TouchBistro — Local services in Toronto

I've had this system in my restaurant for almost 3 years now. As they've grown, they have completely gone down hill in the customer service department.

When we first got the system, we were trained "on-line" about programming, use, etc. This was fine as we had a direct phone number for additional support... and while we've learned a whole lot about how to better program the system [on our own], we still were able to call when we got "stuck".

Fast forward to about 6 months ago. There was a technical error with the system, called "tech support" [which is its own phone number with a good 30-45 seconds of being told how to call sales]... and heard a recording that said if we'd like to keep our place in the customer service queue... leave a number and someone would get back to us.

Cool... didn't have to waste time on "death hold"!! Yay!!! ...that is until I thought we must have lost our place in the queue... and called back 3 hours later... lather, rinse repeat it was almost 7 HOURS before we'd heard anything from Touch Bistro technical support.

Lost a dinner service from it [not entirely lost, but we were not functioning at regular speed nor efficiency due to the lack of a system upon which we rely].

Next problem came about 3 months later [they seem to come shortly after software "updates" that usually don't mean a damn thing to us]... this time it was 9 HOURS before hearing back from tech support.

Starting to see a trend... as soon as we notice anything even slightly funky, we call and get in the queue. Most times we can figure out the fix and move on... call back times range from 3 to 4 hours, which I guess means they're getting better... but it still sucks!!!

The last time was a week or so ago, but most importantly - last Friday. The week or so ago... I called at 4pm when we found that after an "update" neither of our terminal units were able to connect to the main server. Giving up on a call back that night, I went home and put on "Game 7" of the Stanley Cup playoffs. 10 minutes not the game, my phone rang, and I asked the very pleasant young man on the other end of the phone to give me a call back in 15 minutes [so I could travel to the restaurant, where the system was].

He was very accommodating and got us back up on-line in about 90 minutes [which was OK... my team lost and I didn't have to view the defeat]. However, a new an yet to be identified problem sprang up last Friday.

This one was that the "printer default" was "do not print". Even when we changed it -- not only in "Menu Category" [the default status selection], but individually on every item in the new category, the "do not print" selection was there for 3 seconds before reverting to its proper status. That 3 seconds was enough so nothing printed in the kitchen!!! Kind of a nightmare for a busy restaurant on a Friday night.

I got a call back at about 10pm, I was on my motorcycle so I couldn't answer... they left a "call back" number on my voicemail... which was the "main -- death wait" number instead of a "you already waited, here's the number for the front of the line".

Put in another call to the general number... suffered the 30-45 seconds of "sales phone number" reference... left my return phone number... got a call back shortly after midnight... as soon as I answered the phone, who ever was on the other end hung up.

Next call 11a Saturday morning... call back 2:30pm... the guy with the team viewer said he didn't see the problem on his end so I shot video on my cell phone and emailed it to him. They said they'll call me back sometime Tuesday morning with a "status update"... which I'm hoping upon hope is a fix... but I'm not holding my breath as I seem to not be any of the important 30k+ clients they keep bragging...

STAY FAR AWAY…

TouchBistro recently rolled out a large-scale migration from their basic POS to a new cloud-based system and it has completely disrupted the functionality of our business.

Before the migration, our only major issue was that staff member could visably see the business’s total gross revenue on the closed orders page. NOT shift reports per server but rather total revenue of our business. That’s a huge privacy concern. My staff do NOT need to know the total daily revenue of my business. We raised this concern multiple times over the years, and were told: “That my concerns will be documented and would only get addressed if more businesses complain.” That’s ridiculous!

Since the migration, things have spiralled horribly : • The system crashes every 30–45 minutes with “cannot connect to main device” errors, forcing us to restart the app. • Menu items have disappeared entirely. • Modifiers are misaligned or missing. • Orders print to the wrong kitchen printers, even ones that were never assigned to those items. • We run three separate menus — regular, catering, and Uber Eats — with many of the same items priced differently. TouchBistro’s explanation is that having the same item in multiple menus is confusing the system and causing incorrect routing. That is not a solution. Any POS designed for professional use should be able to handle multiple menus with duplicate items. • Taxes didn’t transfer properly, so we’ve had to manually, re-enter, publish, and double-check almost every single item. It’s like starting from scratch.

We requested on-site support because we know this needs a hands-on rebuild. Andrea, from customer care, originally said she’d try to arrange that — and then never followed up. Left us waiting…Instead, she continues to push phone support. There so many issues that a phone call alone would not be able to solve.

She’s dismissive, unhelpful, and not treating our concerns with the seriousness they deserve.

To make matters worse, a full frustrating week later…we wanted out of our contract because we received little to no help and Andrea at customer care informed us that in order to exit our contract, we’d have to pay $1,600 — even though this entire mess stems from a forced migration we never asked for.

TouchBistro has taken a functional system and replaced it with something unstable, frustrating, and unsupported. We’ve lost time, money, and staff confidence — and they refuse to take responsibility.

If you’re a serious business, STAY FAR AWAY from...

We had very bad experience with TouchBistro (TB), here is why

They made us sign one year contract, without giving us any chance to try the software prior to signing the contract. All we had is 30 minute demo, where we were verbally assured that TB has all the features that could help the restaurant. But, once we started using the software we started to discover issues, such as;

A. We have been in business for nine years, we have many loyal customers, once we made the switch to TB, we started to hear back from them that whenever they wanted to order online (now through TB) they were forced to register an account with TB, however the odd thing is that TB keeps this info for themselves, we have no access to it. We called TB to complain, they forwarded us to “tech support”, who explained to me that I had two options; one, is to enter info directly into the iPad contacts or, two: purchase “Loyalty” from TB for $179/month.

B. Few other technical problem we faced: 1. minimal control over order printing (you can’t make the font larger or bolder, one has to hold the ticket close to their eyes to read it. 2. No control whatsoever over the design or appearance of the online ordering or reservations website. TB’s model here is very much like Skip or DoorDahs, they host menus for restaurants where people can chose menu and order from it, but restaurants have no access to customer info.

I contacted TB again to see if these tech issues can be resolved, I spoke again with customer services (all dates and names are documented) and we were told that this is the way things are, they referred me back to “tech” who in turn told me the same thing. So I asked if I can cancel our subscription, they referred me to “customer care”. It took customer care less than 60 seconds to take care of me and send me bill to pay the total amount due. Although all of this happened within the first 30 days of using their software.

We contacted BBB and filed a complain, two months later BBB informed us that TB didn’t reply to them, neither did they contact us, although I sent a detailed email with pictures and screenshots to TB explaining the problems.

We stopped using their software and we are still paying for it monthly. But still, once in a while TB leaves us a message reminding us to use their online...