Rezku POS Review: Is Rezku Right for Your Business?

Rezku is a cloud-based iPad POS for restaurants. Launched in 2014, Rezku is designed to be a streamlined system for modern restaurants that need POS tools in a digitally-driven world. Rezku includes loyalty, online ordering, and basic inventory in its entry-level POS, in addition to essential POS functions. Rezku pricing starts at $69 per month for software for a single terminal.

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What We Recommend Rezku For

Rezku is a great entry-level POS for small restaurants. It is also a perfect fit for food and beverage businesses that want to expand into online ordering and customer loyalty without breaking the bank.

In particular, we recommend Rezku for:

• Wineries: Rezku offers excellent support for wineries that want to process orders for pick up, local delivery, or shipping. Included inventory features keep stock tidy, making this system an excellent choice for a winery POS. In our evaluation, Rezku earned a 4.26 out of 5 for best winery POS.
• Bars: Clever features like pinch to expand beverage recipes, pour count integrations, and streamlined, dark mode order screens make Rezku a great bar POS.
• Food trucks: Rezku is focused on being a mobile solution and has excellent offline functionality. Combined with the rich customer engagement features, this makes Rezku one of our top-ranking food truck POS systems. In our evaluation, the system earned a 3.78 out of 5.

When Rezku Would Not Be a Good Fit

• Analytics-heavy restaurants: If locking yourself in the back office and drilling into reports is your favorite pastime, you’ll find Rezku’s reporting functions limiting.
• Multi-location restaurants: This is still a young system. Even with lots of positive reviews for customer support, it might be too soon to build a restaurant empire on it.

Not seeing what you need? Check out our guide to the best POS systems for small businesses to find the tool that’s right for you.

Rezku POS Overview

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Rezku doesn’t currently list its pricing publicly. Though, in the past, the baseline pricing for a single terminal’s software was $69 per month, which puts it in line with cost-effective competitors like TouchBistro. Getting a total price for a complete Rezku system requires scheduling a product demo. As most every restaurant POS company has gone this route in recent years, there really is no way out of the demo. On the plus side, however, a demo lets you ask questions to ensure that the system has the tools you need and that you don’t pay for what you won’t use.

As for value, Rezku offers a lot of functionality for your money. Loyalty, online ordering, ingredient-level inventory, and gift cards are included in the baseline POS. The system also features excellent reporting, timekeeping, table management, tab, and check management. Initial service agreements run on a two-year term but shift to month-to-month after your first term is completed. Month-to-month users have no obligation and can terminate their Rezku services at any time.

Rezku Payments is built into the Rezku system. Rezku offers two options for payment processing. The first option is a traditional flat rate, exchange-plus processing rate that is custom quoted based on your sales volume and a credit application. The second option is a bit more daring, and Rezku calls this its “Cash Discount” option. With it, Rezku passes the transaction fees directly to your customers when they opt to pay their tabs with a credit or debit card. The discount comes in because your customers that choose to pay with cash aren’t charged the transaction fees, so they experience this as a discount.

The transaction fees for the Cash Discount run from 3.99% to 4.99% for in-person versus online payments. This is substantially higher than typical interchange-plus processing fees. Restaurants that pay tips to their staff would need to pay processing fees on credit card tips (though some states allow employers to pass a portion of these fees on to employees). Rezku waives monthly software fees for restaurants that qualify for the Cash Discount payment plan. So, it can be a cost-effective option for businesses that want to shift from a cash-only model to accepting credit and debit card payments.

Rezku was designed to operate on iPads, which keeps the system flexible and affordable. You can bring your own compatible iPads (generation 6 or later) or purchase them through Rezku. Printers are the industry standard Epson M30 series, and card readers are MagTek. If you previously used another iPad POS, you can likely use at least some of your pre-existing hardware. Though if you need a complete system, Rezku does have financing options available.

Rezku offers several pre-built hardware configurations that include iPad stands, receipt printers, kitchen printers, and card readers. Pricing for the entry level “Budget” configuration starts at $495, without an iPad. Hardware for a metal stationary terminal with receipt printer, card reader, and optional cash drawer and kitchen printer rings in at $1,198, plus iPad.

