CAKE POS

order-capture-floor-plan-editor

A full graphical editor exists, but in CAKE Guest Manager rather than the POS. Building Your Guest Manager Floor Map documents dragging tables from a palette onto the floor, a 'custom size' table option, renaming and adding floors ('Upstairs', 'Patio', 'Downstairs'), a Walls & Furniture tab for background objects, and a Defining Server Sections step - 'tap the section you want to create... select the tables to include them', a colour bubble per section, 'Create Multiple Configurations: set up different charts for various staffing scenarios (e.g., 2-server lunch shift vs. 4-server dinner shift)', and 'Assign Server Names... displayed in the server rotation feature'. Reservation layouts are separately named and saved with min/max party sizes and turn times. Shortfalls: Guest Manager is a separate purchase added from Admin Portal > Settings > Guest Manager ('follow the prompts to complete the purchase and activation'); the POS's own floor chart is thinner - Adding and Adjusting Table Layout covers add/move/resize tables with Table Number, Number of Seats and Shape, active/inactive landmark tables, and the Edit Table Layout permission, but the only grouping construct is Zones, and the Zones article states explicitly 'Zones are not server sections. They represent broad areas of your restaurant layout'; no multiple saved POS layouts are documented. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Building-Your-Guest-Manager-Floor-Map · retrieved 2026-09-01

order-capture-seat-level

Entry-side seat tagging is fully documented: System Options > Table Service > Seat Positions, 'when enabled, Seat Positions let servers assign specific menu items to individual seats at a table', with 'Add As You Go' or 'Add All at Once', toggled 'as optional or required', and enabling it automatically disables Guest Count. Modifiers display the seat position as part of the modifier options, and the Epson KDS article adds that with 'Group Prep Ticket by Seat Assignments' enabled the KDS 'will show a sub-header for the seat's items just as it would show on a paper ticket'. Shortfall: nothing splits the check by seat afterward. The Split Check article's operations are all item-selection based - highlight items and move them to a '+ Check', 'Split Item' across checks, 'Undo All', 'Move to Order' - and no seat-based split or per-seat check is documented anywhere in CAKE University, so a server re-selects each seat's items by hand. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Table-Service-Settings · retrieved 2026-09-01

order-capture-coursing-hold-fire

System Options > Sending documents a Sending Items Overlay: 'Toggled On: A dialog box appears with options for course breaks and holding items. Toggled Off: Access the overlay by holding down the Send button.' That is the entire published treatment of coursing - one sentence. Shortfalls: no article documents assigning items to named courses in Menu Admin, releasing a held course (there is no documented fire-next-course action; the Send button behaviours enumerated are Send, Send and Exit Order, Send and Sign Out), how a held item appears on the prep ticket or KDS, or whether the overlay is available on CAKE OrderPad. The neighbouring settings in this article are otherwise enumerated field by field, so the thinness is the vendor's, not a retrieval gap. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Sending-Settings · retrieved 2026-09-01

order-capture-split-merge

Item-level splitting and re-merging are documented: the Split Check screen adds checks with '+ Check' ('You can add as many checks as needed'), moves highlighted items between them, and 'Split Item' divides a single item across selected checks; 'Undo All' recombines the checks, and 'Move to Order' transfers items to another open order. The Splitting Payments article covers splitting one check across payment methods — N cards via +/- icons, plus arbitrary dollar amounts for cash, check, 3rd party and gift card. The Transferring Orders or Items article documents combining two tables into one. Shortfalls: no split by seat exists anywhere in the split or transfer articles (there is no seat concept in the workflow); no split by percentage; tables can be combined only 'as long as neither order has split checks'; 'A split item cannot be transferred to a different order'; and no article addresses splitting or merging after partial payment. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Split-Order-by-Item · retrieved 2026-08-04

order-capture-bar-tab-preauth differentiator

System Options > Order Entry > Swipe to Pre-Auth: 'allows the system to open a new order with the customer's name when swiping a credit card from the Order Queue. After swiping the card, you can return the card to the customer, and the pre-authorized hold will last between 1 to 7 days'. The amount is configurable: 'the card will be authorized for $15.00 to verify its validity and stored for final payments... The $15.00 pre-authorization value can be customized via CAKE Admin Portal Settings, under the Payments tab.' Shortfalls: no incremental re-authorization as the tab grows is documented; and there is no auto-close of stale tabs at end of day - the only automatic end-of-day mechanism, Auto Close Cash, is a card-batching backup that fires '48-72 hours after the first card transaction at 4 am' and the vendor states 'the CAKE system does not currently have a set automatic close cash time'. Pre-authorization is also listed as 'Not supported offline' in the Offline Payments feature table. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Order-Entry-Settings · retrieved 2026-09-01

order-capture-transfer-audit

Transferring Orders or Items documents server-to-server transfer ('click the server's name in the dialogue box, depending on your permissions, a manager or owner may be required to enter their password and approve the transfer'), table-to-table transfer of the whole order, combining two tables, and item transfer via the split screen's Move to Order. The Audit Trail: Transfer Report logs it: columns Date, 'Approved By: name of the employee who approved the transfer', Transfer Type (Order or Item), Current/Target Receipt, Current/Target Table, 'Employee From: employee who transferred the order', 'Employee To: employee who received the order', and Transfer Amount, filterable by Employee From, Employee To and Approved By. Device-to-device transfer is not a separate operation because orders live in a shared Order Queue - the OrderPad overview states 'any updates made on the POS are instantly reflected on the OrderPad, and vice versa' - so a check opened on one device is picked up on another without a transfer step. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Transferring-a-Table · retrieved 2026-09-01

order-capture-native-handheld

The OrderPad overview describes 'a cutting-edge iPad-based Point of Sale (POS) solution designed to enhance table-side ordering' where 'wait staff can take orders directly from the table and transmit them to the kitchen promptly', with 'any updates made on the POS... instantly reflected on the OrderPad, and vice versa' - an app installed on the iPad (there are separate articles for resetting the OrderPad app and for finding its iOS version), not a mirrored desktop session. Tableside card payment is documented per device: 'payments must first be activated for each OrderPad via the Device Manager on your CAKE POS system... Toggle ON Payments Enabled', processed 'via the VP3300 Bluetooth payment reader', with eReceipts and Sign By Finger for the guest. Hardware is an iPad (Mini 2-6, Air 1-2) in an nClose/Vault Connect2 case, purchased with an activation fee and a per-OrderPad subscription. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Enabling-OrderPad-Payments · retrieved 2026-09-01

order-capture-offline-order-entry

The vendor does publish an offline scope statement - the Offline Payments article carries a 'What Works (and What Doesn't) in Offline Mode' table: Discounts, Service Charges and Comps 'applied normally'; Tips 'can be added and adjusted'; Receipts 'includes full order details'; Reports 'delayed'; Loyalty, Gift Cards, Pre-Authorization and Manual Card Entry all 'No'. On a network outage 'all POS devices across your CAKE network automatically switch to Offline Mode' and a banner appears 'on the order screen and payment screen', so order entry continues; card transactions are stored locally for up to 72 hours and auto-submitted on recovery, and Close Cash is blocked until the status returns to Online. Shortfalls: the published scope is about payments, not the full order path - it never states whether prep tickets or the KDS still receive sent items during an outage, never mentions cash tender, and never mentions CAKE OrderPad handhelds; offline card payments also only work if 'Offline Card Payments' was enabled before the outage, and swipe is the only supported method on an Original Payment Cube. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Offline-Payments · retrieved 2026-09-01

order-capture-qr-same-check differentiator

The only QR construct in the retrieved KB is payment: POS Extra Fee's FAQ asks 'How does the Extra Fee work with QR Pay?' and answers 'The fee is automatically included in the total for QR Pay transactions.' The Customer Touch Display guide's only QR use is marketing ('Add QR codes that link to loyalty or social pages'). No guest QR item entry appears in the 207 articles, the 14-product catalogue or the three-plan pricing matrix, and the POS order-start surface is closed to two staff paths ('You can begin creating an order in two ways... Via Order Queue... Via Tables'). Not converted to no for two reasons established this session: the sitemap census is refutably a floor (university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/CAKE-KDS-Workflow and /Checkmate-Onboarding return real article ids while a fabricated control slug returns none, and neither is among the 207 slugs), and a prior pass recorded a CAKE Marketing article listing 'QR Pay at Table' among 'CAKE ordering channels', which is exactly the ambiguity this cell turns on.

