The best restaurant CRM software in 2026, and the tier Zayos actually belongs in.
Published July 2026 · Updated July 26, 2026
The best restaurant CRM in 2026 depends on your size. Bikky is the strongest purpose built restaurant customer data platform, but it, Punchh and Thanx all sell to multi unit brands. Under five locations, your CRM is whichever ordering channel you own, which is where Zayos sits.
What counts as a restaurant CRM, and what is just a mailing list?
Four different products get sold under the same three letters, and telling them apart saves you a bad purchase. A customer directory stores names and contact details. An email or SMS tool sends messages to that directory. A loyalty program gives a guest a reason to identify themselves at checkout, which is how the directory fills up. A customer data platform, or CDP, joins all of it to order history from every channel and reports on behaviour over time.
Bikky, Punchh and Thanx are on the CDP end. Square, Owner.com, ChowNow and Zayos are on the directory plus messaging end, attached to an ordering channel. Neither end is wrong; buying the wrong one for your size is.
The single test that matters: can you export the list and take it with you when you leave? If the answer is no, it is not your customer data, it is the vendor's.
Why does a busy restaurant end up with almost no customer data?
Because the busiest channel keeps the customer. Order through DoorDash and the diner is DoorDash's customer: the marketplace holds the email, the phone number and the order history, and your kitchen receives a ticket. Do that for three years and you can serve tens of thousands of people while your mailing list stays at a few hundred names collected from a fishbowl.
That asymmetry, more than the commission itself, is the long term cost of renting your ordering channel. The commission is a number you can see on a statement. The missing customer list is a cost that only shows up the day you want to fill a slow Tuesday and have nobody to call.
Which is why the CRM question and the ordering question are the same question for most independents. Software cannot report on data that was never captured.
Which restaurant CRM is best for a multi location brand?
These three are the real category leaders, and none of them publishes a price. That is normal for enterprise software and it is also a filter: if you cannot get a quote returned, you are not the buyer.
Bikky
Best purpose built restaurant CDPBikky is the closest thing the industry has to a real restaurant customer data platform. It connects POS, delivery marketplaces, reservations, loyalty, kiosks and digital ordering into one guest record, then reports how a menu change or a marketing push moved guest behaviour. Its own site describes brands "from fast casual, to full service, to fine dining", naming operators in the 10 to 180 location range.
Multi unit brands with more than one order channel and somebody whose job is actually to read the data.
Not published. bikky.com carries no plan names or prices as of July 2026 and routes every pricing question to a demo booking.
It is an analytics and data platform first, so it assumes you already have a marketing team to act on what it finds. A single location owner working doubles has no use for a guest lifecycle dashboard, and no realistic path to a quote.
PAR Punchh
Best when loyalty is the data engineNow sold inside PAR Engagement, Punchh builds the guest profile out of the loyalty program: enrolment, tiers, offers, and campaigns across email, SMS, app and web, with a Guest360 profile that starts before a diner ever signs up. Its site cites "Trusted by over 275 global brands" including national chains. If your CRM strategy is a loyalty program, this is the category standard.
Regional and national chains running a branded app and a real rewards program.
Not published. punchh.com states no prices and directs visitors to talk to the team.
You are buying an enterprise engagement suite, with the sales cycle, integration work and internal ownership that implies. Nothing about it is sized for an independent, and PAR does not pretend otherwise.
Thanx
Best for multi location guest valueThanx positions itself squarely as "Enterprise solutions built for restaurants" and focuses on lifting the value of guests you already have rather than acquiring new ones. For a brand that has plenty of traffic and a frequency problem, that focus is the right one, and it is one of the few platforms honest enough to say up front that its price scales with your size.
Multi location brands, priced against restaurant count and average unit volume.
Not published. Thanx states "Thanx pricing is designed to scale with your business" and asks you to schedule a demo for a number.
Pricing that scales with average unit volume means your best year is also your most expensive one. And like the two above it, there is no self serve path: you cannot find out what it costs without a sales conversation.
Which restaurant CRM is best for one to five locations?
Here the CRM comes attached to something else you were buying anyway, so rank them by which channel you trust to feed the list. We build one of these five and it is placed fourth of five on purpose; the card explains why.
