5 Best Grocery Store POS Systems for Small Businesses

Revel Systems Features

• Inventory management: With the ability to manage complex matrix inventories, you can organize items into categories, monitor stock counts in real time, send automatic stock low-stock alerts, and generate purchase orders. Aside from its barcode scanner, you can use your phone to scan items, and the activity will be synced from the app to your dashboard seamlessly.
• Self-checkout options: Increase service speeds without compromising customer service, especially during peak hours, with intuitive self-service kiosks.
• Scale and scanner integrations: Directly integrate scales into your POS system to eliminate double entry and avoid costly errors. All Revel Systems scales are certified by the National Conference on Weights and Measures.
• Loyalty program and CRM: Create your own loyalty program depending on how your customers want to earn—like earning points per transaction, for buying specific items, or based on the purchase amount. You can generate insights from the app’s management console in order to develop a rewards program (e.g., exclusive discounts and promos) that will boost customer satisfaction.
• Employee management: Set up administrator permissions, assign roles and wages, monitor timecards, and manage payroll. The system also allows you to create staff schedules and standardize time sheet rules according to local laws.
• Payment processing: Revel Systems’ management console lets you view credit card transactions throughout a particular period and check on deposited funds. It is also EMV-compliant and integrates with QuickBooks for seamless accounting processes.
• Customer service: Customer support is available 24/7 via the web, phone, and email.
• Reports and analytics: The software generates in-depth sales, inventory, and labor reports, covering factors such as cost of goods sold (COGS), product mix, and employee expenses vs sales revenue.

To find out more about Revel Systems’ wide array of functionalities, read our full Revel Systems review.

IT Retail Features

• Inventory management: Track your stock levels across multiple locations in real time using IT Retail’s mobile inventory and reporting tools. You can also use the software to receive stocks, generate shelf tags and purchase orders, and make, print, and scan barcode labels.
• Self-checkout options: Accelerate operations with self-checkout kiosks, which helps you save on labor costs by assigning only one employee to monitor two to six lanes. The system can be easily switched between cashier-assisted and self-checkout modes during peak hours.
• Scale and scanner integrations: IT Retail offers customized scale and scanner hardware (depending on your store’s traffic) for quick swipe-and-go capabilities. It also provides tech support and regular programming updates.
• Loyalty program and CRM: Engage with customers better through a customizable rewards system to ensure that they keep coming back. For example, you can reward loyalty points for every purchase, which they can later redeem in dollar amounts or as percentages-off of a sale.
• Employee management: Track employee activity through its built-in time clock and restrict POS permissions according to job level. The system also monitors staff performance at the POS in real time, allowing you to see the numbers of cancellations, voids, transactions, and more.
• Payment processing: IT Retail supports debit card, check, gift card, NFC, EMV, eWIC, and EBT food and cash payments.
• Customer service: Tech support technicians are available 24/7 via phone for emergency cases, while regular support hours are on Mondays to Fridays, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific time.
• Reports and analytics: Generate a wide range of employee, inventory, customer, and sales reports from any device, including profitability reports, end-of-day analyses, and suspicious transactions.

For more information on IT Retail’s dedicated grocery POS features, read our full IT Retail review.

POS Nation Features

• Inventory management: Generate purchase orders, manage vendors, and track perishables, case breaks, and carton-pack inventory. Additional features include a mix-and-match pricing tool.
• Customizable interface: POS Nation has plenty of different interface layouts, so you can choose what works best for your team. Clerks and cashiers can use the buttons to easily find a specific item and see its SKU, price, availability, and more.
• Self-checkout options: Bring the sale to your customer using the mobile checkout feature on its wireless scanners and tablets. You can walk around the store to approach customers who might want to check out immediately and avoid long queues.
• Scale and scanner integrations: Automatically ring up weighed and scanned items to expedite the checkout process.
• Loyalty program and CRM: POS Nation’s built-in customer tracking feature makes use of purchase data so you can provide a more personalized approach to providing customer service. You can also use the system to create loyalty and rewards programs to ensure repeat business and higher transaction values.
• Employee management: Streamline employee management through its clock in and out functionality, user permissions, and automated payroll and payroll deduction reports.
• Payment processing: Accepts multiple payments, including cash, credit card, debit card, check, and EBT. You can also set flat amounts off certain items at specific times, assign discounts, bulk pricing, and even time-based rates.
• Customer service: POS Nation provides 24/7 support via phone and email.
• Reports and analytics: The system has over 55 pre-built reports, including a detailed monthly 1014 file for users in Pennsylvania, as the state requires beer distributors to monitor the purchase and sales of malt beverages.