order-capture-kiosk-first-party differentiator

CAKE Kiosk is first-party: the CAKE Access Point article lists it beside CAKEpop, OrderPad and KDS as a CAKE device - 'CAKE Kiosk - self-service station where guests can browse the menu, order, and pay' - and it is reported as its own channel in the Dashboard In-Store Channels report (POS, CAKEpop, CAKE Kiosk). It is driven from the same Menu Admin build rather than a separate menu: the Enterprise Menu System webinar's menu-building syllabus includes 'Featured Tab: Featuring Items on OLO or Kiosk' alongside Items, Modifiers, Global Modifiers and Availability. Shortfalls: parity is not complete - the Stock Counts article states a POS stock count 'only reflects on the POS, OrderPads, & CAKEpop. It does not affect: Online Ordering (OLO), Kiosks', with cross-platform sync listed as 'coming soon'; existing V1/iPad kiosks 'do not support tips'; and no ADA or WCAG conformance statement for the kiosk exists anywhere in the knowledge base or on trycake.com/products/self-ordering-kiosk, whose feature copy runs to 'supports modifiers, combos, and dynamic upsell prompts' and countertop or floor-standing configurations with no accessibility claim. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Enterprise-Menu-New-Customers · retrieved 2026-09-01

order-capture-drive-thru

The Custom Order Type article is the vendor's own statement of how drive-thru is handled: 'you can create special order types for your drive through, retail shop, etc... Enter a name for your new order type (E.g. Drive Thru, Retail, etc). This name will be displayed on both the customer and kitchen receipts', then 'select an Attribute for your new order type. This attribute will affect the behavior'. The attribute set is enumerated in full by the article's Order Type Attribute - Order Detail Fields table, which has exactly three columns - Dine in, Take Out, Delivery - and lists the fields each unlocks (Name, Guest Count, Table, Server, Order Notes, Phone Number, Email, Address, Promised Time). So a drive-thru order type is a label plus one of three existing behaviours. Nothing in that surface separates an order point from a pay window or a pickup window, sequences or assigns tandem lanes, or supports pull-forward or parking-spot assignment, and no such concept appears in the System Options tabs (Close Cash, Zones, Table Service, Service Charge, Discounts, Payroll, Clock In/Out, Receipts, Payment, Sending, Order Entry, 3rd Party Payments, Online Ordering, Customer Display, Offline Payments) or on any CAKE hardware page. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Custom-Order-Type · retrieved 2026-09-01

order-capture-drive-thru-timers

There are no order/total/window segments to time. The Custom Order Type article shows a drive-thru is only a named order type carrying one of three enumerated attributes (Dine In, Take Out, Delivery), and enumerates the order-detail fields each attribute exposes - Name, Guest Count, Table, Server, Order Notes, Phone Number, Email, Address, Promised Time - with no order-point, pay-window or pickup-window stage and no per-stage timestamp. CAKE does time the kitchen: the Kitchen Operations Report's Tickets by Station table carries Avg Time per station, Ticket Details carries Open Time, Sent to Kitchen Time, Completed Time and Cook Time, and the Epson KDS defines 'Priority & Rush times: how much time goes by before the ticket changes color?'. But every one of those is measured from the kitchen ticket, none is segmented by drive-thru stage, and none is tied to an order-point or window event, because no such event exists in the order model. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Custom-Order-Type · retrieved 2026-09-01

order-capture-voice-ai differentiator

Both limbs fail on surfaces retrieved 2026-09-04. Native limb: the parent's dedicated CAKE restaurant page is an AI-first pitch whose entire AI portfolio is four blocks — 'AI-Optimized Ordering' (distributor purchasing), 'Analytics and AI Insights' ('Conversational AI interface for restaurant operators on CAKE POS'), Neo on the customer display, and 'AI Customer Support', whose text is 'NLP Phone Agent can service hundreds of calls simultaneously referencing a knowledge base, the web, and past case histories to solve customer issues in real time in any language.' The only phone agent the vendor group markets for CAKE answers support cases; nothing takes a guest order or injects one into the POS, and no voice product appears in the trycake.com site-nav product catalogue. Publication limb: probed 2026-09-04, developer.cake.net returns HTTP 200 with the trycake.com marketing body for /, /robots.txt and /docs, serving no developer document at all, and no Developers entry appears in the trycake.com nav or footer. Graded D because the load-bearing source is a marketing landing page. Note the integrations catalogue is NOT evidence here: trycake.com states 'Connect with hundreds of third-party applications', so it is self-declared non-exhaustive. https://madmobile.com/restaurant/cakepos · retrieved 2026-09-04 adversarially verified

order-capture-throttling differentiator

'Order pacing offers a way to limit the number of incoming online orders... restaurant managers can limit the total number of online orders that can received by the restaurant every 15 minutes', configured in CAKE Dashboard > Settings > Online Ordering > General with an 'orders per interval' field. The worked example: with a limit of 5 per 15 minutes, 'the first 5 orders will go through' and 'the 6th customer will no longer see promise time of between 12:15 PM to 12:30 PM as an available time for pickup/delivery'. Shortfalls: it applies to CAKE Online Ordering only, not per channel - the POS, kiosk and third-party marketplace channels have no equivalent control in System Options or in the Dashboard's online-ordering settings; the interval is fixed at 15 minutes; the cap is a static number rather than a kitchen-load threshold; and the response is to withdraw the slot rather than extend the quote time - no dynamic quote-time or promise-time extension is documented, and Default Promised For Time in System Options > Order Entry is a fixed operator-set offset. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Order-Pacing · retrieved 2026-09-01

order-capture-scheduled-orders

Guests do choose a promise-time slot on CAKE OLO: the Order Pacing article limits 'the total number of online orders that can received by the restaurant every 15 minutes' and describes the sixth customer losing 'promise time of between 12:15 PM to 12:30 PM' as an available pickup/delivery time. Shortfall: the documented workflow fires on receipt, not at a computed fire time — 'Approving the order removes the order from the order queue, sends it directly to the kitchen', and with Auto-Approve Online Orders on, orders go 'directly to the kitchen without requiring approval in the Orders queue'. No per-channel lead time, prep-time offset or deferred kitchen injection is documented anywhere in CAKE University. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/CAKE-Online-Ordering-Process · retrieved 2026-08-03

order-capture-catering

Custom Order Type is the only construct CAKE offers for a catering flow, and the article closes the field set. 'Select an Attribute for your new order type... a custom order type with the attribute of "Delivery" will have the option for a delivery address, whereas a custom order type with an attribute of "Dine In" will not.' Its 'Order Type Attribute - Order Detail Fields' table then enumerates every field any order can carry across all three attributes: Name, Guest Count, Table, Server, Order Notes, Phone Number, Email, Address, Promised Time. There is no quote, deposit, balance-due or event-schedule field, so no CAKE order type can represent a deposit against a balance, and configuring a custom type is only a name, an attribute, an icon and an active toggle. Catering itself appears only as menu advice ('Don't add your catering list. Simply say "Catering Menu Available"'), as an example custom order type in the full-service settings guide, and as a reporting example of a long-lived ordinary order; the nearest payment construct, Custom Pre-Authorization, holds a card against one open order for 1-7 days and is not a deposit against a balance. Verified 2026-09-04. The residual hazard is an unlisted third-party catering integration: trycake.com states 'Connect with hundreds of third-party applications', so the partner catalogue bounds nothing and is not relied on here. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Custom-Order-Type · retrieved 2026-09-04 adversarially verified

order-capture-order-ready-signal differentiator

Nothing in the 207-article corpus describes an outbound order-status event; DoorDash appears only as a tender name, a card-not-present report category, a refund caveat ('Refunding 3rd Online Orders, like DoorDash or UberEats, through the POS will update the CAKE report but does not complete the refund with the third party') and an Admin Portal pointer. trycake.com/products/integrations routes the marketplace connection outward ('Get started with DoorDash via CAKE Marketplace in the Admin Portal') and names Checkmate for the same job, so the subject of any ready-signal verdict may be the middleware rather than CAKE. The interface that would carry the event is unpublished — developer.cake.net serves the trycake marketing catch-all at every path — and a capability claim about an unpublished interface may not be scored no.

order-capture-void-comp-controls

Reason codes are configurable and enforced for discounts and comps: System Options > Discounts & Comps, '+ New Reason' with a Reason name and a fixed or customizable Discount Amount, reorderable for the POS; at payment, 'Comp: this option is used to comp the entire order. A list of comp reasons will appear (e.g., Customer Birthday, Restaurant Error). Select a reason or enter a custom reason, then Submit', and 'Discount... requires manager authorization or appropriate employee permissions'. Role gating is granular: User Management lists POS Manager Approval covering 'Item Void', 'Order Void', 'Item Edits Approval', 'Sent Item Edits' and 'Refund'; the order screen distinguishes 'Delete: before items are sent to the kitchen. Void: after items are sent to the kitchen (manager approval required)'; and Delete Approval sets a per-category grace period in minutes before manager approval is required. Exception reporting exists both ways - the Deleted Items report under Reports > Transactions > 'Voids & Deletes' shows deletions 'by each employee, transaction type, close cash, order type, receipt, approved by, zone, and revenue center', and the Discounts & Comps report tracks all discounts 'differentiated by Discount Type'. Shortfall: no reason code is documented for a void itself - the configurable reason list is titled Discounts & Comps, and the void flow documents only manager authorization, so voids are captured with an approver but not a categorised reason. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Discounts-Setting · retrieved 2026-09-01

menu-pricing-nested-modifiers

Nested modifier groups exist in the Enterprise Menu (EMS) version of Menu Admin and reach exactly the depth the claim asks for. Enterprise Menu: Build Smarter Menus with Nested Modifier Groups defines the object -- 'a nested modifier group is a modifier group that is assigned to a modifier option... They will appear on the ordering screen of the item only if the modifier option it is assigned to is selected' -- and states the depth as a rule: 'Rule #1: Up to 3 Levels. You can create up to 3 levels of follow-up steps. Each level is triggered by the selection before it.' Setup is field-level: 'In the Edit Modifier Option menu: Scroll down to the Nested Modifier Groups field. Select the modifier group you created.' Because every level is itself a modifier group, each level carries the selection controls independently -- the EMS Add/Edit Modifier Group field table gives 'Modifier Selection Required Toggle: When toggled ON, this requires modifier options to be selected before the item can be added to the order. Set a minimum and maximum amount of modifier options that can be selected.' Shortfalls, all stated by the vendor: the feature is 'only available in the latest version of Menu Admin (Enterprise Menu). Accounts are currently being upgraded'; even on EMS it is off by default and must be switched on by the vendor ('Step 2: Contact CAKE Support to Activate Nested Modifier Groups... Request: Nested Modifier Groups activation'); depth is capped at three ('Why can't I go past 3 levels? The system is designed to support up to 3 levels'); and assignment is one-to-one ('Each Nested Modifier Group belongs to one modifier option only... Can I reuse a nested modifier group? No'), so a shared sub-tree must be rebuilt per option. The older non-EMS Menu Admin remains flat: its Add Modifier Group screen (V3 Menu Admin - Modifiers) enumerates Modifier Group Name, Modifiers, Required, Show This Modifier Group On and Assign Menu Categories/Items, with no field for attaching a group to a modifier option. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Enterprise-Menu-Nested-Modifiers · retrieved 2026-09-02

