Lavu POS Review: Is The Tablet-Based POS a Good Match For You?

Lavu POS is a tablet-based POS system that’s ideal for quick-service businesses like cafes and bars. The POS offers lots of strong hospitality features – including perishable stock alerts – as well as a dedicated training mode to help new employees get to grips with the software, making it a reliable option for small to medium-sized restaurants.

But while Lavu POS is quite easy to use, the software design is a little dated, and the limited hardware options may be offputting to more established food and drink businesses. Compared to some of the best restaurant POS systems it’s a little pricey too, as its cheapest tier is $99 per month and there’s no free plan in sight.

This guide, which has been informed by our extensive research and user testing, explores Lavu POS’s features, hardware options, pricing model and more, to help you decide whether the POS is right for you. Read on to learn more about the provider, or jump to a specific section using the links underneath “In this review”.

In this review:

• Lavu POS: At a Glance
• Lavu POS: Core Features
• Lavu Hardware
• Lavu Pricing Plans
• Lavu Customer Support
• How Does Lavu Compare to Alternatives?
• How Did We Research the Best POS Systems?
• The Verdict: Is Lavu Worth It?

Who should go for Lavu POS?

• Small quick service businesses that want a simple iPad setup
• Businesses that want an integrated kitchen display
• Businesses that require ultra-accurate stock tracking tools

Who shouldn’t go for Lavu POS?

• Businesses that want support in pricing products competitively
• Food trucks that depend on an automatic offline mode
• Table service businesses after mobile or QR ordering features

Lavu POS Review: Core Features

Lavu POS offers a wide selection of general POS features as well as some advanced hospitality-focused features for larger food and drink businesses. Read on to learn more about its toolkit.

Payment and ordering

Lavu POS’s platform takes the fuss away from logging orders, by giving users a straightforward way to split orders, move and reassign bills, and add custom notes to orders and receipts. The system lets you split bills by entering specific amounts as well. However, if you think you’ll need to split bills by percentage you’ll have to choose a system that offers slightly more flexible bill-splitting options like Square or Lightspeed instead.

Lavu POS’s quick serve mode lets you log orders faster by only presenting your top sellers. Source: Tech.co testing

One thing that stood out when we tested Lavu POS was its Quick Serve Mode. The mode lets you present your most popular items on the screen, reducing the amount of time it takes for servers to log orders. This feature, combined with its ‘Quick Pay’ tool that streamlines the payment process, will likely be a lifesaver for busy counter-service businesses that need to serve customers as quickly as possible.

Inventory tracking

Lavu POS lets businesses manage their inventory levels with ease. The platform lets you manage inventory in real-time, manually update stock levels, and upload products in bulk to save time. The POS also sends out low-stock notifications when items are running low, to reduce potentially costly stockouts from occurring.

Lavu POS’s inventory dashboard also includes a “Use First Inventory” notification, so businesses can prioritize perishable items over goods with a longer shelf life. By improving visibility this capability helps businesses to reduce costly wastage and will be especially useful for food businesses that stock fresh produce, dairy products, and baked goods.

Lavu POS’s ‘Use First’ feature makes it simple for businesses to keep track of perishable inventory items. Source: Lavu

While Lavu POS’s stock tracking tools are strong across the board, we noticed that the system doesn’t currently give businesses a way to optimize profitability through inventory-focused profit management features. While this won’t be a dealbreaker for most businesses, it may be an issue if you are planning to use the system to price your products more competitively.

Customer loyalty

If growing your customer base is important to you, Lavu POS has you covered. Its in-house loyalty program, Lavu Loyalty, lets you assign loyalty points to specific menu items, offer discounts in exchange for points, and manage loyalty points for your customer base. You can also choose whether you want the customer’s rewards to be earned by the number of orders they place, or by the amount of dollars they spend.

Lavu POS lets you add customer information into the system in a couple of taps. Source: Tech.co testing

Lavu POS also makes saving customer data light work. Servers are able to create customer profiles and enter important information with a couple of taps. You’re also able to save the favorite orders of your customers and track their activity down the line to strengthen the relationship between you and your base.

Lavu POS’s basic loyalty features are free too, giving it a huge advantage over systems that charge extra for the perk like Square and Lightspeed. This being said, if you’re really serious about improving your customer retention, and want to unlock specialized features like birthday reminders and customizable rewards, we’d recommend using Clover instead as offers the best CRM features we’ve researched.

Learn more about the user-friendly POS in our Clover POS review.

Floor plan management

If your food business has table service options, you can use Lavu POS to create customizable floor plans that replicate the layout of your location. You’ll be able to customize their shape and size and add custom labels. The POS color-codes the tables based on their status too, so servers will be able to see which tables have an active order at a glance.

Lavu POS lets you manage tabs on different tables, and serve them faster if they don’t open a tab. Source: Tech.co testing

When we tested out Lavu’s floor plan management features we were able to create a floor plan pretty quickly. However, you weren’t able to make changes directly through POS like Epos Now and Clover, which meant we had to go into the back office to make quick edits.

Training mode

Lavu POS has a dedicated training mode that helps new starters familiarize themselves with the system without reports being impacted or company data being jeopardized. The feature gives employees a way to practice using it in an ultra-safe mode and will be especially useful to established food businesses that hire new staff regularly.

Since many POS systems don’t offer a training mode feature – including our top-rated systems Square and Clover – we definitely consider the capability to be one of Lavu POS’s biggest strengths.

See how the high-quality systems compare in our Square vs Clover POS review.

