Lolly POS Alternative: The Best Lolly Alternatives for Hospitality
Lolly POS Alternative: The Best Lolly Alternatives for Hospitality
Lolly is a UK hospitality POS. You'll mostly find it in staff restaurants, visitor attractions, stadiums and workplace catering. People start looking elsewhere for the usual reasons: the contract is nearly up, the business has grown, or they need the system to do more than take payments at a till.
Why operators move off Lolly
Online ordering is the big one. Lolly is built around the counter and the till. If you want customers ordering direct from your website, a branded app or a kiosk, you'll probably end up bolting another system on to do it.
Multi-site groups sometimes find that updating menus and prices across sites from one place takes more manual work than they expected.
Integrations can be thin next to newer platforms, especially for delivery platforms, loyalty and third-party apps.
Then there's cost. Add a few more sites and the hardware, software and support bills add up. Worth checking what else is out there.
Lolly POS alternatives for hospitality
1. Flipdish
We'd put Flipdish first for operators who want more than a standalone POS. It does POS, online ordering, branded apps, kiosks, payments, AI phone ordering, loyalty and marketing in one platform, so you're not buying separate products and then trying to get them to talk to each other.
Counter, table, click-and-collect and delivery orders all come through the same system and land in the same reports.
What you get:
- POS with a kitchen display system
- Online ordering and branded mobile apps
- Self-service kiosks for busy venues
- Payments built in, so card takings show up in the same reports as everything else
- Menus and pricing managed centrally across sites
- An AI phone agent that answers the phone and takes orders
Restaurant chains, QSRs, cafés and multi-location operators across the UK and Ireland use it.
2. Lightspeed Restaurant
Cloud POS with decent multi-site reporting and a fair range of integrations. It's built mainly for table-service restaurants. Not a great fit for high-volume counter service, or if you want kiosks and direct ordering in the same system as your tills.
3. Tevalis
UK hospitality POS that copes reasonably well with complicated venues, and it has a track record in stadiums and other large venues. It's aimed at enterprise customers. A smaller operator may find it's more system than they need.
4. ICRTouch
A lot of UK hospitality businesses run on ICRTouch. It's a traditional POS and it's reliable at the counter. Multi-channel ordering is less joined up than on newer platforms.
5. Epos Now
Popular with smaller UK hospitality businesses, and cheaper to get started with. It gets more limited once you're running a group with several locations.
What to check before switching
- Your Lolly contract. Look for the notice period and any early termination fees.
- Hardware. Can you keep your existing terminals, or does the new system need new ones?
- How long migration takes. Moving data and training staff both take time, and you may need to run the two systems side by side for a while.
- Integrations. Write down every system the new POS has to connect to (accounting, inventory, delivery platforms and anything else) and confirm each one works.
- Support response times. If the tills go down mid-service you're losing money, so find out how fast support commits to responding.
Comparing Lolly and Flipdish
| Capability | Lolly | Flipdish |
|---|---|---|
| Counter POS | ✓ | ✓ |
| Online ordering | Limited | ✓ Full direct ordering |
| Branded mobile app | ✗ | ✓ |
| Self-service kiosks | Limited | ✓ |
| Integrated payments | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multi-site management | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI phone ordering | ✗ | ✓ |
| Loyalty and marketing | Basic | ✓ Full platform |
| UK and Ireland support | ✓ | ✓ |
Switching to Flipdish
Flipdish has a set migration process for operators coming from another POS. It usually starts with a scoping call to go through how your current system is set up. After that you get a migration plan with dates, a hardware check and staff training.
Flipdish covers more than the POS, so operators coming from Lolly can often drop a few other tools. Fewer systems to manage, and often a smaller total bill.
If you're thinking about leaving Lolly, talk to the Flipdish team about your setup.