menu-pricing-modifier-price-by-parent-size

The Add Modifier Group screen is enumerated field by field — modifier options with 'a price column where you can add an up charge price if necessary', Required with min/max, channel visibility, and Assign Menu Categories/Items. One price per option; no parent-item or size price matrix exists. Shortfall: per-size modifier pricing is achieved by duplication instead. The Pizza Menu Orderflow article builds pizzas as size sub-categories each holding their own items, and notes 'the toppings are priced according to the size of the pizza. If you were to select the large size of this same pizza, the layout would be identical, but the prices would be higher' — i.e. a separate modifier group per size rather than one modifier priced by parent. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/V3-Menu-Admin-Modifiers · retrieved 2026-08-03

menu-pricing-fractional-placement differentiator

The vendor's Pizza Menu Orderflow guide documents half placement: 'Half & Half pizzas all start with the price of a plain, cheese pizza of that size... Select the 1st half required item and then the modifiers that would apply to the 1st half of the pizza. Then, choose the 2nd half requirement. Select the modifiers that apply to the 2nd half', with each half's toppings priced separately - 'each modifier is priced at 1/2 its normal price. If pepperoni is $2 for a whole pizza, on the 1st half modifier it will be $1. If both halves want pepperoni, each half will be charged $1'. trycake.com/solutions/pizza/pos markets the same thing ('CAKE handles half-and-halfs, swaps, and custom pies'; 'Half & Half Toppings - split pizzas in seconds'). Shortfalls: halves only - no quarters or thirds appear in the guide or anywhere else in the knowledge base; and placement is not a property of a modifier but a menu-build convention requiring a separate Half & Half item with distinct 1st-half and 2nd-half modifier groups whose options are manually priced at half, which the V3 Menu Admin Modifiers field list confirms is the only pricing control available ('next to each modifier option, there is a price column where you can add an up charge price'). https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Pizza-Menu-Orderflow · retrieved 2026-09-01

menu-pricing-half-and-half-rule differentiator

CAKE documents one scheme and only one: 'Pricing for 1/2 & 1/2 pizzas is as follows: each modifier is priced at 1/2 its normal price. If pepperoni is $2 for a whole pizza, on the 1st half modifier it will be $1. If both halves want pepperoni, each half will be charged $1 to equal the $2 total', with the item base being 'the price of a plain, cheese pizza of that size'. That is the third of the claim's three options (charge each topping at a fraction of full price). Shortfall: there is no rule selector at all - no charge-the-higher-half and no average-the-halves option is documented, and the 1/2 factor is not a setting but a number the operator types into each half's modifier option price column, since the Add Modifier Group field list carries only a flat up-charge price per option with no multiplier or parent relationship. The operator can therefore price halves however they wish by hand, but cannot configure a pricing rule, and the vendor's documented practice offers one scheme rather than a choice among at least two. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Pizza-Menu-Orderflow · retrieved 2026-09-01

menu-pricing-topping-quantity-tiers

Global Modifiers 'come with a number of instruction prefixes (add, side, light, extra, sub, and no). Each prefix can be assigned a different price', configured under Modifiers > Global Modifiers; on the POS modifier screen staff 'have the ability to change global modifier quantity, instruction prefixes, and remove global modifiers'. Shortfall: tiering exists only on Global Modifiers, not on item-specific modifier groups, whose Add Modifier Group screen exposes a single up-charge price per option with no tier; pricing per prefix is an absolute amount rather than a configurable multiplier; and no 'double' tier is documented. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Global-Modifier · retrieved 2026-08-03

menu-pricing-size-style-matrix differentiator

Two vendor enumerations settle it. (1) The Add Item screen's field list is published as the complete surface - 'complete the Add Item Edit Menu by filling out all the fields provided. Below, you'll find detailed information about each field within the edit menu' - and the fields are Item Name, Price ('unit price of this item'), Price + Tax, Online Description, Categories, Tax, To Go Tax, Printers, Modifiers, Prep Ticket Name, Receipt and Online Name, Sales Category, Item Code and Show This Item On. One scalar price, no variant axes, no per-cell override. (2) The vendor's own answer to size by style is duplication, not a grid: 'there is a Category for Pizzas and then the pizzas are listed by size as Sub-Categories below... When you click on one of the sizes, you'll be taken to the pizza types (Item) available in that size. Each item will require a crust selection, a sauce option and a toppings selection... if you were to select the large size of this same pizza, the layout would be identical, but the prices would be higher' - one axis becomes sub-categories of duplicated items, the other becomes a modifier group. The Enterprise Menu System webinar's menu-building syllabus (Sales Categories, Stations, Taxes, Special Tax Treatments, Categories, Subcategories, Items, Copy Item, Featured, Modifiers, Global Modifiers, Availability) contains no variant or matrix builder either. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/V3-Menu-Admin-Items · retrieved 2026-09-01

menu-pricing-included-allowance differentiator

The Add Modifier Group screen is enumerated field by field ('complete the Add Modifier Group Edit Menu by filling out all the fields provided. Below, you'll find detailed information about each field within the edit menu'): Modifier Group Name; Modifiers - 'generate modifier options for the group. Next to each modifier option, there is a price column where you can add an up charge price if necessary'; Required - 'if you select Yes, you'll be prompted to establish a minimum and maximum number of modifier options that can be selected'; Show This Modifier Group On; and Assign Menu Categories/Items. There is no included-quantity field, no overage price, no free-then-charge threshold and no substitution credit or prohibition. Because each option's price is charged whenever it is selected, 'three toppings included, then charge for the fourth' cannot be expressed - min/max only constrains how many may be chosen, it does not price them differently. Global Modifiers are the same shape one level up: prefixes (add, side, light, extra, sub, no), each of which 'can be assigned a different price', again absolute per selection. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/V3-Menu-Admin-Modifiers · retrieved 2026-09-01

menu-pricing-combos

Combo construction is documented, but as modifier structure rather than as a combo entity, and the auto-conversion half is absent. Enterprise Menu: Nested Modifier Groups (retrieved 2026-09-02) names the use case explicitly - nested groups are "commonly used for: Sides with add-ons, Drink customizations, Combo meals or build-your-own items" - and documents the mechanism: assign a modifier group to a modifier OPTION (Edit Modifier Option > Nested Modifier Groups field), up to 3 levels, inherited structure so only the first level is assigned, and one-to-one assignment ("Each Nested Modifier Group belongs to one modifier option only... Tea cannot use that same group"). The price delta on a swap comes from the option itself: Enterprise Menu: Modifiers lists a modifier option's fields as Online Name, "Price - Upcharge price of the modifier option (not required)", Modifier Code, External ID ("Currently not an active field") and Associated Modifier Groups. Shortfalls: there is no first-class combo or meal object anywhere in the Enterprise Menu family (Sales Categories, Stations, Taxes, Categories, Items, Modifiers, Global Modifiers, Nested Modifiers, Availability, Stock Status, Menu Variations, Multi-Locations) - a combo is an item carrying modifier groups - and nothing in that family or in the order-entry articles describes the system detecting eligible a-la-carte items already in the cart and converting them to a combo price; that half is not claimed even by trycake.com, whose kiosk page says only that the menu "supports modifiers, combos, and dynamic upsell prompts". Nested Modifier Groups also require the Enterprise Menu version of Menu Admin and a support call to activate. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Enterprise-Menu-Nested-Modifiers · retrieved 2026-09-02

menu-pricing-upsell-prompts differentiator

Admin Portal > Menu Admin > Promotions > Cross-Selling creates a Cross-Sell Group of recommended items and assigns 'the categories that will trigger the recommendations during checkout'; at checkout '6 recommended items will appear below the subtotal' and 'customers can click on these items to instantly add them to their cart'. Shortfalls: it is CAKE Online Ordering only - the feature is described entirely in terms of guests placing online orders, and no equivalent prompt is configurable in the POS System Options (Order Entry's nearest setting is Force Modifiers Screen) or in any kiosk article; the trigger is a category, not a specific item; the display is not deterministic - 'the system will randomly display 6 items from your selected list'; and no attach-rate or prompt-conversion metric is reported anywhere, since the Dashboard's enumerated sales reports (Overview, Payment Type, Order Type, Employee, Register, Zone, Revenue Center, Discounts, In-Store Channels) and the Online Orders report carry no cross-sell attribution. trycake.com/products/self-ordering-kiosk separately claims the kiosk 'supports... dynamic upsell prompts', but that is marketing with no configuration documented. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cross-Selling · retrieved 2026-09-01

menu-pricing-86-propagation

A single 86 now does propagate across most of the surface. Enterprise Menu: Stock Status marks Items, Modifier Groups and Modifier Options In Stock or Out of Stock, singly or in bulk, and states: 'Whether an item is marked Out of Stock in Enterprise Menu (EMS) or directly from the POS, supported ordering channels automatically receive the updated availability.' The supported channels are enumerated as 'CAKE Online Ordering, CAKE Kiosk, Paytronix Online Ordering, DoorDash, Other supported integrated ordering platforms', and changes are attributable in the Activity Log. Shortfalls: the KDS is not among the enumerated channels and no article states that an 86 reaches a kitchen display; no propagation latency is published - the closest is the DoorDash Integration FAQ's 'near real-time', which is scoped to that one channel and is not a figure; the feature requires the Enterprise Menu (EMS) version of Menu Admin, which CAKE is still migrating merchants onto ('We're actively migrating merchants, and the updated version will be available to you soon'), and the older Stock Counts behaviour it replaces was explicitly POS-family only; and an EMS-side change reaches the live menu only after a Publish step. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Stock-Status · retrieved 2026-09-01