Toast
Best if you already run ToastYour POS already holds every card transaction that crosses the counter, which makes it the highest volume source of guest data in the building. Toast sells guest engagement on top of that, and for a restaurant already on Toast hardware it is the least effort route to a working customer list because nothing has to be integrated.
Any restaurant whose floor already runs on Toast.
Toast publishes POS plans but sells its marketing and loyalty tooling inside quote based packages. Trackers report a $0 Starter Kit and a $69 a month Point of Sale plan, with marketing and loyalty sold as a bundle reported around $185 a month on top (UpMenu, Merchant Insiders and Favecard, accessed July 2026). Reported, not published.
A POS customer list is a list of people who paid you, not a list of people you can reach. Card data is not an email address, and the reach depends entirely on how many guests opt in at the terminal. Add ons also stack: several third party reviews put a working Toast bill at $150 to $400 a month in modules alone.
Square
Cheapest real CRM for a small shopSquare folded its customer directory, loyalty and email plus text marketing into its plan tiers, which makes it the least expensive way for a small independent to hold a real customer list instead of a spreadsheet. If you take payments on Square already, there is very little reason not to switch it on.
One to three locations, counter service, already on Square hardware.
Published. Square Free is $0 a month per location and includes point of sale, websites, online ordering and invoicing. Square Plus is $49 a month per location and adds "advanced POS features" along with loyalty programs and marketing tools. Square Premium is $149 a month per location (Square unified plans announcement, accessed July 2026).
It captures the guest at the register, so a diner who orders through a marketplace never enters the directory. The segmentation is also basic next to a real CDP: you can send a campaign, but you are not modelling guest lifecycle.
Owner.com
Best re-marketing on a direct channelOwner pairs the customer record with the thing that creates it: your own ordering site and branded app. Loyalty, rewards, and automated email and text campaigns ship in the same subscription, so the list and the machine that mails it are one purchase. For an independent whose goal is repeat orders rather than dashboards, that is the practical shape of a CRM.
Independents who want the ordering channel and the marketing to come from one vendor.
Published: $249 a month plus a 5% restaurant fee per order, or $499 a month flat, with guests paying a 5% order support fee on both plans, month to month (owner.com/pricing, accessed July 2026).
The customer record only covers your direct channel, which is true of every option in this tier, and the 5% guest fee is a percentage that grows with the ticket. It is also a marketing product, so do not expect POS level operational reporting.
Zayos
Best when you have no first party data yetWe build Zayos, so read this one with that in mind. It is not the deepest CRM on this page and it does not try to be. What it does is create the records in the first place: every direct order on your own domain writes a customer you keep and can export, and the same tablet also shows the marketplace orders coming in through Otter so the kitchen runs one queue. If your honest situation is that you have almost no customer data because everything arrives through DoorDash, the fix is a channel you own, not a better dashboard.
Independents and small groups whose orders currently arrive through marketplaces and whose customer list is effectively empty.
Published on /pricing: Operator $499 a month, Operator plus Marketplace $599, Concierge $699, each per location, month to month, no setup fee. The restaurant pays 0% commission and keeps 100% of food revenue and tips; the diner pays a flat $0.99 pickup or $2.99 delivery service fee at checkout.
Two honest limits. First, marketplaces mask diner contact details, so orders ingested from DoorDash, Uber Eats or Grubhub give you the ticket, not the guest, and no platform on this page changes that. Second, it is the youngest product here: Naya Grill in Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach is live and taking orders today, and Shishka, La Vie Mediterranean, Yummy Grill, aura, Courtyard Cafe, Mr. Smoke, Yalla Market and Tap That Ash are built with ordering opening at launch.
ChowNow
Most transparent about its limitsChowNow includes loyalty and email plus SMS marketing on every tier and, unusually, publishes exactly how many customer contacts each tier holds. That honesty is worth something: most vendors on this page will not tell you the ceiling until you hit it.
Independents who want commission free direct ordering with marketing attached and a known contact ceiling.
Published: Launch $229 a month annually or $249 month to month, Grow $319 or $349, Elevate $409 or $449, plus a $119 to $499 setup fee and 2.95% plus $0.29 processing. Grow includes 2,000 customer contacts and 2,000 email or SMS credits; Elevate includes 5,000 of each (get.chownow.com/pricing, accessed July 2026).