Lavu POS Pricing and Plans

Lavu POS offers three different pricing packages for businesses to choose from: Starter, Growth and Optimize. Take a look at our pricing table below to see how the plans compare at a glance, or read on to learn about them in greater depth.

Lavu POS Starter is designed for smaller hospitality businesses like cafes, market sellers, and food trucks. The tier includes core POS features including basic inventory management, gift card support, customer loyalty tools, and reporting and analytics. Lavu POS recently upped the price of this plan from $59 per month to $99 per month, making it slightly more expensive than entry-level plans from other POS providers.

Manage a mobile restaurant? See how Lavu POS compares to the competition in our guide to the best POS for food trucks.

Lavu’s Growth plan ($149 per month) provides businesses with everything in the Starter plan with additional MenuDrive online ordering and DoorDash delivery integrations. For this reason, the package is best suited to mid-size restaurants that manage take-out and delivery orders.

Lastly, Lavu POS Optimize costs $279 per month and was designed to be used by large, full-service restaurants. In addition to everything in the Growth plan, the premium tier gives users access to tableside ordering features, a kitchen display system, and accounting integrations with Xero and Quickbooks.

Unfortunately, Lavu’s software don’t include hardware, so businesses will have to purchase devices separately. .

Lavu POS doesn’t currently display its pricing on its website, but these are the last prices listed online. Reach out to a customer service representative for up-to-date estimates. 

Does Lavu POS offer a free plan?

If you want to get started with Lavu POS for free you’re out of luck, as the provider does not currently offer a free plan. Lavu does let businesses test out its software at no cost with a free demo, however. There’s no obligation to move forward with Lavu POS after your demo period comes to an end, either.

Lavu POS doesn’t state how long the trial period is on its website, so we’d recommend reaching out to a member of its customer service team for details.

Is Lavu POS a good value?

Lavu POS’s value offering isn’t terrible, but when you compare it to POS providers like Clover that offer quick-serve hardware and software packages from $105 per month, we think the price of its software packages is quite steep. The fact that Lavu POS doesn’t offer a free plan, like the alternatives Square and SpotOn, will rule it out from smaller ventures that are looking to completely avoid monthly overheads.

Check out our SpotOn POS review to see if the free system is a better match for you.

Lavu POS Hardware

Lavu POS is a tablet-based POS system, so its hardware options aren’t as comprehensive as many of its rivals. However, Lavu does sell its own POS terminals – which are essentially tablets – and a range of third-party hardware accessories like cash drawers, Epson sales slip printers, and card terminals.

Lavu also offers an Epson-branded KDS to streamline the order-taking process for restaurants. The hardware components of the KDS include the POS tablet, back-of-house (BOH) screens, and a keyboard bump bar, which businesses are able to purchase as a bundle package.

Unfortunately Lavu POS isn’t forthcoming about the price of its hardware. As the provider doesn’t list its prices publicly, we’d recommend getting in touch with its customer service team to see how much its hardware could cost you.

Lavu POS lets you connect with a range of third-party hardware accessories. Source: Lavu

Lavu POS Customer Support

Lavu POS’s help center is open around-the-clock, making it a great system for food businesses with early start times or late finishes. Specifically, you’re able to reach out via phone or email 24/7, and the provider also has a live chatbot that lets you get in touch with a member of its customer support team.

The provider doesn’t currently offer support through social media channels like Instagram and Facebook. So if this is a dealbreaker for you we’d recommend using systems like Square or Zettle By PayPal instead.

How Does Lavu POS Compare to Alternatives?

Lavu POS performed quite well in our research and user testing, but there are better alternatives out there. Toast offers a greater selection of industry-specific features than Lavu – including a cost management calculator – and its physical POS terminal is better suited to established restaurants that require something more comprehensive than a tablet-based setup. Toast also has a completely free hardware and software package, which lets businesses sell without paying monthly fees.

Learn more about our POS restaurants frontrunner in our Toast POS review.

If you’re after an iPad-based system Square POS is another great alternative, with affordable hardware, a forever free plan, and industry-leading payment features like online ordering and QR payment features. While Square doesn’t have a training mode like Lavu POS, the system’s interface is a lot more modern, making it more suitable for businesses using a POS for the first time.

See how Lavu compares to the competition in our guide to the best restaurant POS systems.

How Do We Research The Best POS Systems?

POS systems serve as central hubs for small businesses, helping them do far more than just take payments. With so much to consider when buying a new system, our thorough research process aims to do a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

After shortlisting the best POS solutions on the market, we analyze them against the following criteria:

• Software features – We check what general POS features a provider offers – from stock controls to reporting and analytics – and also see whether they give access to industry-specific capabilities like SKU labels and food wastage reports.
• Hardware – We analyze a provider’s hardware selection and check for the presence of stand-alone POS terminals and tablet stands, as well as more specialized equipment like KDS systems and customer-facing displays.
• Price – We calculate the average price of POS packages, factor in its entry price and the price of transaction fees, and check for the presence of free plans.
• Help and support options – We research which customer support channels are available – from email to social media – measure how fast the response times are, and consider whether they’re open 24/7.
• Customer satisfaction – We take an aggregate score from customer review sites like Trustpilot and TrustRadius to understand what businesses actually make of the POS system.
• User experience – We test out the POS systems firsthand to gauge how easy to use they are, paying special attention to factors like error rates, intuitiveness, and loading times.

When we’ve carried out our desk-based research and user testing, we give each provider a score out of five in all six categories, in addition to an overall score. These scores help us to determine how the providers compare side-by-side, and how capable they will be at meeting the needs of specific types of businesses.

Learn more about our research process here.