menu-pricing-countdown-auto-86 differentiator

The countdown half is documented precisely: from the order screen's notepad icon, select an item, tap Stock Count and enter the number available; then 'a small number appears on the item button to show how many are left. Each time the item is ordered, the number counts down automatically. When it hits 0, the item becomes unavailable for ordering.' An item can also be forced out with the 'In Stock' toggle. Shortfalls: restoration is entirely manual - 'to reactivate an out-of-stock item: repeat the same steps. Toggle In Stock back ON or remove the stock count applied (leave blank if unlimited)' - with no scheduled auto-restore, no daily par reset and no start-of-day count; and the countdown does not reach the other channels: 'Stock Count only reflects on the POS, OrderPads, & CAKEpop. It does not affect: Online Ordering (OLO), Kiosks, Reports.' https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Stock-Counts · retrieved 2026-09-01

menu-pricing-dayparting

Menu-level scheduling is real: Menu Admin > Availability ('previously known as menu hours') creates named menu instances, 'select the days of the week the menu will be available that will have the same time (example: Monday-Thursday 4-6)', 'if this menu is also available on other days at a different time, click Add Hours', then 'select available categories for menu' with separate POS and Online checkboxes; 'your staff will be restricted to this menu outside of the time frame chosen', with manager override. Shortfalls: the unit of scheduling is a menu and the categories inside it - there is no per-item schedule and no scheduled price. A timed price change is achieved by duplication, which the vendor documents as the method: 'before creating a menu instance for your Happy Hour menu, you'll need to create new categories and items within those for your Happy Hour Menu. We recommend naming your items and categories beginning with HH... (I.E.: Bud Light Draft $5, HH Bud Light Draft $2.50)', or 'use the Copy Item button and then changing it to the new price... the menu item name cannot be the same'. Consequently reporting and stock counts see two distinct items. No article states which timezone menu hours are evaluated in; the closest published timezone-sensitive construct is Dashboard Dayparts, which is a reporting split ('dayparts must cover the entire 24-hour day without any gaps') and does not drive menu availability. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Menu-Admin-Shift-Based-Menus · retrieved 2026-09-01

menu-pricing-channel-price-books

The Add Item screen's published field list - presented as detailing 'each field within the edit menu' - carries exactly one price field ('Price: unit price of this item', plus the derived Price + Tax and a To Go Tax rate) and one channel field: 'Show This Item On: choose whether this item is visible on POS and Online Ordering'. The OLO menu guide confirms channel handling is visibility end to end: every troubleshooting step for items, modifier groups, modifier options, subcategories and categories is 'look for the Show this ___ on field and ensure the Online Ordering checkbox is selected', and the Availability screen's category grid has POS and OLO checkboxes only. No percentage-markup rule, delivery uplift or per-channel price list appears in Menu Admin's enumerated sections (Sales Categories, Stations, Taxes, Special Tax Treatments, Categories, Subcategories, Items, Copy Item, Featured, Modifiers, Global Modifiers, Availability), and the vendor's documented way to run a second price is to duplicate the item under a different name in a different menu. Channel-specific money in CAKE is instead a fee: the POS Extra Fee applies to POS orders and explicitly 'does not apply to Online Orders or Kiosk orders', and a separate CAKE OLO Fee appears in the Dashboard's fee breakdown. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/V3-Menu-Admin-Items · retrieved 2026-09-01

menu-pricing-dual-pricing differentiator

Two field enumerations settle this and neither depends on the completeness of the knowledge-base manifest. (1) The menu side: the V3 Menu Admin: Items article introduces its table as detailed information about 'each field within the edit menu' and lists the Add Item fields in full - Item Name; Price ('Unit price of this item'); Price + Tax ('Unit price of this item after applying post tax'); Online Description; Categories; Tax; To Go Tax; Printers; Modifiers; Prep Ticket Name; Receipt and Online Name; Sales Category; Item Code; Show This Item On. Exactly one price, with no cash/card pair, so an item-level dual price is not expressible. (2) The payments side, which the earlier rationale left open: CAKE's only configurable fee surface is the POS Extra Fee at Admin Portal > Settings > Payments > Extra Fee, and its Visa Compliance FAQ states the limitation outright - 'Can I charge different fees for different payment types? No. The same fee amount must be applied across all payment types', 'Does the Extra Fee apply to debit and cash too? Yes. The fee must apply to all tender types (credit, debit, and cash) to remain compliant' - and forbids names 'like "credit card fee," "processing fee," or anything that targets a specific payment method'. CAKE further states the capability does not exist yet: 'Will CAKE offer a more flexible surcharge option? Yes. A more advanced feature is in development, but this current method is required in the meantime.' The claim's channel-parity leg fails on the same page: the fee 'does not apply to Online Orders or Kiosk orders'. The POS System Options > Payment tab is separately enumerated (Force EMV Transactions, Payment Types, Default Payment Type, E-Receipts, Require Signature) with no cash-discount toggle. Parent-company marketing at madmobile.com/restaurant/cakepos, read 2026-09-01 and never read before, contains no occurrence of dual pricing, cash discount or surcharge, and neither does trycake.com/products/payment-processing. Scored consistently with the sibling payments-dual-pricing and commercial-dual-pricing-compliant, which rest on the same two enumerations. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/V3-Menu-Admin-Items · retrieved 2026-09-01

menu-pricing-allergen-nutrition

The Add Item screen is enumerated as the whole editor - 'complete the Add Item Edit Menu by filling out all the fields provided. Below, you'll find detailed information about each field within the edit menu' - and the fields are Item Name, Price, Price + Tax, Online Description ('item description customers will see in the online menu'), Categories, Tax, To Go Tax, Printers, Modifiers, Prep Ticket Name, Receipt and Online Name, Sales Category, Item Code and Show This Item On. There is no allergen flag, no dietary tag and no nutrition value; the only place such information could go is the free-text Online Description, which is not a structured field and is not published as allergen data. The Enterprise Menu System build syllabus likewise has no allergen or nutrition section. The derivation half of the claim fails for the same reason recipe linkage does: CAKE has no recipe or bill-of-materials layer of its own (recipe costing comes from the third-party Orca integration), so there is nothing to compute nutrition from. The only allergen mention anywhere in the corpus is menu-design advice about wording a printed menu. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/V3-Menu-Admin-Items · retrieved 2026-09-01

menu-pricing-recipe-linkage differentiator

The capability is reachable but not native. CAKE University's Orca article documents the integration: 'Orca is a cloud-based inventory management solution... Compatible with CAKE POS', with 'POS integration: imports menu items and sales data from CAKE POS to help align inventory with actual sales' and 'flexible reporting: provides real-time P&L statements, loss tracking, cost variance reports, and recipe costing tools that adjust as vendor prices change'. Shortfalls: it is a separate vendor and a separate subscription with its own sales line ('visit https://orcainventory.com/pos/ to sign up for a demo, or contact the team at (888) 713-9309'), so the linkage lives in Orca's data model rather than CAKE's; CAKE's own Add Item field list has no recipe, ingredient or bill-of-materials field; CAKE's native depletion is a flat per-item Stock Count that counts down on sale and 'does not affect Online Ordering (OLO), Kiosks, Reports'; and no item-level theoretical food cost appears in any CAKE Dashboard report (the enumerated sales reports are Overview, Payment Type, Order Type, Employee, Register, Zone, Revenue Center, Discounts, In-Store Channels). The Epson KDS's 'item recipe/description lookup' is text displayed on the kitchen screen, not a costed bill of materials. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Orca · retrieved 2026-09-01

menu-pricing-3p-menu-push

A certified direct path IS documented, contrary to the prior note. 'How to Integrate DoorDash with CAKE POS' documents DoorDash Self-Serve Integration Onboarding (DD SSIO) end to end from the CAKE Admin Portal's Integrations tab: authenticate with DoorDash, 'Sync Locations' mapping each CAKE location to a DoorDash store, then 'Step 4: Push Your Menu -- Push your CAKE menu to DoorDash for processing', then 'Step 5: Checking Your Menu Processing Status'. Errors are surfaced to the operator, not hidden: 'You will see a "Menu Error (x)" label next to the store. Select the Manage button to open a detailed grid view and review the errors. After correcting the issue, click Re-Sync to try again', a Status dropdown filters by 'Has Error / Inactive / Live / Ready for Live', 'View Menu' previews the menu as it will appear on DoorDash, and the FAQ enumerates the failure messages ('Menu job failed due to missing hours', 'Menu job succeeded, but no items were processed', 'Menu job failed due to menu issues (e.g., missing contents, null category/item names)'). Ongoing sync is automatic: 'Any menu changes made in CAKE Menu Admin will update on DoorDash in near real-time.' Shortfalls: the direct integration covers DoorDash only -- Uber Eats, Grubhub, Postmates and the rest reach CAKE through ItsACheckmate, the menu-management middleman the claim excludes, which the Checkmate onboarding article prices as a 'Flat monthly rate' and restricts to '10 or more locations required ... not available for single-location restaurants'; the DoorDash path requires 'the Enterprise Menu version of Menu Admin', to which CAKE is still migrating merchants; sync state is reported per STORE with an error grid rather than as a per-item status list; and a stale DoorDash menu is fixed by 'Contact CAKE Customer Support to request a menu re-sync'. The developer.cake.net leg is withdrawn as refuted: probed on 2026-09-02 with redirects NOT followed, the host returns HTTP 301 Moved Permanently (Server: awselb/2.0) to https://trycake.com:443/ for every path tried including /robots.txt, so it serves no document of any kind -- the 224,679-byte 'catch-all body' was trycake.com's, attributed to the wrong origin. Nothing is gated there and no policy question remains, but that closes only that host: CAKE could still document an API in a partner-gated portal, a PDF or the SSO-walled Admin Portal, none of which we can read. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/DoorDash-Integration · retrieved 2026-09-02

