Opening a restaurant? Start with an EPOS that costs you nothing
You have a lease, a fit-out bill and a kitchen to stock. The till should not be the thing that adds a four-figure line to the pre-opening budget. BMTable gives a new UK restaurant a full EPOS, kitchen display and table plan for £0 per month, live in about half an hour, on hardware you already own.
Last reviewed July 2026
What opening with BMTable avoids
- No terminal purchase. The average UK restaurant EPOS bundle asks £700–£1,500 per till before a single cover is served.
- No 36-month lease. EPOS finance agreements are one of the most common regrets we hear from operators in their first year.
- No setup or onboarding fee. You build the menu yourself in a form; it takes an afternoon.
- No transaction percentage. Your card rate stays between you and your acquirer.
- No minimum covers or turnover commitment.
Getting open, in order
Register the food business first
You must register with your local council at least 28 days before you start trading. It is free and cannot be refused. Do this before anything else — the 28 days is a hard gate on your opening date.
Sort licensing if you are selling alcohol
A Premises Licence under the Licensing Act 2003 plus a named Designated Premises Supervisor holding a Personal Licence. Allow several weeks; a 28-day consultation period applies.
Write your menu with allergens attached
Build the menu in BMTable with the 14 allergens tagged per item as you go. Retrofitting allergen data onto a live menu during service week is miserable; doing it at authoring time costs nothing.
Map the floor
Drag tables onto a grid to match your room. Table numbers, covers and sections take about twenty minutes.
Run a soft-launch service
Invite friends and family, run real tickets through the kitchen display, and find out where your pass jams before paying customers do.
Why new sites specifically suit BMTable
Established restaurants have sunk cost — terminals bought, staff trained, a contract with eighteen months left. A new site has none of that. You can pick the system that fits how you want to run service rather than the one you are already paying for, and you can change your mind in month three without a termination charge.
The trade-off is honest: BMTable is a young product from a small team. If you want a decade-old system with a national engineer network and a thousand integrations, that is not us. If you want a till that does the core job well, costs nothing to try, and puts you in direct contact with the people writing the software, that is exactly what this is.
Questions from operators about to open
- How long does it take to get a new restaurant live on BMTable?
- Most operators go from signup to a working menu, floor plan and kitchen display in under an hour. The longest part is typing your menu in; a 60-item menu takes roughly 30–45 minutes.
- What hardware do I need to open?
- A tablet or laptop per service station, a screen for the kitchen, and a standard ESC/POS receipt printer. If you already own iPads, you already own your EPOS hardware. A card terminal is separate and comes from your payment provider.
- Can I start on the Free plan and upgrade later?
- Yes, and most new restaurants do. Free covers one account and unlimited orders. You move to Pro when you need offline desktop service, more staff accounts, the Android app or advanced reporting.
- Do I need a separate booking system?
- BMTable handles the floor plan and covers. It is not a public online reservation platform, so if you take bookings through a channel like a diary widget on your website you will still want that alongside it.
- Is BMTable suitable for a food truck or a small cafe?
- Yes. Single-location operators are exactly who the Free plan is for. If you have no table service, you can skip the floor plan entirely and run counter orders straight to the kitchen display.
Get your first ticket through the pass tonight.
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