How to build the perfect restaurant tech stack for the holiday season

Most people know the period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s as “holiday season,” but you likely know it by another name: “busy season.” This stretch from October to December can put your restaurant in the black, but it also brings bigger bookings, longer waitlists and more staff on the floor.

Fortunately, the right restaurant tech stack can help you cut through the chaos. With technology like TouchBistro One, a new handheld device that takes orders and payments right at the table, you can get through the holiday rush and build faster, more profitable workflows that will benefit your business all year long.

With the right restaurant tech stack, you can:

How to build a holiday-proof restaurant tech stack

Before you start hanging up holiday decor, make sure you have the following restaurant tech in place to get you through your busiest time of year.

1. Handheld point-of-sale (POS) and payment devices

The dining room floor can be a busy place during regular service, but in the middle of the restaurant holiday rush, every trip between the table and a stationary POS terminal slows your servers down even further.

This is where a handheld, mobile POS and payments device comes in handy. Unlike older legacy POS systems, which require servers to walk back and forth to a stationary terminal, handheld POS and payment solutions like TouchBistro One go where your servers go. Built specifically for full-service restaurants, TouchBistro One combines TouchBistro’s user-friendly POS interface and order management technology with Moneris’ fast and secure payment processing capabilities. The result is a three-in-one solution that allows staff to take orders, process payments and print receipts from the compact, apron-friendly Moneris Go terminals.

Using this kind of integrated payment processing solution is particularly important during the busy restaurant holiday season when your floor is at full capacity. Because orders and payments run on the same system, staff don’t have to manually key amounts into a separate card reader. This can help to prevent costly errors when staff are at their busiest and reduce fraud, which spikes during the holidays due to high customer volume, fast-paced service and distracted diners.

2. Reservation software and digital waitlist management

Another way to tame the chaos of a busy floor is by taking reservations. According to TouchBistro's 2025 Diner Trends Report, 54 per cent of diners make a reservation when they want to celebrate a special occasion and the holiday season provides endless opportunities to celebrate. In fact, according to OpenTable, reservations at Ontario restaurants were up 23 per cent year over year from Dec. 14 to 27, 2025.

The challenge is, if you’re trying to manage this influx of reservations over the phone, your staff might end up spending the whole evening tied to the phone. Not to mention, when diners try to make changes to their reservations after hours, your staff are left sorting through endless voicemails to make sense of all the changes.

Incorporating reservations software into your restaurant technology stack helps you manage this influx of holiday bookings by allowing diners to make bookings and changes online 24/7. This restaurant tech not only frees your staff up to be on the floor, but it also equips you with added tools to manage your bookings, like automated reservation reminders that reduce no-shows, digital waitlisting options that help you control the queue, and floor plan management features that allow you to redistribute tables among your servers based on how busy you are.

3. POS-integrated online ordering software

Managing the holiday rush in-venue is one thing, but that doesn’t mean it’s business as usual for your off-premise channels. According to 2025 data from Restaurants Canada, 64 per cent of all Canadians ordered delivery in the past six months and a whopping 79 per cent of Gen Z Canadians said the same. Takeout and delivery are already a weekly habit for many Canadians that only intensifies as cooler weather keeps consumers indoors.

However, trying to manage takeout and delivery orders by phone can create major bottlenecks. Front-of-house staff can end up tied up on the phone, while back-of-house staff have little visibility into the volume of orders coming in. 

A POS-integrated online ordering solution is integral to your restaurant tech stack because it allows customers to place orders for takeout or delivery directly from your restaurant’s website so your staff don’t need to babysit the phone. Those orders then flow directly into your POS in real time so you can keep track of everything coming in. Something that’s significantly more difficult if you’re still taking off-premise orders by phone.

4. Loyalty and customer relationship management (CRM) software

In the midst of long holiday shifts and hosting private events, it can be tough to focus on customer retention, but not doing so can be a missed opportunity. According to TouchBistro’s 2025 Diner Trends Report, 40 per cent of loyalty program members in Canada dine out weekly or more often, making them some of the most frequent diners. In other words, loyalty program members can become your most reliable audience for repeat business if you take time to nurture those relationships.

The restaurant holiday season presents a unique opportunity to take first-time visitors who might have only come in for a special occasion, and turn them into loyal regulars. A restaurant loyalty program that doubles as a restaurant CRM is a key part of your restaurant technology stack that allows you to capture valuable details about these loyalty guests, like their food preferences and special milestones such as their birthday. You can then use that information to craft personalized promotions that will encourage those new visitors to come back in the new year. And if your loyalty platform is integrated with your POS and payments data, you can observe long-term patterns in spending behaviour and reward redemptions that will help you craft more engaging and better targeted marketing campaigns.

5. Physical and digital gift cards

In some cases, not having the right restaurant tech in place also means missing out on extra revenue. According to 2025 research by Zamplia, 41 per cent of Canadians planned to give gift cards as holiday gifts, and of that group, 28 per cent planned to give restaurant gift cards, making this the number one type of experiential gift.

If your restaurant doesn’t currently offer physical and digital gift cards, you could be missing out on a massive revenue opportunity. Gift cards create immediate cash flow by injecting money into your business for goods that will be redeemed at a later time. And strong cash flow is especially valuable during the holiday season when you may have extra staff on payroll. Not to mention, gift cards can introduce brand-new diners to your restaurant who may not have visited otherwise. The catch is that you need to have gift card management software in place first in order to enjoy these benefits.

Make this your smoothest holiday season yet

Your POS is essential to cutting through the holiday chaos. Building a restaurant tech stack of integrated solutions around it can ultimately help you achieve smoother operations, more efficient staff and higher profits. And these benefits don’t just end on Jan. 1. Once you have the right systems in place, your restaurant can reap the rewards all year long. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Ready to build your holiday tech stack? Learn more about TouchBistro One.