Rezku also relies on iPad minis to power its mobile order tablets and customer facing displays. iPads are the foundation for self-ordering kiosks and KDS screens.

Rezku’s floor plan layouts are expansive and vivid; you can make your POS floor plan look identical to your restaurant—complete with plants, walls, and other furnishings, like pianos or stages. Create floor plans with simple drag-and-drop in the POS or from the back office dashboard. The system allows your team to toggle quickly between several dining rooms for restaurants that feature multiple seating areas and create unlimited floor plans for special events like Valentine’s Day.

You can start checks at tables or as free-standing tabs. Bar tabs have credit card pre-authorization functions so you don’t need to hold customer’s credit cards (and fill your office safe with the cards left behind). Assigning dishes to seat numbers and courses is easy if you need those functions. Transferring tabs to tables or transferring tables between servers only requires a simple click. Check splitting functions are incredibly flexible and easy to backtrack if you make a mistake. The payment screen itself is one of the most intuitive interfaces I’ve seen, ensuring all those split checks are closed without errors.

Rezku’s ingredient level inventory functions similarly to TouchBistro. It is included in the baseline POS and tracks ingredients as they are sold or poured. If you want to add vendor management that auto generates orders from low stock, or create physical count worksheets that correspond to the storage location for your supplies, you’ll need to add an integration with YellowDog.

Workforce management functions are basic in Rezku. The system automatically acts as a time clock to track your staff’s hours. The system has a unique feature that uses the iPad’s front-facing camera to take a picture when a staff member clocks in, preventing staff from clocking in for others. For scheduling that syncs with the system, however, you’ll need to add an integration with 7shifts.

Reporting is another area where Rezku reminds me of TouchBistro—and that’s not a bad thing. Both systems support a wide range of built-in reports that show your restaurant’s performance with vivid charts. Rezku’s report interface gets extra points for being slightly easier to navigate than TouchBistro. However, the report ecosystem itself reminds me a lot more of Lightspeed Restaurant. For restaurant groups that want to customize reports and drill down for nitty-gritty data to analyze, Rezku’s reporting will feel limited. But for most small to midsize restaurant operations, its reporting will be enough.

Rezku’s online ordering is the real killer app in the system. With it, your restaurant’s menu is posted online, allowing customers to place orders for pick up or delivery. Your custom online ordering URL is included in your Rezku subscription; there are no additional web hosting fees to pay. Online payments are secure and accept gift cards alongside credit and debit cards. If a customer calls your restaurant to place an order, caller ID integration shows you their information before you answer.

Restaurants that have a roster of in-house drivers can use the Google Maps integration to direct drivers and provide detailed delivery instructions. You can set delivery zones with custom delivery fees as well. Once orders are approved in your POS, they print in your kitchen or on your KDS, creating an efficient order stream without juggling extra tablets or creating duplicate tickets.

The Rezku POS grew out of parent company Guest Innovations’ reservation software. The name Rezku, in fact, is a play on the term “reservations queue” (“res-queue,” get it?). So, it makes sense that this POS has excellent reservation and waitlist tools. Rezku Reservations and Rezku Waitlist are both available with month-to-month or annual software subscriptions. Annual subscribers get a break on the price.

Rezku offers Rezku Reservation—a fully integrated reservation system, which is offered as an additional module—to organize table seating and generate guest records for full-service restaurants. Meanwhile, Rezku Waitlist allows quick-service restaurants (QSRs) to add walk-in guests’ names, quote wait times, and improve seating efficiency.

Auto-rotation alerts ensure that your front desk team doesn’t double or triple seat servers. Customizable booking limits help you control the number of guests who arrive at a certain time, whether you hope to maintain limited occupancy guidelines or simply avoid overwhelming your kitchen. The guest profiles created in the reservation system provide a valuable foundation for the customer relationship management (CRM) tools, logging your customer preferences alongside their contact information.