menu-pricing-dynamic-pricing

Time-varying prices are achievable and automatic in operation: a menu instance carries days and hours (with Add Hours for further time frames) and the categories it exposes, and 'your staff will be restricted to this menu outside of the time frame chosen'. Shortfalls against all three limbs of the claim: (1) the variation is build-based rather than rule-based - the vendor's documented method is to duplicate the item at the second price, 'we recommend naming your items and categories beginning with HH... (I.E.: Bud Light Draft $5, HH Bud Light Draft $2.50)', or to 'use the Copy Item button and then changing it to the new price', since 'the menu item name cannot be the same'; (2) only time is an input - no demand, inventory level or channel condition can drive price, and the Add Item field list carries a single unit Price with no rule, schedule or multiplier; (3) there are no floor or ceiling guardrails anywhere in Menu Admin's enumerated sections, because there is no computed price to bound. Nothing in the knowledge base or on trycake.com describes surge, demand-based or AI-driven pricing. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Menu-Admin-Shift-Based-Menus · retrieved 2026-09-01

payments-processor-choice differentiator

CAKE acknowledges that a merchant may process in-store card transactions elsewhere: the Online Ordering activation guide says 'Since CAKE Payments must be activated for Online Ordering - even if you use a third-party processor for in-store transactions - select Payments Onboarding to complete an application. Be sure to choose CC processing only for Online Ordering in the application, if you do not want to use it for in-store CC processing.' The POS Extra Fee FAQ likewise addresses merchants 'using a 3rd party payment processor'. Shortfalls: no list of supported processors or gateways is published anywhere in the 207-article CAKE University knowledge base or on trycake.com, so the choice is undocumented and cannot be checked in advance; CAKE Payments is compulsory for online ordering regardless; and the Payment Settings screen (Force EMV Transactions, Payment Types, Default Payment Type, E-Receipts, Require Signature) exposes no processor or gateway selection at all. The separate 3rd Party Payments system option only creates named tender buckets (for example 'Uber Eats', 'Corporate Account') for recording payments taken outside the POS, not integrated processing. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Activate-Online-Ordering · retrieved 2026-09-01

payments-published-rates differentiator

CAKE publishes packages but no card-processing price. The pricing page shows three plans (Core, Growth, Scale), each labelled '$0 down. No bill. Ever.' with no rate, and its FAQ makes the omission explicit: 'CAKE does not charge monthly POS fees... Your processing rate covers everything, so you never receive a POS bill' and 'Your POS cost is built into your processing rate.' 'Processing Rate Lock' appears only as a comparison-chart row on the Scale plan, with no number. The payment-processing product page says the same in words - 'Straightforward Pricing. Custom rates that fit your flow. Our team builds a pricing plan around your volume, not a one-size-fits-all model' - i.e. quote-only by design. The vendor's own help-centre explainer 'What is CAKE Payments?' then itemises every fee it IS willing to publish - '$20 per chargeback', '$3 for payout failure or notice of change', no monthly, refund or inactivity fees - while describing the card rate only as 'Competitive standard transaction fees'. Publishing the ancillary fees numerically and the discount rate not at all is the positive evidence here, not a failed search. https://trycake.com/pricing · retrieved 2026-09-01

payments-dual-pricing differentiator

CAKE's only documented differential-charging mechanism is the POS Extra Fee, and it is the opposite of dual pricing. The article states the fee 'is not linked to specific payment types. It automatically applies to all eligible POS orders, regardless of whether guests pay with credit, debit, or cash', and the Visa compliance FAQ answers 'Does the Extra Fee apply to debit and cash too? Yes. The fee must apply to all tender types (credit, debit, and cash) to remain compliant' and 'Can I charge different fees for different payment types? No. The same fee amount must be applied across all payment types.' Approved fee names are restricted to Operational Fee, Admin Fee, Restaurant Fee and Universal Service Fee, and names 'like credit card fee, processing fee, or anything that targets a specific payment method' are forbidden. The menu model cannot hold a second price either: the V3 Menu Admin Add Item field table lists every field on an item - Item Name, Price ('Unit price of this item'), Price + Tax, Online Description, Categories, Tax, To Go Tax, Printers, Modifiers, Prep Ticket Name, Receipt and Online Name, Sales Category, Item Code, Show This Item On - one price and no cash/card pair. Nothing on the guest check or receipt prints a cash total beside a card total; the fee is shown as a single line under the subtotal. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/POS-Extra-Fee · retrieved 2026-09-01

payments-surcharge-guardrails differentiator

CAKE ships no surcharging engine of the kind the claim describes, and says so in its own words. The Extra Fee is deliberately universal: 'Automatically Applied to POS Orders: The Extra Fee is not linked to specific payment types'; 'The fee must apply to all tender types (credit, debit, and cash) to remain compliant'; and on the network cap, 'Is there a limit to how much I can charge for the Extra Fee? No specific limit applies here. Since this is a universal fee applied to all tenders, Visa's 3% surcharge cap does not apply.' So debit and prepaid exclusion by BIN or product code is impossible by design - debit is explicitly included - and no percentage cap is enforced. The FAQ states the gap directly: 'Will CAKE offer a more flexible surcharge option? Yes. A more advanced feature is in development, but this current method is required in the meantime.' Configuration is a single Admin Portal toggle under Settings > Payments > Extra Fee with a name and a flat or percentage amount; the only per-order control is a manager toggling it off on an open order, and no per-location scoping is documented. Compliance risk sits with the merchant: 'CAKE is fined by Visa, but is required to pass those fines to non-compliant restaurants.' https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/POS-Extra-Fee · retrieved 2026-09-01

payments-emv-nfc

First-party terminal, handheld and kiosk with bundled processing accepting 'all major payment types'; EMV/NFC and Apple Pay/Google Pay are not individually enumerated. https://trycake.com/ · retrieved 2026-08-01

payments-softpos-tap-to-pay differentiator

Every documented card-acceptance path on CAKE runs through vendor hardware. On the mobile device the enablement guide is unambiguous: 'Setting up credit card payments on your CAKE OrderPad streamlines transactions... Payments are processed via the VP3300 Bluetooth payment reader, which can be ordered directly from the CAKE Shop', and payments must first be switched on per device in Main Menu > Settings > Device Manager > OrderPads. The same article's Important Notes treat the reader as the only alternative to keying a card by hand: 'Manual Card Entry: While possible, manually entering credit card information on an OrderPad is: Less secure than card swipes or taps. Subject to higher processing fees. For enhanced security and cost efficiency, always use the Bluetooth payment reader.' The OrderPad requirements article enumerates the hardware essentials -- iPad, 'Bluetooth Reader (Optional): If you want to process payments directly on the OrderPad', and the nClose case that houses the pair -- and the Offline Payments article's device table enumerates the supported payment devices as the Next Generation Payment Cube and the Original Payment Cube. Contactless acceptance itself is real: the Payments report classifies Transaction Type as 'EMV/Chip, NFC/Tap-to-Pay, Swipe, Keyed'. But that is a card tapping a CAKE reader, not a phone acting as one, and the CAKEpop page sells a dedicated handheld rather than a phone app. The CAKE University corpus is a floor rather than a census, so its silence is not offered here as evidence; the hardware enumerations above are. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Enabling-OrderPad-Payments · retrieved 2026-09-02

payments-pay-at-table

CAKE sells first-party handhelds that take the card at the table. The OrderPad guide describes an iPad-based POS for 'Instant Table Side Order Entry' whose payment path is a paired reader: 'Payments are processed via the VP3300 Bluetooth payment reader, which can be ordered directly from the CAKE Shop', enabled per device under Settings > Device Manager > OrderPads. The same article configures the tableside tip and signature flow - 'Tips: Navigate to Main Menu > Settings > System Options > Customer Display > Tips. Toggle on the tipping option and configure desired tip percentages' and 'Sign By Finger... Enable this option to allow customers to sign electronically without needing a paper receipt' - plus eReceipts by text or email. Entry types across the platform are chip, tap and swipe (the Payments report records Transaction Type as 'EMV/Chip, NFC/Tap-to-Pay, Swipe, Keyed'), and manual keying on an OrderPad is documented but discouraged as 'less secure than card swipes or taps. Subject to higher processing fees.' The newer CAKEpop handheld page states the tableside case explicitly: 'Take orders, split checks, and accept contactless payments at the table', with 'built-in tip suggestions'. The card is never carried away. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Enabling-OrderPad-Payments · retrieved 2026-09-01

