POS systems for breweries and taprooms
A taproom sells one product in six formats: a taster, a flight, a pint, a crowler, a growler fill and a to go four pack, all from the same keg. The POS question underneath every other one is whether the system can keep that keg's math straight while a Saturday crowd runs tabs across three spaces.
Judd Alsup and the Equip Payment Solutions team, who install and support restaurant POS systems nationwide and sell Shift4 Dine and Clover.Updated August 9, 2026. Sources and dates cited on every figure.
The short answer
For a brewery taproom, judged on flights, growlers, keg yield and tab mobility:
- Arryved or GoTab the taproom specialists, built around keg level inventory and format pricing. We sell neither.
- Shift4 Dine the brewpub answer when a kitchen and table service run alongside the taps. We install this.
- Toast fits multi location brewpub groups; keg tracking arrives via add-ons and partners.
- Square workable for a nano taproom with discipline standing in for keg software.
The rest of this page is the case for each line, with sources.
What this room needs from a POS
Flights and pours as structured items
A flight is four quarter pours priced as one item, each pour drawing down its own keg. If flights are a free text hack, inventory is fiction by Friday and the brewer is guessing which beers actually sell.
Keg level inventory that ties to ounces sold
The system should know a half barrel holds roughly 124 pints and warn when the IPA is two dozen pours from kicking. Keg tracking is how a taproom catches over pouring, and it is the difference between ordering by data and ordering by walking the cooler.
Tabs that follow people, pre auth in place
Card behind the bar, pre authorized, and a tab that moves from the rail to a table to the patio without being reopened. Walked tabs are a real cost; pre auth is the fix, and the POS has to make it the default, not a manager trick.
On premise and to go, taxed and tracked separately
A pint and a four pack to go are different tax treatments in most states, and self distribution states add excise reporting on top. Per item, per mode tax rules again, plus reporting clean enough to hand your excise filing service.
Events, trivia nights and a food truck out back
Taprooms run on events, and many run rotating food trucks instead of kitchens. The POS should tag event nights for honest comparisons, and play nicely alongside a truck's separate system without the two fighting over the patio.
Keg math is the operator section, so here is the actual math
A half barrel is 15.5 gallons, 1,984 ounces. Sold entirely as 16 ounce pints that is 124 pours; at a taproom running 10% loss to foam, samples and line cleaning, call it 112 sellable. If the POS shows 130 pints sold against one keg, you do not have a generous keg, you have a ring up problem, usually pints rung as tasters or flights rung as singles. Reverse it, kegs kicking at 95 recorded pints, and you are watching over pours or unrecorded comps walk out the taps. Neither shows up in revenue reports. Both show up in keg yield, which is why keg level tracking is the taproom's real P&L.
Format pricing is the second math problem. The same beer at a taster, pint, crowler and growler fill needs per format pricing that respects the ounce cost, and growler fills add the returning container wrinkle: the fill is the product, the glass may be a deposit item, and your register flow has to handle a regular walking in with three empties. Systems built for restaurants treat these as five unrelated menu items and lose the thread to the keg entirely; the specialist taproom systems, Arryved and GoTab among them, were built around exactly this and honest comparison for a production taproom includes one.
The third thing: taproom service is genuinely hybrid. Counter service at open, tab service by seven, table service on food truck nights. A rigid counter or table model fights the room. Look for tabs addressable from any terminal and a floor view loose enough to survive a bluegrass night where every chair in the building has moved.
The systems, judged for this room
Arryved and GoTab are the specialists, and they earned it
Built for taprooms: flights, keg yields, format pricing and tab mobility at the core. We sell neither, and a production brewery whose taproom is the margin engine should demo one before choosing anything general purpose. That is the honest first row of this list.
Shift4 Dine handles the brewpub well
When there is a kitchen and table service alongside the taps, restaurant grade tabs, pre auth, per mode taxes and included online ordering for to go crowlers make it a real fit at $29.99 a terminal with visible processing markup. We install it; the specialist row above is the check on this one.
Toast fits the brewpub group
Multi location brewpubs on Toast get its kitchen and enterprise tooling with keg tracking through add-ons and partners. The reported per terminal cost and unpublished rate carry the usual caveat: effective rate in writing before signing.
Square runs plenty of small taprooms honestly
For a nano taproom pouring twelve taps with no kitchen, Square's simplicity and published pricing work, with keg tracking handled by discipline or a bolt on. The pre auth tab flow is the pinch point to demo hard at Saturday volume.
Clover can tend bar, with the reseller caveat
Decent bar flow and tab handling through its apps. The keg question lands on the app market rather than the core, and the rate is whoever quoted you. Same sentence as every Clover row on this site: effective rate, in writing.
