How to test whether a platform really does multi-location

If you run more than one address, this is the question that matters most and the one most easily answered with marketing language. The way through it is to stop reading feature lists and ask for a demonstration, live, of five specific things.

The five requests

Ask any vendor to do all of these in front of you, in one sitting, without logging out once.

• Change the opening hours of one branch only, leaving the others untouched.
• Redraw the delivery zone of a second branch, with a different radius.
• Mark a dish unavailable at a third branch while it stays on sale elsewhere.
• Raise the price of that same dish at one branch only.
• Do all four without a single logout.

What the answers tell you

If they have to duplicate your restaurant to answer any of these, you are not buying multi-location management. You are buying several single-location accounts with one credit card on file, and you will do the management yourself, forever.

The menu question underneath

Some platforms only work when every location sells exactly the same things at exactly the same prices. Real groups are rarely like that. Rent is not the same in every neighbourhood, and the menu should be allowed to say so. What you want is one master menu with branch-level overrides, not three menus maintained by hand.

And the one that grows with you

Check whether the fee is a percentage of each order. At one location a small commission looks like a rounding error. Across three, at volume, it is a salary, and it grows every time you have a good month.