Clever Till vs Zettle: Which EPOS System is Best for Restaurants in the UK?
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Running a successful restaurant is more than just serving good food and providing great service; having the right back-of-house tools can make or break your business in today's competitive hospitality market. One of the most significant tools is your EPOS (Electronic Point of Sale) system.
If you are looking to discover the best EPOS for restaurants in the UK, you may have heard of a couple of names including Clever Till and Zettle by PayPal. While both provide POS capabilities, they vary considerably in terms of features, pricing and restaurant suitability.
In this comparison, we will outline Clever Till vs Zettle, what they provide individually, their advantages and disadvantages, and most importantly which system is better suited for the fast paced nature of UK restaurants and hospitality venues.
Understanding the Basics
Zettle by PayPal – A Popular Choice for Retailers and Pop-Ups
Zettle has become a popular name in the UK, especially for independent, market stalls, and small retail businesses. It offers a free POS app and an inexpensive card reader that businesses on a budget could afford.
Key features include:
• Mobile-friendly and clean interface
• Simple and quick set-up process
• Integration with PayPal and third-party accounting systems
• Basic sales and stock reporting
Zettle works well for retail and pop-up environments, but it is not designed specifically for the multi-faceted workflows that exist in the food and beverage sector.
Clever Till EPOS – Purpose-Built for Restaurants
Clever Till is an innovative, all-in-one EPOS solution for the hospitality industry. Clever Till's EPOS system operates the way your team works, no matter if you're a fine dining restaurant, a casual café or a busy takeaway.
Clever Till comes fully loaded with features including:
• Customizable table and floor plans
• Split billing / tips
• Kitchen Display System (KDS) including printing
• Sales, staff, and inventory reporting in real-time
• Ingredient level stock management
• Cloud-based, multi-location
• 24/7 customer service and onboarding
For restaurants looking for more than just a card reader and till, Clever Till is commonly rated as one of the best EPOS systems in the UK Market for restaurants.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
Let’s dig deeper into how Clever Till and Zettle compare across the categories that matter most to hospitality businesses.
1. User-friendliness and Setup
• Zettle: Zettle is as simple as plug-and-play and excels in being easy to use. Zettle is designed for very low-friction set-up and minimal training for traders.
• Clever Till: Clever Till system is the most straightforward to learn interface but features a lot more on the back-end — from back-office tools, to staff permissions and role-based access. The Clever Till onboarding process is person-led by customer success specialists, led by people, rather than simply help articles.
Winner: Clever Till - in terms of staff everyday use it is easy to get on with, but is a powerful EPOS system behind the curtain.
2. Restaurant-specific features:
• Zettle: Zettle is limited but offers basic transaction functionality and transaction modifiers. Zettle is not complete with features essential to service providers like the ability to print kitchen tickets, table tracking or sequencing of orders.
• Clever Till: Clever Till was designed specifically with restaurants in mind. Clever Till includes:
o Custom table App
o Course based products (Starters, Mains, Desserts)
o Order Modifiers and allergens per order
o Time-based menus for breakfast (Open Menu), lunch and dinner times
o Kitchen printing and kitchen ticket prints/displays.
Winner: Clever Till - is clearly the better EPOS system for restaurants and food businesses.
3. Inventory & Stock Control
• Zettle: Zettle can accurately track simple quantities of stock products. However, it wouldn't be very helpful for ingredient-level stock or if you operate an EPOS where stock is deducted based on recipes.
• Clever Till: Clever Till tracks all ingredients and can alert a user when they are low stock, and can give reports on waste, margins and performance from the back-office report menus. It is the best tool for controlling costs and analytics on restaurant engineering.
Winner: Clever Till - any restaurant design around stocking food products and tracking menu and ingredient usage will need more than a basic POS.
4. Reporting and Analytics
• Zettle: Provides basic sales and item reports.
• Clever Till: Provides sophisticated insights, including:
o Vital - Real-time sales dashboards
o Ability - Staff performance tracking
o Product - What is popular, profit margins
o Time - Trends in sales over time
Winner: Clever Till - because it provides restaurant owners with the data they require to grow
5. Customer Support and Reliability
• Zettle: Offers live chat and email support between business hours.
• Clever Till: Offers 24/7 support based in the UK which is available by telephone, email and live chat - vital when your kitchen printer stops working at 10pm on Saturday night.
Winner: Clever Till - hospitality never sleeps, and neither should your customer support.
6. Cost and Scalability
• Zettle: Free app for POS with affordable built hardware. Suitable for credit-fed businesses.
• Clever Till: All-in-one EPOS solution for restaurants — includes hardware bundle, cloud backup, and premium support. No monthly fees, just a one-time payment of £999.Grows with your business, single site, multi venue.
Winner: Tie - Zettle offers cheaper upfront expenses, but Clever Till provides future value and growth scalability.
Why Clever Till is the Best EPOS for Restaurants in the UK
Zettle may serve smaller retailers and mobile vendors well; but it is not designed with hospitality in mind. Clever Till, however, is built for restaurants — from front-of-house efficiencies to back-of-house accountability, it supports every aspect of the daily operations of a food business.
Here’s why many restaurants in the UK are switching from Zettle to Clever Till:
• You have more control over staff, stock, and service
• You can gain live insights into your business from anywhere
• You will waste less and track your profits better
• You can DIY and customise Clever Till features to reflect your workflow
• There is reliable support during the busy hours!
Whether you are a fast-casual eatery, fine-dining restaurant or takeaway chain, Clever Till is leading the charge to being the best EPOS for restaurants in the UK.
Conclusion
If you want a card reader and basic POS app, in that case Zettle may be a good temporary solution. However, if your restaurant needs more: more organisation, more features, and more growth potential, Clever Till is the obvious winner.
With Clever Till EPOS’ restaurant-first design, industry-specific tools, and unlimited support, it’s not just processing orders, it’s driving your business.