section 179 but fail the bonus test; California caps 179 at $25,000.
Portraits and cocktail hour are the same 60 minutes
Allow three to five minutes per family photo grouping. One venue publishes plated service at 40 to 45 minutes, from salad to coffee.
Your photographer's contract sets how many meals you serve
A university caterer adds $1,000 to every wedding for labor alone, and $2 a head across the whole room when one entree choice passes 20%.
Rounding cash to a nickel doesn't round the sales tax owed
Congress hasn't finished its penny bill. Arizona already requires rounding and a posted sign, and cash-discrimination laws make rounding up risky.
The Visa-Mastercard deal would let you refuse premium cards
It isn't final: preliminary approval came June 9, and there's no opt-out. The surcharge cap becomes 3% or your cost, and state bans still apply.
Closing? W-2s are due with your last 941, not in January
New York's closing-notice law starts at 50 employees, not 100, and New Jersey adds a week of severance per year of service even with full notice.
OpenTable keeps the rights to the diner data it sends you
Exports close 30 days after you leave. An exported phone number isn't permission to text, and a court struck down NYC's delivery-data law.
Food service drew 21% of 2025's web accessibility lawsuits
An overlay widget didn't prevent about 1,400 of them, and the FTC fined accessiBe $1 million. A restaurant can't use the online-only defense.
A non-refundable deposit can still be void as a penalty
California judges a birthday dinner's deposit more strictly than a corporate booking's, and taxes a mandatory event service charge even if staff get all of it.
QR ordering's proven gain is faster turns, not bigger checks
65% of diners have used QR menus, yet 58% want paper back. Only 16% of Boomers would pay by QR code, and the ADA still requires an alternative.
The new federal hemp cap is 0.4 mg of THC per can
The deadline moved to December 11, and synthetic cannabinoids lose hemp status November 12. A state hemp licence does not protect a bar from federal law.
Regulars install your app; that's why app users order more
Even Starbucks takes only 33% of US transactions through mobile order. Apple requires your app under your own $99-a-year developer account.
Every missed-call statistic you'll see comes from a vendor
Published prices run from $85 a month to $599 per location, or $1.50 per completed order. A wiretap suit over a Domino's AI phone call survived dismissal.
DC, Chicago and Michigan walked back ending the tip credit
DC now caps tipped pay at 75% of the minimum by 2034. Chicago holds a 24% credit until 2028, then ends it in 2030 or 2033 depending on employer size.
ezCater's commission is charged on your delivery fee too
Marketplace orders pay 15% plus 2.99%; customers you bring in pay 7%. On ezCater's $420 average order, that is roughly $83 versus $46 in fees.
White-label delivery hands you every refund and complaint
DoorDash Drive's $9.75 flat fee beats a 25% marketplace commission only on orders above $44 once card processing is counted. Against the 15% tier, above $81.
Toast's $0 plan costs more past $11,500 a month in card sales
Toast's Starter Kit hardware is owned, not leased; the 36-month-lease claim is stale. What Square, Clover and Katalyst charge the same new restaurant instead.
An A instead of a B is worth about 5% of revenue
The FDA found handwashing non-compliance in 73% of full-service restaurants, and improper cold holding appears in roughly 40% of inspections nationally.
Nobody under 18 may clean the slicer, not just run it
Late I-9 Section 1 or Section 2 became a substantive violation in March 2026, at $288 to $2,861 per form. The correction window is gone.
G2 agreed to acquire Capterra, Software Advice and GetApp
Vendors pay $3,000 to $95,000 a year for placement, Capterra's default sort is Sponsored, and review incentives run to $25 on one site and $100 on the other.
Toast's partner API fees aren't published anywhere
Clover's marketplace keeps 30% of app revenue, so the tool you want is priced to net 70%. Ask which integrations exist today, not whether there's an API.
Clover arrived at Fiserv inside a $22 billion payments deal
Most restaurant POS companies are owned by a processor, a database vendor, or a fund with a hold period. That owner sets the roadmap you'll live with.
Clover terminals can't be repointed at another processor
Switching means buying hardware again while the old lease runs. The termination fee is the small part — reported ranges disagree by a factor of five anyway.
$400 a month: Lightspeed's price for an outside processor
Before comparing rates, find out whether you're allowed to shop them. Toast and Square are payment facilitators; SpotOn and Clover permit outside processors.
If a broker quotes you earnings, check Item 19 exists
About a third of franchisors publish no earnings data at all. Item 8 can mandate your POS outright, at prices reported 10-30% above the open market.