Rezku developed this POS system to offer affordable software to independent restaurants, so it makes sense that ingredient-level inventory is included in the basic system. You can tie ingredients to recipes to keep track of your supplies in real time as orders are placed. The system will send you an email when supplies are low so you don’t forget to place orders. If you want to place orders with vendors directly through the POS, you’ll need to add a third-party integration with YellowDog.

Without additional integrations, Rezku’s inventory functions similarly to TouchBistro, which requires a regular amount of manual data entry as new orders arrive. This won’t overwhelm small restaurants or those with streamlined menus, but larger restaurants with multiple revenue streams or frequently changing menus will want to upgrade with integrations.

Unlike many other restaurant POS, Rezku includes loyalty functions in the baseline POS.

Choose to track loyalty customers by their phone numbers or design and distribute custom-branded, swipeable rewards cards. You can run unlimited coupons and create promotions. The system logs which staff member processes each discount or coupon to ensure that none of your staff are over-discounting.

The custom promotions and discounts are really robust for such an affordable restaurant POS. If you are a small independent restaurant that needs to create customer incentives to drive business, Rezku is an excellent option.

Staff learn the Rezku system easily. The order screens are streamlined and rely on instinctual swipes, taps, and expand and collapse gestures. You can add menu images to order buttons, or use provided stock images to provide visual variety. Keep your servers from running back to the kitchen by adding recipe information to order buttons so your staff has allergy information at their fingertips. Rezku’s online order screens, customer facing displays, and self-service kiosks are as intuitive and streamlined as the restaurant interface.

Rezku’s Kitchen Display Systems are as streamlined as the order screens. Cooks can tap dishes as they complete them so that the whole kitchen can see what items are holding up the ticket. The interface is as intuitive in the back of the house as the front. But, if I can nitpick for a moment, the monochromatic color scheme of the KDS screens is not my favorite. In a busy kitchen, I’d prefer a wider range of colors for alerts to make it easier to see modifications and special orders at a glance.

The cloud-based manager dashboard is straightforward for owners and managers to navigate. A sidebar menu also allows you to move between different built-in reports. The reports themselves have all the information you need, but they are not as customizable as other restaurant POS systems. Depending on your operational style, you may still need to cobble together information from several reports to create your best-fitting end-of-day manager snapshot.

You can access the manager dashboard directly through the POS terminals for flash reports on sales and labor, as well as to print end of shift and end of day reports. Reports can be exported from the dashboard in XLS, CSV, and PDF files. This is pretty granular, but I really like the way Rezku allows you to customize restaurant floor plans from the cloud dashboard. I hate having to wait for off-hours or arm-wrestle my serving staff during service to use a POS terminal.

Rezku Restaurant Software Alternatives

Rezku covers a lot of ground for an affordable, iPad restaurant POS. This system’s streamlined tools easily support most small to midsize independent restaurants. But there are instances where you might find a better fit in a different system.

What Users Think of Rezku POS

Rezku is still a young POS, so there are not a lot of user reviews online. The ones that are available, though, rate the system positively. Users give the customer service team exceptionally high marks for their response time and friendliness.

• Software Advice: Rezku earns a rating of 4.7 out of 5 based on 17 reviews.
• POS USA: Ranks Rezku as the No. 4 overall restaurant POS system and awards the system a rating of 9 out of 10.
• Finances Online: Rezku earned Great User Experience and a Rising Star awards for 2018. The system earned a rating of 8 out of 10.

There is a lot to like in this young POS system, though the biggest drawback to it may be its very newness. I wouldn’t recommend a multi-location restaurant switch its entire system over just yet, as there may be hidden bugs to work out of the system.

Bottom Line

Rezku is a streamlined, cost-effective bar and restaurant POS. Its built-in reporting, strong offline functionality, and mobile terminals make it an excellent fit for food trucks as well. With online ordering, loyalty, and inventory built into the baseline software subscription, Rezku is great for small restaurants that want to expand their operations. To get a more in-depth look at its full functions, contact Rezku for a full demo.

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