Most operators pick a point-of-sale system based on what their merchant-services rep recommends, or what looked impressive at a trade show. We picked our first one, Clover. Because the sales rep told us it had the lowest processing fees. He was right. We still ended up moving off it.
Over three years at Cork & Candles we've run four different POS systems. Clover, then Square, then Toast, then back to Square. None of those switches were free. Every migration costs you reporting history, staff retraining, and a stomach-turning week of "did that transaction post correctly?" By the end we had opinions. Here's the version we wish someone had handed us when we opened the doors.
The four systems and why we tried each
Clover came first because of the merchant-fee story. Clover doesn't lock you to a single payment processor. You can shop around for the lowest rate. We landed at something like 2.3% + 10¢ for swiped cards and a hair more for keyed. For a candle bar doing meaningful volume, the savings vs. a closed system were real. We're talking $400-$600 a month on processing alone.
Square came second because of the mobile app and the Marketplace. Clover's hardware was fine. Clover's reporting was fine. But the moment we wanted to wire up our booking software, our payroll, and our accounting, we found ourselves writing custom integrations. Square Marketplace has an app for everything, including the things you didn't know you needed.
Toast came third because someone convinced us we needed a "real" restaurant POS for our private-event business. We were running buyouts with food service. Toast is built for that workflow. What we didn't appreciate going in: Toast is also built for restaurants with networking budgets. Setup required two on-site visits from field engineers and a wired Ethernet drop to every terminal. Our quote came in around $3,200 in upfront hardware and setup before the first transaction ran.
Back to Square was the cheap-shot fix. Within four months on Toast we realized the depth we needed for food service was real, but the network configuration and per-terminal cost made it the wrong tool for a candle bar with retail and occasional catered events. Square had quietly improved its food-service features in the meantime. We moved back, ate the second migration, and have been on Square ever since.
What we'd actually recommend
A decision tree, because nobody benefits from a generic "depends on your needs" answer.
Pick Clover if: You're a low-volume venue with no significant retail attached, you have a bookkeeper who can hand-reconcile booking-platform transactions against POS deposits, and you want the lowest processing fees you can get. The integration ecosystem will be your problem. Plan for that.
Pick Square if: You have retail attached to your experience (we sell finished candles at Cork & Candles, that revenue runs through the same Square account as the booking experience), or you want a Marketplace where every booking platform, payroll system, and accounting tool already integrates. Processing fees are reasonable. Not the lowest, but defensible.
Pick Toast if: You have full table-service food running alongside your experience. A winery with a real kitchen. A cooking school with a restaurant-style buyout business. If "food and beverage" is 40%+ of your revenue, Toast's deeper restaurant features earn the higher cost. Anything less, and you're paying for a complication tax.
Don't pick Shopify if your business is primarily in-person. We looked at it. Shopify is genuinely best-in-class for ecommerce, and their in-person hardware has gotten better, but the workflow assumes online-first, with in-person as a backup. The reverse is true for an experience business.
The merchant-fee gotcha most operators miss
Two POS systems can advertise identical processing rates and cost you very different amounts at the end of the month. The reason is which transactions count as "card present" vs "card not present."
A booking platform that takes payment online, like Square Appointments, Bookeo, or FareHarbor. Runs every transaction as "card not present." Even if your guest hands you a card at the host stand, if the platform processed it online first, you got charged the online rate. That's typically 2.9% + 30¢ instead of 2.5% + 10¢.
For a venue doing $30,000 a month, the difference is roughly $135 in fees. Per month. $1,620 a year. On nothing but how your booking platform routes the transaction.
This is one of the reasons we built ArtistryHost on top of Square's Orders API specifically. The way a payment is structured in Square determines which fee it gets. Most booking platforms route through Square's E-commerce endpoint, which lumps everything into card-not-present rates. We route through Orders, which preserves the distinction between deposit (online, card not present) and balance (in-person, card present).
A small architectural choice. Worth thousands per year for a busy venue.
The hidden cost nobody talks about
The other thing that hit us moving between systems: reporting continuity. Every time you switch POS, you start your sales history over. Year-over-year comparisons get harder. Loyalty programs reset. Gift card balances need migration paths. Tax filings need to reference two systems for the year you switched.
By the third migration we'd built a rule: don't switch POS unless you're going to stay for at least three years. The first year is paying off the migration. The second is the year you finally get clean reports. The third is the year you actually benefit from the choice.
That rule, in retrospect, is why we shouldn't have moved to Toast. Three months in we knew the choice was wrong. The cost to move back wasn't the migration. It was losing six months of comparative reporting at exactly the moment we were trying to make capacity decisions.
What we'd do today
If we were opening Cork & Candles for the first time in 2026, knowing what we know: we'd start on Square. The marketplace ecosystem alone is worth the few extra basis points in processing fees. The hardware is solid. The mobile app is the best in the category. And the path from "small candle bar" to "small candle bar with retail and private events and gift cards and a loyalty program" doesn't require migrating off the platform.
Then we'd build our booking software on top of Square specifically, because the alternative is reconciling two financial systems every month-end, and that math wins, every time.