payments-qr-guest-pay differentiator

A QR pay-at-table channel is documented to exist, but not the mechanics the claim specifies. Two help-centre articles establish it: the POS Extra Fee FAQ - "How does the Extra Fee work with QR Pay? The fee is automatically included in the total for QR Pay transactions. While it's not shown as a separate line item on the QR receipt, the total reflects the fee" - together with the same FAQ's rule that "The Extra Fee only applies to orders placed through the POS system", so a QR Pay transaction settles a POS-originated check rather than an online order; and CAKE Marketing: Enrolling Customers, which names "QR Pay at Table" as one of the CAKE channels through which a guest will shortly be able to opt into marketing, alongside the All-in-One POS, OLO, OrderPad, Kiosk and Loyalty. So guests do pay a POS check by QR at the table and receive a QR receipt. Shortfalls: across all 290 CAKE University articles there is no QR Pay setup, settings or how-it-works article at all, so nothing states where the code is presented (printed check, table tent or Customer Touch Display), whether the guest can view the itemised check on their own phone before paying, whether partial or split payment is possible, or whether settlement closes the check in the POS automatically. Customer Touch Display (CTD) Settings, Accepting Payments, Payment Settings and Split Order by Payment are all silent on QR Pay. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/POS-Extra-Fee · retrieved 2026-09-02

payments-tip-adjust

Both flows are documented. On-device prompt: 'If a customer pays at the POS using the Customer Touch Display (CTD), they will be prompted to select their tip amount during the transaction... The tip is automatically added to the transaction and recorded in the POS'; on OrderPad the same prompt is configured under System Options > Customer Display > Tips. Adjust after the fact: 'CAKE POS allows staff to enter tips at any time during their shift. Tip entry is not required to close a check', and the manager screen for unadjusted tips is explicit - 'Tap Main Menu and select Tips. The Tips Page will display all paid-out transactions from the shift. Use the search bar at the top to locate specific transactions... Enter the tip amount from the receipt and tap Add Tip', with 'No Tip' for those left blank. A genuine pre-authorisation flow also exists: the Order Entry system option 'Swipe to Pre-Auth' opens an order from a swiped card, 'the pre-authorized hold will last between 1 to 7 days', the card 'will be authorized for $15.00 to verify its validity and stored for final payments', and that $15 default is customisable in the CAKE Admin Portal under Payments. The window is stated at both ends: 'All tips must be entered before the end of the day. Once the restaurant closes cash, any unentered tips are lost', the batch cut-off is 9:00 PM ET / 6:00 PM PT, and after Close Cash a missed tip can still be corrected within 48 hours where the original tip was $0, the adjustment is at most 20% of the sale and the request totals at least $20 - that route runs through a CAKE Support case with an Excel form and photographed signed receipts rather than self-service, and lands in reports as a 'CAKE Adjustment'. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Tips-Cash-and-Card · retrieved 2026-09-01

payments-tip-pooling differentiator

Tip Sharing is configurable but advisory. It 'allows you to suggest how tips should be distributed among team members based on their roles and contribution to sales. Using this model, the system calculates percentages of total net sales and displays the suggested amounts on the employee close-out receipt at the end of their shift.' Setup is per group: name the group (Bartenders, Bussers, Kitchen Staff), 'Enter the percentage of the server's total net sales that should be tipped out to that group', add rows with '+ New Row'. Online-order tips can additionally be routed to a chosen staff member or to a 'Tip Pool' account. Shortfalls, all stated by the vendor: the feature is 'calculation-only. It does not automatically deduct or process these amounts' and is 'purely a suggested calculation for reference'; the only rule basis is a percentage of the server's NET SALES, so there is no allocation by hours worked or by points; the output is a per-GROUP suggested tip-out printed on the shift close-out receipt rather than a per-employee allocation; and no payroll export of that allocation is documented - the Payroll report's Tips and Cash tab carries declared and card tips, not tip-share distributions. Kiosk tip assignment is shown as 'Coming Soon' and currently inactive. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Tip-Sharing · retrieved 2026-09-01

payments-offline-store-and-forward differentiator

Store-and-forward is real and documented end to end: 'Offline Payments allow your POS devices to continue accepting credit card transactions even when the internet connection is lost... payments are securely stored and processed once connectivity returns.' The network detects the loss, all POS devices switch to Offline Mode with a banner, 'Card transaction data is securely stored locally', and on reconnect 'the system automatically submits the stored payments for authorization', tracked by an Online / Offline / Recovery status indicator. Shortfall: there are no configurable per-transaction or cumulative offline limits. The whole setting surface is one global switch - Main Menu > Settings > System Options > Offline Payments > 'Turn on Offline Card Payments', applied at the CAKE network level to every device, with a 'Global indicator' confirming that scope - and the only documented bound is time, not money: 'Offline transactions can be stored for up to 72 hours before they expire', after which they are 'permanently lost'. The setting must be on before the outage ('Can Offline Payments be enabled during an outage? No'). Cover is also partial by device and feature: the Original Payment Cube supports swipe only while the Next Generation Payment Cube adds tap and chip, and gift cards, manual card entry, loyalty and pre-authorisation are unsupported offline, with Close Cash blocked until the status returns to Online. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Offline-Payments · retrieved 2026-09-01

payments-offline-decline-liability differentiator

The liability half is answered explicitly, and in CAKE's favour: 'Because payments cannot be authorized while offline, there is always a risk that a transaction may be declined later by the issuing bank', and under Your Responsibilities, 'You are responsible for managing offline transactions. CAKE is not liable for transactions that are declined, lost due to power loss or disconnection, or expire before they are processed.' The loss modes are itemised too - the POS losing power, the payment device being disconnected, or connectivity not returning inside the window: 'Transactions expire after a limited time... If not processed in time, they will be permanently lost.' Shortfall: no post-reconnect report of failed offline payments is documented. What the merchant gets on reconnect is a status indicator only - 'Recovery: Connectivity is restored and stored transactions are being processed. Once all stored payments are processed, the status will update to Online' - and neither this article nor the CAKE Dashboard Payments, Transactions or Sales report articles describe any list of offline transactions that declined or expired. The FAQ answer to 'Why were my offline transactions lost?' explains causes rather than pointing at a report. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Offline-Payments · retrieved 2026-09-01

payments-gift-cards

Gift Cards listed as a first-party product; real-time balance, cross-location and online-channel redemption are not documented. https://trycake.com/ · retrieved 2026-08-01

payments-house-accounts

CAKE's answer to a corporate or on-account payment is a tender LABEL, not an account. The 3rd Party Payments system option is the whole surface: 'Click + New 3rd Party in the top-right corner of the screen. Enter a descriptive name for the payment type (e.g., "Uber Eats," "Corporate Account"). Click Add 3rd Party to save the new payment type', plus up/down arrows to reorder the list -- and the article's own Quick Reference Table enumerates exactly two actions, 'Add New 3rd Party Payment' and 'Organize Payment Methods'. At the register the flow is equally thin: 'Use this option for 3rd party payments like external payment processors, old gift certificates, or delivery services like GrubHub. Select a reason from the dropdown menu... then select Submit', with an amount and an optional note. The Payment Settings article, which presents itself as covering the whole Payment tab, enumerates five options -- Force EMV Transactions, Payment Types, Default Payment Type, E-Receipts, Require Signature (<=$25) -- with no account tender among them. So there is no account record, and hence no per-account credit limit, no running balance and no statement or invoice run. The only invoicing documented anywhere is CAKE billing the merchant (the Billing Portal's Invoices and Auto-Pay Settings tabs), not the merchant billing a guest. Stored value is handled instead by gift cards, which do carry a balance lookup at payment time. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/3rd-Party-Payments-Setting · retrieved 2026-09-02

payments-split-tender

Multi-tender settlement is documented step by step: 'Select the Pay button on the open order screen. Choose Split Payment from the available options', then pay the balance down with any mix of Card, Cash, Check, 3rd Party and Gift Card, the total updating after each - 'Adjust the number of cards being used to split the payment by using the + and - icons', check number optional, gift-card balance looked up by number before applying. Splitting the check itself is a separate documented tool with no cap: 'Click the + Check button on the top right. You can add as many checks as needed', items highlighted and moved between checks, 'Split Item' dividing a single item across the selected checks (even shares), 'Undo All' recombining them, and 'Move to Order' transferring items to another open order. Arbitrary amounts are accepted for cash, check, 3rd party and gift-card tenders. The one method not documented anywhere in the split or transfer articles is splitting by seat - seat assignments exist in CAKE only for grouping prep tickets ('Group Prep Ticket by Seat Assignments') - and the claim lists its methods disjunctively, so item, even-share and amount splitting with no cap below eight satisfies it. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Split-Order-by-Payment · retrieved 2026-09-01

payments-refund-void-controls

Every override-class transaction report carries an 'Approved By: Name of the employee who approved the transaction' column — Sales & Refunds, Voids & Deletes (item voids, order voids, payment voids and pre-send deletes) and Discounts & Comps, which additionally records the 'Reason' selected on the POS; the Cash Log records cash-in/cash-out with reason, register and employee. Authorization is role-based: the User Management guide lists POS Manager Approval sub-permissions for Item Void, Order Void, Refund, 'Cash Drawer (No Sale) Button', 'Register Actions (Cash In/Out)', POS Discount Approval and Custom Discount Approval, and each user gets a personal 4-digit POS password they reset on first login. CAKE does not state that the log is immutable. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Dashboard-Transactions-Reports · retrieved 2026-08-03