Read our POS Nation review to know if POS Nation is the right POS for your grocery store.

eHopper Features

• Inventory management: eHopper has a pretty standard inventory management system. You can track inventory down to ingredient-level details for prepared food, create custom low-stock alerts, and manage all vendor and purchase order information right within the POS. Its paid plans also include barcode creation, management, and printing capabilities.
• Hardware integrations: eHopper has a self-service kiosk solution but no direct scale offering. However, you can work around this and set up your own solution by managing price by weight in the back-end. Input the price per weight sold, and synchronize in the POS. The system will then automatically determine the price of the product based on how much it weighs.
• Loyalty program and CRM: Enable your team to provide more efficient customer service by keeping records of their information within the system—such as personal or business details, purchasing preferences, frequency of visits, and other relevant notes.
• Employee management: Assign specific roles and permissions to each employee and set the software language where applicable. eHopper also tracks sales by employee, which can be configured to monitor inventory-related actions like stock adjustments. Paid plans have a time clock to track employee hours.
• Payment processing: eHopper supports card payments through First Data, Global, Elavon, Evo Payments International, and TSYS, as well as contactless payments via NFC technology like Google Pay and Apple Pay. Such can be integrated via PAX s300, PAX D210, Dejavoo Z1, and Dejavoo Z11 terminals.
• Customer service: Essential users can access its knowledge base and video tutorials anytime, while subscribers of paid plans can get in touch with the technical support team via chat, phone, and email.

Find out more about eHopper’s grocery features with our full eHopper review.

Nextar Features

• Inventory management: Nextar’s free plan lets you add products and set expiration dates, specify your sales tax, and create a supplier catalog. With the premium plan, you can create promotional pricing, print product labels, and manage inventory counting.
• Cash register management: The “Quick Seller Switch” feature helps you keep track of your cash balance to ensure faster checkouts and avoid long queues. It includes an edit or cancel transaction option, a money counter tool, and discrepancy warning triggers on an all-in-one screen. Cash register activities are also recorded per user.
• Delivery management system: Create a register of your delivery staff and record orders by each delivery person. Nextar also gives you a quick view of pending orders and prints the delivery address on both the sales invoice and sales receipt. With optional internet access, you can get directions straight from the POS screen and get the best route through Google Maps.
• Loyalty program and CRM: You can register customer information along with an ID photo, and additional information such as preferred delivery person, multiple address registration, and parentage for underage customers. Activate the built-in loyalty program, customize your conversion rates for redeemable points, and offer redeemable options between store credit and reward products.
• Employee management: Nextar allows you to set up staff logins, commission rules, and manage user permissions. You can also record shift schedules and compare it against cash register activities. Cash registers can be identified by user, with the login procedures at the start and end of a shift.
• Customer support: Nextar customer support is available during extended hours via live chat and email for the free plan. Phone support is also available via WhatsApp. There’s also a help center where you can find a knowledge base and video tutorials.
• Reports and analytics: Access business data in real time. You can generate transaction reports, sales tax reports, accounts payable records, and sales reports by product, customer and by staff. You can also get customized statistics reports on inventory costs, stock movement, customer behavior, and more. Drag and drop column headers and apply filters for more customization and export your reports to an excel file.