Sysco POS explained, and what to use outside the US

Search for sysco pos and you land on a cash register system sold alongside food deliveries. It is a genuine offer, and it carries one condition that decides whether it is relevant to you at all.

This piece sets out who Sysco is, what the point of sale product is, who may buy it, and what a restaurant elsewhere should do with that information.

Who Sysco is

Sysco is a food distributor, not a software company. In its own words it is the global leader in selling, marketing and distributing food and related products to customers who prepare meals away from home, operating 333 distribution centers in 10 countries with about 670,000 customer locations and revenue above $84 billion in fiscal 2026.

That scale explains the software. A distributor of that size can bundle a restaurant point of sale with the food it already delivers, and a kitchen already buying from them gets a familiar name and one relationship instead of two.

What the product actually is

The system is CAKE POS. Sysco's own page presents it as an all-in-one restaurant system covering handheld ordering, kiosks, kitchen displays, loyalty and card processing, and offers Sysco customers the first hardware station at no cost, described there as a $2,000 value with an extended two-year warranty.

CAKE itself is run by Mad Mobile. Its own site describes an all-in-one restaurant point of sale with 24/7 human support and calls the arrangement a partnership, noting that it is trusted by Sysco.

So a plain description: CAKE is the product, Mad Mobile operates it, and Sysco is the route to market plus a hardware incentive.

The condition that decides everything

Sysco's page for the offer states it directly: CAKE POS is only available for US-based restaurants.

If your kitchen is in Nairobi, Mombasa or anywhere outside the United States, this search ends there. No amount of waiting, emailing or reseller-hunting changes a market restriction the vendor has published on its own page.

That is not a criticism. US-only is a reasonable decision for a system tied to card processing, US hardware supply and a US support line. It just means the honest next step is to stop comparing it and start comparing what you can actually buy.

What a point of sale does, and whether you need one first

A pos system for restaurants does three things at a counter: it rings up a sale, it takes the card, and it prints or displays a ticket. Everything else is added around those.

Ask yourself where your orders come from this month. If most arrive at a counter with a queue behind them, a counter system is your first purchase and a restaurant POS is the right thing to read next. A comparison of restaurant POS systems will help you shortlist, and POS software for a restaurant covers what the software half should include.

If most of your orders arrive by phone, by message, or from people sitting at your own tables, then a counter system is not the bottleneck. Taking those orders properly is.

I sold point of sale software to small businesses for four years before I built anything myself. Half the shops that bought a full system needed one third of it, and the third they needed was the part nobody demonstrated. — Anzul Aqeel, founder of Get Menu

What we built instead, and what it is not

Get Menu now includes a point of sale, sold as a yearly add-on to the plan, and we will be plain about what it does. It rings up a walk-in customer, takes cash or your own card machine, splits a bill, parks a sale, opens a cash drawer and prints receipts over wifi. Each shift closes with a Z report sent to your managers' WhatsApp group and by email. Refunds and discounts sit behind a manager PIN, and sales made while the wifi is down are kept and sent when it returns. Tables get a drawn floor plan, tabs and rounds, a kitchen display screen and waiter phones. It works on iPhone and Android.

The rest of it takes the orders that arrive from phones, and carries them through to the door.

Its own ordering page. Your menu on an address that belongs to you, with 12 page layouts, 57 colour themes and a font picker, so the page looks like your restaurant rather than a template.

A code on every table. Generated for you, printable through a designer that matches your brand, and posted to you as a print pack ready for the printer. The table is the address, so a seated customer types nothing but their order.

Group ordering into one bill. Six people at a table each order from their own phone and the kitchen receives a single ticket.

Orders that reach people, not screens. A confirmation to the customer, a ticket to the managers group, and a rider dispatch with the GPS pin, sent as messages within a couple of seconds. There is a log of every message and whether it arrived.

Correct prices without supervision. Each line is priced again from the live menu at checkout, options and add-ons carry their own prices, and required choices stop an incomplete order reaching the kitchen.

Stock that manages itself. Counts fall as orders arrive, a sold-out dish greys itself out, and low-stock alerts warn you before it becomes a problem.

Loyalty without plastic. Stamps per order or on the one dish you want to move, tiers your regulars grow into, and the card kept in the card holder on their phone, updating itself. It works on iPhone and Android.

Offers with brakes on them. Coupons carrying caps, exclusions and expiry dates, ten kinds of upsell, and bundles at a fixed price. Two discounts never stack by accident, because the best one wins.

Paperwork that stands up. VAT invoices carrying your registration number as a PDF, in one unbroken sequence, plus a sales dashboard by day and item.

The price is a flat monthly fee and 0% of what you sell, so a good week costs the same as a slow one.

What we do not do

There are no online payments. Money changes hands when the food does.

There is no staff rota, and there is no collection order type.

And there is no hardware sold. The point of sale runs on an Android phone or tablet you already own and prints to a receipt printer over wifi, and the card machine is your own.

If the search brought you here from outside the US

Write down the three things you wanted from a bundled system: the hardware discount, the single supplier relationship, and the counter workflow.

The first two are commercial, and a local dealer can usually match them. The third is the only one that is a software question, and it is worth answering separately from your food supplier.

Then test the half you are least sure of with real orders. Our trial runs 15 days, asks for no card details, and can be running on your own menu the same day if you have it in a spreadsheet.

Frequently asked questions

Is Sysco POS available outside the United States?

No. Sysco's own page for the offer states that CAKE POS is only available for US-based restaurants.

Who makes CAKE POS?

Mad Mobile operates CAKE. Sysco is a distribution partner and offers its customers a hardware incentive alongside it.

Is Get Menu a POS system?

It is an ordering system with a point of sale available as a yearly add-on. The ordering side takes orders from your own page and from table codes, prices them, and pushes them to your kitchen and riders. The point of sale rings up counter sales, takes cash or your own card machine, opens a cash drawer, prints receipts and closes each shift with a Z report. A counter sale can also stay on whatever cash register you already own.

Can my customers pay online?

No. They pay cash or on your card machine when the order arrives, which is why the system holds no card details of any kind.

What do I need to get started?

A menu and a phone. If the menu is already in a spreadsheet you can upload it in one go, and old order details are cleared automatically after 120 days so the account does not become a filing cabinet.