payments-chargeback-tooling differentiator

Dispute response is a real documented workflow, but it lives in email and an external web form rather than in the product. 'You will be notified via email by CAKE (or its banking partners) when a chargeback has been made by the card issuing bank', and 'You may respond to a chargeback by clicking on the "Dispute" button in your chargeback notification email. Clicking on this button will open a web page in the default web browser set on your computer where you will be able to provide details of the dispute and upload any supporting documentation.' Status is checked the same way: 'Select the Dispute button in the chargeback notification email. This will open the application you used to submit the dispute and will show the status of your chargeback (in review, won or lost.)' Shortfalls: no in-product dashboard lists open disputes - the only in-product surface is financial, 'You will see the debit for the chargeback along with the non-refundable $20 fee in the "Account Balance" report in your Payments Report'; access depends on the notification email, which goes to the billing address given at onboarding and can only be changed by contacting support; and evidence is assembled by hand rather than from the POS transaction record - 'Typically, this proof is a legible, signed copy of the receipt and any comments that will explain what happened during the transaction' - inside a 7-day response window, with a $20 non-refundable fee per case. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/ChargebackFAQ · retrieved 2026-09-01

payments-card-on-file differentiator

A card IS retained against a guest profile, but as an identifier rather than as a payment credential. CAKE Loyalty: Linking a Credit Card to a Loyalty Account (recovered 2026-09-02) documents the feature in full: it is "enabled automatically once CAKE Loyalty is activated in your Admin Portal" and the POS is on version 6.41.0.10 or higher, with "no additional setup required"; during payment the guest selects "Link My Points" to "securely connect their credit card to their loyalty account", after which "points will be automatically added to their account with every credit card transaction - no manual entry needed"; "Customers can link multiple credit cards to the same loyalty account"; and re-using a card already linked elsewhere returns "The provided Credit Card is already linked with a different Loyalty Profile". The Guest Portal lets the guest "manage linked credit cards for seamless point earning and redemption during future visits", and the same account is matched on Online Ordering by phone or email at checkout. Shortfalls, all central to the claim: nothing documents charging a linked card - it is matched at the moment the guest presents it, and CAKE Online Ordering still requires payment at order time ("Customers must pay online when placing their order"); no phone-order or in-store charge-card-on-file action appears in Accepting Payments or in Payment Settings, whose options are Force EMV Transactions, Payment Types, Default Payment Type, E-Receipts and Require Signature; Swipe to Pre-Auth remains a per-order authorisation lasting 1-7 days; and no CAKE document states what is stored for a linked card beyond the PCI Compliance page's generic "SSL protocols and data tokenization". https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/CAKE-Loyalty-Linking-a-Credit-Card-to-a-Loyalty-Account · retrieved 2026-09-02

payments-payout-timing differentiator

CAKE publishes both the schedule and a faster option. Standard funding: 'funds are typically released to your bank within two business days after your credit card batch is closed', printed as a full day-by-day table (batch closed Monday before 9:00 PM ET / 6:00 PM PT -> funds released Wednesday end of day, and so on across the week). Accelerated Funding 'provides next-business-day funding for CAKE Payments merchants', with its own complete table (Monday before 9:00 PM ET -> Tuesday end of day). Enrolment is self-service - 'You can enroll in Accelerated Funding at any time through Payment Settings in Restaurant Admin' at https://admin.cake.net - and the price and eligibility are published as well: '$25 per month. There is no fee per batch', a 9:00 PM ET Close Cash cut-off ('If Close Cash is completed after the cut-off time, funding may be delayed by one additional business day'), a $50 minimum batch, and 'Accelerated Funding is not available for accounts that process only eCommerce transactions through CAKE Payments.' Bank-holiday effects and the causes of delay (bank processing, fraud monitoring reviews, system outages) are listed too. Same-day or instant funding is not offered; next-business-day is, which the claim accepts. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/CAKE-Payments-Funding-Schedule · retrieved 2026-09-01

payments-p2pe-pci4

Encryption is documented in substance: 'With your CAKE POS, credit card data is encrypted the moment you swipe a credit card. This is true whether you are online or using our offline payments mode system option... Credit card data is never stored unencrypted. The data remains encrypted as it is transmitted from your CAKE POS, to the server, and to the credit card processor', with 'SSL protocols and data tokenization' named as further layers, and CAKE identifying its processing partner as 'Worldpay from FIS'. CAKE also publishes a PCI DSS Service Provider and Customer Responsibility Matrix to merchants in the help centre. Shortfalls: that matrix is written against the wrong standard for this claim - the document itself states 'The PCI Reference numbers below, in the left hand column, are based on PCI DSS v3.2.1 control standards' and is footed 'CAKE PCI Responsibility Matrix v1.0.0' (read from the article's page images on 2026-09-01) - so no current PCI DSS 4.x attestation is offered; the matrix is a shared-responsibility summary and says so ('This document is a summary only'), not an Attestation of Compliance; and CAKE nowhere claims a validated P2PE solution or a PCI SSC P2PE listing, the wording being encryption at swipe plus tokenization. Merchants on an external processor are told to 'locate the tools they provide' instead. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/PCI-Compliance · retrieved 2026-09-01

kitchen-station-routing

Routing is item-level and merchant-configurable. The Printer Assignments article: 'During the item creation process, stations (printers and/or KDS) are assigned for the item to print at... Navigate to the Stations field in the item edit menu. Select the Stations field to see a list of available stations to assign to the item. Select the station(s) you would like the item to print at', then Save and 'Click the Publish button to apply the changes across your POS terminals', with stations themselves created by the merchant in Menu Admin ('If you do not see the desired printer or KDS name listed within the stations field, you need to add it within the Stations tab'). The V3 Menu Admin Add Item field table carries the same field ('Printers: Assign up to 2 printers this item will print at') and V3 Menu Admin - Printers is a self-service 'Click Add Printer. Name your printers intuitively. For example, Kitchen or Bar.' On the KDS side the Epson integration adds a second routing layer the merchant also owns: 'Printer group compatibility: Works with CAKE printer groups and kitchen redirects', and either 'Directly to the IB01 expansion boxes. This is the preferred method. If you have a Salad station, the CAKE POS is configured to print to that station' or 'KDS Filtering. You can send all items to the U220i... You can configure the KDS to filter for only certain items or modifiers.' Sending Settings adds a Custom Item Station for open items and an 'Items Sent to Other Printers' option. Order-type and revenue-centre routing are not documented, but the claim's list is disjunctive and item-level routing is fully self-service - CAKE states of the KDS configuration 'You must take responsibility for configuring the KDS.' https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Printer-Assignments · retrieved 2026-09-01

kitchen-expo-consolidation

Expo consolidation exactly as the claim describes is documented for the Epson KDS integration: 'You may configure displays to act as an expeditor. An expo screen will show all items sent to all stations. The expo can only bump an order, when all items have been bumped for that order on all stations' — with a manual override via the bump bar, and bump statuses syncing across displays. Shortfall: this is Epson's KDS, configured through Epson's Windows-only KDS Configuration Utility, and CAKE's own FAQ states 'Support is very limited as we do not have direct access to the KDS system. You must take responsibility for configuring the KDS.' CAKE's own KDS product page describes real-time order tracking, colour-coded status alerts and touchscreen bumping, but no expo screen and no all-stations-bumped gating. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Epson-KDS-Software · retrieved 2026-08-03

kitchen-course-firing differentiator

The Sending system options document coursing and holds on the send action itself: 'Sending Items Overlay - Toggled On: A dialog box appears with options for course breaks and holding items. Toggled Off: Access the overlay by holding down the Send button.' Firing is the same Send control the server already uses - 'Sending: Toggling On activates the Send button in the POS, allowing orders to be manually sent to the kitchen' - with 'Send Button Behavior' choosing what happens afterwards ('Send', 'Send and Exit Order', 'Send and Sign Out. This can also be applied to CAKE OrderPad users'), so the flow is available on the handheld as well as the terminal, and a 'Send Reminder' prompts staff who leave the order screen with unsent items. Related send-time controls: 'Send Items Individually - When enabled, creates a separate prep ticket for each menu item', and on the kitchen side the Epson KDS honours the POS's seat grouping ('If you have Group Prep Ticket by Seat Assignments enabled on the CAKE POS, the Epson KDS will show a sub-header for the seat's items'). What the help centre does not do is walk through releasing a held course from a management screen; the capability is documented, the release workflow only implicitly (press Send again). https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Sending-Settings · retrieved 2026-09-01

kitchen-prep-time-pacing differentiator

There is nowhere in CAKE to record a per-item cook time, so the staggering the claim describes cannot exist. The V3 Menu Admin Add Item screen's field table is complete and lists every field on an item - Item Name, Price, Price + Tax, Online Description, Categories, Tax, To Go Tax, Printers, Modifiers, Prep Ticket Name, Receipt and Online Name, Sales Category, Item Code, Show This Item On - with no prep, cook or hold time among them. The KDS side has no such field either: the Epson KDS Configuration Tool's sections are enumerated as General Setup, Tiles, Displays, Devices and Menu and Recipes, and the only time-based behaviour is per-DISPLAY colour escalation ('Priority and Rush times: How much time goes by before the ticket changes color?'), while Menu and Recipes exists 'If you need to filter what to be shown on displays', for the Summary Tile, or to 'enable item recipe/description lookup on the KDS'. The POS's only timing control is order-level, not item-level: Order Entry's 'Default Promised For Time - Set a default preparation time for orders... for example... orders will be ready 10 minutes from the current time'. Items are released to the kitchen when a server presses Send (optionally one ticket per item), not on a computed per-item start time. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/V3-Menu-Admin-Items · retrieved 2026-09-01