Those caps are the catch. A restaurant doing 1,000 direct orders a month will pass 2,000 unique contacts inside a year at any realistic repeat rate, which pushes you to Elevate and then past it. The base Launch tier lists no contact allowance at all.
How do the restaurant CRMs compare?
The last column is the one nobody reads until it bites. Only one vendor on this page publishes how many customer contacts you are allowed to hold.
| Platform | Sells to | Price | Where the data comes from | Published contact cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bikky | Multi unit | Not published | POS, delivery, reservations, loyalty, kiosk, ordering | Not published |
| PAR Punchh | Enterprise | Not published | Loyalty, app, web, POS | Not published |
| Thanx | Multi location | Not published, scales with unit volume | Ordering, loyalty, POS | Not published |
| Toast | 1 location and up | Reported $69/mo POS plus ~$185/mo marketing bundle | POS transactions, online ordering | Not published |
| Square | 1 to 3 locations | $0 / $49 / $149 per month per location | POS transactions, online store | Not published |
| Owner.com | Independents | $249/mo + 5% per order, or $499/mo flat | Direct site, branded app | Not published |
| Zayos | Independents and small groups | $499 / $599 / $699 per month per location | Direct site, dine in QR, catering | No published cap |
| ChowNow | Independents | $229 to $449/mo + $119 to $499 setup | Direct site, branded app, ChowNow network | 2,000 on Grow, 5,000 on Elevate |
Figures reflect vendor pricing pages and named third party reports as accessed in July 2026. Three of the eight publish no pricing at all.
What is a customer record actually worth?
This is the arithmetic that decides whether any CRM on this page pays for itself. Marketplace commission is 15% to 30% base and 25% to 35% blended once delivery, marketing and processing stack, so every guest you can reach directly is worth the take you stop paying.
Those are modeled figures at the stated ticket and frequency, not a measured customer result. Run them against the subscription: a $49 a month Square plan is covered by roughly four recovered guests a year, and a $499 a month plan needs about 38. That is a fair test, and it is the same test whichever vendor you pick.
Real result we can point to: Naya Grill, in Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach, keeps $48k+ a year that previously went to commissions by running direct ordering. Model your own numbers with the free AI report, or read the commission free ordering guide.
Restaurant CRM, answered straight.
What is the best CRM for a restaurant in 2026?
Why does my restaurant have no customer data?
Is a POS customer list the same thing as a restaurant CRM?
How much does restaurant CRM software cost?
What is one recovered customer actually worth to a restaurant?
Can a restaurant CRM capture customer details from DoorDash orders?
Sources
- Bikky, accessed July 2026: restaurant customer data platform integrating POS, delivery, reservations, loyalty, kiosks and digital ordering; brands described "from fast casual, to full service, to fine dining"; no published pricing.
- PAR Punchh, accessed July 2026: now part of PAR Engagement, "Trusted by over 275 global brands", Guest360 profiles, no published pricing.
- Thanx pricing page, accessed July 2026: "Enterprise solutions built for restaurants", "Thanx pricing is designed to scale with your business", demo required, no published prices.
- Square unified plans announcement, accessed July 2026: Square Free $0, Square Plus $49 and Square Premium $149 per month per location, with loyalty and marketing tools on Plus.
- Owner.com pricing page, accessed July 2026: $249 Flexible plus 5% restaurant fee, $499 Flat Rate, 5% guest order support fee, loyalty and email plus text campaigns included.
- ChowNow pricing page, accessed July 2026: Launch $229 or $249, Grow $319 or $349, Elevate $409 or $449, $119 to $499 setup, 2.95% plus $0.29 processing, 2,000 contacts on Grow and 5,000 on Elevate.
- UpMenu, Toast pricing, Merchant Insiders, Toast fees and Favecard, Toast Loyalty review, accessed July 2026: reported $0 Starter Kit, $69 Point of Sale, marketing and loyalty bundle reported at $185 a month, add ons reported at $150 to $400 a month. Reported estimates, not Toast published pricing.
- Zayos pricing: the $499, $599 and $699 tiers and the flat diner paid service fee referenced throughout.
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