Cut Wait Times by up to 50%: Why Restaurants Are Switching to mPOS in 2025
Table of Content
Running a restaurant isn’t only about serving good food — it’s about serving it efficiently. In today’s fast-paced dining world, long wait times, slow checkouts, and bottlenecks can hurt both guest satisfaction and profitability.
That’s why more and more operators are adopting mobile POS (mPOS). By putting ordering and payments directly in the hands of staff, restaurants are reporting up to 50% faster service. For resellers, this is an opportunity to bring a proven, revenue-boosting solution to your clients.
💡 What is mPOS?
mPOS (mobile point of sale) is a handheld POS system — usually a tablet or dedicated terminal — that allows staff to take orders, process payments, and even manage transactions anywhere in the restaurant. Unlike traditional POS systems that are fixed to a counter, mPOS moves with your team: to the table, into the line, outside on the patio, or even on delivery runs.
In other words, mPOS untethers your service from the counter and gives staff the flexibility to serve guests wherever they are.
🏪 What Type of Businesses Should Use mPOS?
While restaurants are the largest adopters, the use cases for mPOS go well beyond foodservice:
- Full-Service Restaurants (FSRs): Speed up table turns, improve server tips, and make payments seamless.
- Quick-Service Restaurants (QSRs): Line-busting during peak hours keeps queues short and customers happy.
- Cafés and Coffee Shops: Manage morning rushes efficiently with faster ordering and payments.
- Bars and Breweries: Tableside pay reduces abandoned tabs and helps staff serve more.
- Food Trucks & Pop-Ups: Lightweight devices make selling anywhere possible.
- Small Retail Stores: Boutique and convenience shops can check out customers faster.
- Service Providers: Plumbers, electricians, and home-service professionals can accept card payments on-site via mPOS.
- Event Vendors: Merchants at fairs, festivals, and stadiums can process high volumes quickly.
- Delivery Services: Couriers can collect payments on mPOS at the customer’s doorstep.
For resellers, this wide applicability opens multiple verticals, but restaurants remain the highest-value segment where the impact of mPOS is most visible.
🍴 Benefits of Using mPOS in Restaurants
From faster service to happier guests, mPOS brings measurable improvements across every corner of your restaurant.
- Faster Service: No more trips back and forth to a counter. Orders and payments happen where the guests are, shaving minutes off every transaction.
- Better Guest Experience: Guests don’t want to wait for checks or stand in long queues. mPOS aligns with modern expectations of speed and convenience.
- Higher Revenue Potential: More table turns = more covers. Faster service during rush hours means you don’t lose customers to long waits.
- Improved Staff Efficiency: Servers spend less time walking, more time engaging with guests. That translates into higher tips and better morale.
- Scalable Growth: As your business grows, adding more handheld devices is much cheaper than expanding traditional POS terminals.
📈 How mPOS Improves Restaurant Operations
mPOS isn’t just about speed — it makes day-to-day operations more reliable. By sending orders straight to the kitchen, accuracy improves. With fewer errors, voids, and remakes, restaurants cut down on food waste and costs, while staff stay focused on guests instead of terminals. The result: smoother service, happier customers, and better margins.
.webp)
mPOS vs Traditional POS: A Quick Comparison 📊
While traditional POS systems have been the norm for years, mPOS offers a more flexible and efficient alternative, particularly for a restaurant business. See how the two compare:
How to Cut Wait Times by up to 50% with mPOS
Getting a 50% reduction in wait times isn’t about luck — it’s about planning how mPOS fits into your operations. Here’s how restaurants make it happen:
1. Map your bottlenecks: Start by timing your guest journey: greeting, order-taking, drinks, food delivery, payment. You’ll quickly see where the minutes are being lost. In many restaurants, the biggest delays are at the ordering stage and during payment.
2. Deploy handhelds strategically: Don’t just hand every staff member a device. Assign handhelds to where they’ll have the most impact: one in the line during lunch rush, one for patio service, and others for tableside orders. This ensures maximum coverage during busy times.
3. Make pay-at-table the default: Most delays in full-service restaurants happen when waiting for the check to be processed. With mPOS, servers can present the bill, accept tap/chip/wallet payments, and close the check in under a minute — all at the table. This alone can cut meal times by over 10%.
4. Simplify ordering with smart menus: Use mPOS to enforce required modifiers and set up smart defaults. This reduces ordering errors and prevents kitchen confusion. Fewer mistakes mean smoother operations and faster ticket times.
5. Track and optimize continuously: Implement mPOS with clear metrics in mind: average ticket time, % of pay-at-table transactions, table turns per shift, and guest feedback. Share wins with your staff — when servers see they can serve more tables (and earn more tips), adoption skyrockets.
Following these steps, many restaurants report consistent gains of 15–25% faster service within weeks of implementation.
▶️ OneHubPOS × Dejavoo: Built for Speed and Reliability
At OneHubPOS, we’ve partnered with Dejavoo to bring restaurants and other small businesses a POS system built for speed. Dejavoo’s Android P-Line terminals are fast, durable, and secure — perfect for mobility. With EMV, contactless, and PIN debit support, they accept every payment method your guests prefer.
.webp)
When paired with OneHubPOS software, businesses get:
- Real-time sync for accurate order flow.
- Plug-and-play setup for easy onboarding.
- Reliable payouts backed by Loomis.
For restaurant owners, this means happier guests and higher revenue. For resellers, it’s a solution that sells itself.
Ready to see mPOS in action? Book a free demo with us and experience how OneHubPOS × Dejavoo can speed up your service. ⚡
Frequently Asked Questions
mPOS lets servers take orders and payments directly at the table or in line, instead of walking back and forth to a fixed terminal. This speeds up service flow. In fact, restaurants using mobile POS have reported up to 50% faster order-to-table times compared to traditional POS systems.
By cutting wait times for ordering and payment, mPOS helps restaurants turn tables faster. Studies show table turnover can improve by 15–20% with handheld or pay-at-table systems, which directly boosts daily sales and server tips.
Yes. Modern mPOS systems support EMV, contactless, and PCI-compliant payments with end-to-end encryption. That means customer card data is protected at every stage, just like with a traditional POS terminal.
Both. Full-service restaurants benefit from faster table turns and pay-at-table convenience. Quick-service restaurants use mPOS for line-busting and shorter queues. Even cafés, bars, and food trucks see gains because transactions happen faster.
Yes. Most leading mPOS solutions integrate with inventory management, loyalty programs, online ordering, and delivery apps. This makes it easier to manage the entire restaurant operation from one system.
Very little. mPOS interfaces are designed to be intuitive — similar to using a smartphone. Most staff can get comfortable within a single shift, making adoption faster than traditional POS training.
Yes. mPOS is highly flexible. Small restaurants, cafés, and food trucks use it for quick checkouts and mobile payments. Larger chains benefit from scalability, since more handhelds can be added easily as the business grows.
Rajat is a growth marketing professional with a passion for creating content that drives engagement and measurable results. He specializes in turning insights into clear, actionable stories that help brands scale.