The economics: margin lives at the taps, so protect the yield
Taproom beer is the best margin in food and beverage, a pint pouring at 75 to 80 points gross before labor, and that is precisely why yield leaks hurt: every unrecorded pint walks out at full retail value. A taproom pouring $45,000 a month that tightens keg yield by five points recovers north of $2,000 monthly, which dwarfs any processing rate difference on this site. Fix the pour tracking first, then optimize the fees.
The fees still matter, because the tickets are mid sized and the volume is weekend spiked. Run your numbers in the calculator, and if you sell to go beer in volume, check how each system's tax handling deals with your state's on and off premise split before you fall in love with anything.
What the major systems charge
| System | Software | Card present rate | Contract | The part they lead with least |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toast | $0 to $69per terminal, reported | 2.49% to 3.69%+ 15c, reported | 1 to 3 years | The rate climbs with add-ons. Online ordering and delivery move Starter Kit from 3.09% to 3.39%, and gift cards and loyalty take it to 3.69%. That higher rate then applies to every order, not just the online ones. Processing is mandatory and hardware is locked to Toast. |
| Square | $0 / $49 / $149per location, published | 2.6% / 2.5% / 2.4%+ 15c, published | None | The free plan carries the highest rate. Above roughly $25,000 a month in card volume it costs more than the paid one. Kitchen display and kiosk are excluded from free. |
| Clover | $89.95 to $129.85plus $849 to $4,447 hardware, reported | 2.3% + 10crestaurant plans, reported. The reseller sets your final rate | 36 months | Your rate depends entirely on who sold it to you, and identical hardware carries very different pricing from different sellers. Read who owns the equipment before signing. |
| Geniuswas Vital | $0 / $42 / $129published | 2.6% + 10cpublished | 3 years | Their own footnote requires a three year term, 4% cash discounting and $250,000 a year in volume, and mentions an early termination fee. Their pricing page asks about termination fees and then does not answer it. |
| Shift4 DineWe install this | $29.99per terminal, published | Interchange plusmarkup shown in writing | 36 months | What a rep will not lead with: there is a $250 annual program fee per device, an annual regulatory fee, and a yearly escalator on a 36 month agreement. We put all of it in the quote. What you get is a rate where the processor's margin is visible instead of blended into one number. |
| Lightspeed | $69 / $189 / $399published | 2.4% to 2.6% + 10creported, sources disagree | Month to month or annual | A reported $400 a month penalty applies for using a payment processor other than Lightspeed Payments, which makes their processing effectively mandatory. The published software page never states whether prices are per terminal or per location. |
| TouchBistro | $69 or $119published | Not publishedquote based, partner processors | Sources conflict | One reviewer reports month to month, another reports multi year auto renewing contracts that cannot be terminated early. The add-on stack is where the bill grows: reported $25 to $229 a month per module, and a reported $200 setup fee. |
| SpotOn | $0 or $55per station, published | 2.79% + 20c or 2.45% + 15cpublished | 2 years or monthly | The most published rate card in the category after Square. The fine print: a reported $995 conversion fee plus doubled software cost if you switch processors, and cancelling All-In inside a year claws back the hardware discount. |
Square, Genius, SpotOn, Shift4 and Lightspeed software figures are published by those vendors and were read on their own pages on 8 August 2026. Toast, Clover and TouchBistro figures are reported by Merchant Maverick, Expert Market, POSUSA, NerdWallet, business.com and KORONA POS, cross checked against at least two independent sources where possible and labelled where sources disagree. Software units differ: Square prices per location, Toast and Shift4 per terminal, Clover per device, SpotOn per station. Rates change without notice. General guidance, not legal, tax or accounting advice.
Questions owners ask
What is the best POS for a brewery taproom?
For a taproom first operation, demo a specialist, Arryved or GoTab, against a restaurant grade system, and let keg level inventory and tab mobility decide it. For a brewpub with a real kitchen, restaurant systems win; ours is in that fight and the comparison pages say where it loses.
How do I track growler fills properly?
As their own menu items per size, priced from ounce cost, drawing down the keg like any pour, with the deposit container as a separate item if you charge one. The register flow for a three empty regular should be under fifteen seconds or staff will improvise, and improvisation is where the keg math dies.
Should I pre authorize cards for tabs?
Yes. Pre auth ends walked tabs, and modern flows make it invisible to the guest. The objections are outdated: holds release cleanly and guests used to hotel and gas holds do not notice. Make it the default and audit exceptions weekly.
Can the POS handle my excise and self distribution reporting?
It can feed the numbers, ounces sold by format, on versus off premise, but excise filing is its own discipline. What the POS owes you is clean, per mode sales data your filing service can use without a spreadsheet safari. Ask to see that exact report in the demo.
Have your own numbers checked
Send last month's statement. We read it with you, free, and tell you straight whether we are the ones to fix it.
Send your numbers
About a minute. It goes straight to the Equip team.
It reaches the Equip team. A person calls you back, and if we do not have a crew near you, the team routes it to whoever serves you best. We never ask for card or bank details on this site.