kitchen-order-throttling differentiator

Order Pacing is exactly the throttle the claim describes, configured by the merchant: 'Order pacing offers a way to limit the number of incoming online orders. By enabling this feature, restaurant managers can limit the total number of online orders that can received by the restaurant every 15 minutes.' Configuration is self-service in the CAKE Dashboard - 'navigate to Settings > Online Ordering > General. Toggle on Order Pacing to enable the configuration. Enter intended number in the orders per interval field. Select Save.' The article then documents the effect on quoted times rather than a hard rejection: with a cap of five per 15 minutes, 'The first 5 orders will go through' and 'The 6th customer will no longer see promise time of between 12:15 PM to 12:30 PM as an available time for pickup/delivery', so the guest is pushed to a later slot once the configurable volume threshold is crossed. The threshold is order volume per interval; CAKE does not offer a ticket-time-based trigger, which the claim accepts as an alternative rather than a requirement. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Order-Pacing · retrieved 2026-09-01

kitchen-channel-pause-propagation differentiator

Both halves of the claim are documented, but for one marketplace. 86: Enterprise Menu: Stock Status marks Items, Modifier Groups and Modifier Options In Stock or Out of Stock, singly or in bulk, and states 'Once you publish your changes, Enterprise Menu (EMS) automatically synchronizes stock status across supported ordering channels. Supported platforms include: CAKE Online Ordering, CAKE Kiosk, Paytronix Online Ordering, DoorDash, Other supported integrated ordering platforms', adding 'Whether an item is marked Out of Stock in Enterprise Menu (EMS) or directly from the POS, supported ordering channels automatically receive the updated availability.' Store pause: the DoorDash Integration article documents a per-store control on the Admin Portal Integrations grid -- 'Deactivate: Temporarily disable the store. You will be prompted to provide a reason (e.g., Out of Business, Operational Issues)... You can also deactivate the store by using the toggle on the grid view. The toggle will be gray when deactivated. Reactivate anytime by toggling it back on.' Shortfalls: DoorDash is the only third-party marketplace named on either path, and Uber Eats and Grubhub reach CAKE through third parties instead (the Integrations page routes Uber Eats via 'Contact CAKE' and menu management to Checkmate), with no propagation documented for either; the store pause lives in the Admin Portal rather than on the POS or KDS; the KDS is not among the enumerated stock-sync channels and no article states that an 86 reaches a kitchen display; both the DoorDash integration and Stock Status require the Enterprise Menu version of Menu Admin, which CAKE is still migrating merchants onto ('We're actively migrating merchants, and the updated version will be available to you soon'); and an EMS-side stock change reaches the live menu only after a Publish step. The older POS-family-only behaviour (Stock Counts: 'Stock Count only reflects on the POS, OrderPads, and CAKEpop. It does not affect: Online Ordering (OLO), Kiosks, Reports') has been superseded by Stock Status. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Stock-Status · retrieved 2026-09-02

kitchen-order-ready-callback differentiator

Same architecture question, from the KDS side. The KDS material CAKE publishes is the Epson KDS family (Overview, Hardware Setup, Software, Out of the Box, Downloads, FAQ) plus ChefTab, all network-configuration and station how-tos — 'we highly recommend that that person who configures the KDS knows basic networking (IP address assignments), firmware loading' — and a station guide is not where an outbound courier-dispatch callback would be documented either way. 'webhook', 'courier' and 'Dasher' return zero hits across all 207 articles, and the KB census is provably a floor (CAKE-KDS-Workflow returns a real article id but is not among the 207 sitemap slugs), so the search is over a bounded corpus that is not an enumeration. The integrations page also hands digital-order state to a named third party (Checkmate) and names Crunchtime Kitchen as an alternative KDS, so the subject of the verdict is unsettled as well.

kitchen-bump-bar-hardware

Supported models are named in the hardware guide: 'KP1700D: Logic Controls bump bar, legend D. For use with TM-U220i or KD-IB01 for user input', alongside the alternative 'Elo 2202L Touchscreen Monitor: A 22" touchscreen monitor to use with TM-U220i or KD-IB01 in place of the KP1700 bump bar'. PQS bump-bar mounts 'compatible with the KP1700' are recommended. The ChefTab KDS integration likewise lists 'touchscreen or bump bar input'. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Epson-KDS-Hardware-Setup · retrieved 2026-08-03

kitchen-all-day-counts

The Epson KDS provides an aggregate outstanding-quantity view on the station screen: under Key Epson KDS Behaviors, 'Summary Tile - Have an aggregate count for the number of items which need to be made. To use this, you need to configure menu items to show.' It is enabled per display alongside grid size and rush times ('Summary Tile: If you do you need to select items to summarize from the Menu and Recipes section'), and the items it counts are programmed into the KDS from the CAKE menu, matched on the item's Prep Ticket Name ('Please note that item names need to exactly match the Prep Ticket Name from the CAKE Menu'). Because a display's scope is the items routed to that device (or everything, on a display configured for Expeditor Mode - 'All items will show on the expo screen regardless of the KDS device it was sent to'), the count is the outstanding quantity across the open tickets on that station. Two caveats worth recording: the aggregation covers only the items the operator programs into Menu and Recipes, and modifier-level aggregation is not documented - modifiers appear on the ticket and can be used as KDS filters, but the Summary Tile is described in terms of items. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Epson-KDS-Software · retrieved 2026-09-01

kitchen-sla-alerts

Time-threshold colour escalation is a documented, per-display setting on the Epson KDS: 'Rush and Priority Times - Configure the KDS to show the orders header in a different color in when a time threshold is met', set in the Displays section of the configuration tool alongside grid size and the summary tile ('Priority and Rush times: How much time goes by before the ticket changes color?'). Because 'You typically want a unique display configuration per device', the thresholds are per station, which is one of the two axes the claim allows; alert colours themselves are customisable ('Text sizes, linespacing, grid size... colors of certain behaviors, can all be customized in the configuration tool', with the default palette including 'Alerts: Red'). The second KDS option makes the same point independently: the ChefTab integration lists 'customizable order timers' among its flexible display options. Two limits worth recording rather than treating as shortfalls of the claim, which asks for visual escalation and/or an audible alert: no audible alarm is documented, and thresholds are set per display rather than per order type. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Epson-KDS-Software · retrieved 2026-09-01

kitchen-printer-fallback differentiator

Paper backup for a digital kitchen is a documented, deliberate option: 'Each KDS unit includes a printer that can produce backup paper tickets if needed, or it can be disabled for a fully digital setup', and among the integration's key features, 'Backup paper ticket support - Hard copies can be printed through Omnilink printers in the KDS group if needed.' Related redundancy exists on the POS side: Sending Settings offers 'Items Sent to Other Printers - When enabled, all items print on every prep ticket, regardless of their initially assigned printer, ensuring kitchen staff are fully informed', an item can be assigned to more than one station, and bump state is shared across displays ('If an item is sent to more than one display, the bump statuses will sync'). Shortfall: none of this is failover. Nothing in the Epson KDS Overview, Software, FAQ, Hardware Setup or Out-of-the-Box articles, in the ChefTab articles or in Sending Settings describes automatic detection of an offline screen or printer, automatic redirection of its tickets to a designated backup, or any guarantee of no ticket loss; the backup print is a standing configuration the operator chooses in advance. The Epson KDS FAQ's troubleshooting advice for a non-responsive system is manual - check the network and power, then 'try power cycling the master U220i'. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Epson-KDS-Overview · retrieved 2026-09-01

kitchen-offline-operation differentiator

CAKE KDS Overview & Requirements (university.cake.net, recovered 2026-09-02) states it in the vendor's own help centre rather than on the marketing site: "Stay Operational Offline - CAKE KDS includes an offline mode, which keeps your kitchen running even during network interruptions. Orders are saved locally and seamlessly integrated into your reports once connectivity is restored, so your team never misses a beat." The same article establishes the local topology that makes this coherent: "CAKE KDS can connect wirelessly or through an Ethernet cable to your CAKE router (ZyXEL), providing reliable performance for uninterrupted kitchen operations", it runs on an Elo I-Series touch screen, and it requires POS version 6.38.0.0+ and an active KDS Monthly Subscription. The Workflow article adds that routing is by station assignments configured in the menu and that Sync to Expo passes completion updates between displays on the same estate. Scope note for anyone re-reading this cell: this is the first-party CAKE KDS on Elo hardware, not the Epson TM-U220i-driven KDS or ChefTab, which attach to the POS as LAN printers; the Offline Payments article's "What Works (and What Doesn't) in Offline Mode" table is payment-scoped and lists kitchen display in neither column. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/CAKE-KDS-Overview-Requirements · retrieved 2026-09-02

kitchen-item-build-screens differentiator

The Epson KDS can show more than the ticket line. Programming the CAKE menu into the KDS is documented with three purposes, the third being build detail: 'You may want to program menu items to the KDS for a variety of reasons: If you need to filter what to be shown on displays. If you want to use the Summary Tile feature. If you want to enable item recipe/description lookup on the KDS', with the caveat that 'item names need to exactly match the Prep Ticket Name from the CAKE Menu'. Modifier breakout is on the ticket by default - the ChefTab integration's 'TicketGenie technology automatically processes receipt data to create clear, detailed kitchen tickets, recognizing items, modifiers, and other key information', and the Epson default colour scheme has a separate colour for modifiers ('Items: Black. Mods: Gold'), with seat sub-headers where the POS groups prep tickets by seat. Ticket layout itself is configurable through Tiles ('Text sizes, linespacing, grid size... colors of certain behaviors, can all be customized in the configuration tool'). The recipe text comes from the KDS configuration tool's Menu and Recipes section rather than from the CAKE menu record, which has no recipe field. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Epson-KDS-Software · retrieved 2026-09-01

kitchen-pizza-fractional-display differentiator

Half-and-half pizzas are a documented, structured order flow rather than a free-text note: 'Half and Half pizzas all start with the price of a plain, cheese pizza of that size. They have the same option for crust at the top. Select the 1st half required item and then the modifiers that would apply to the 1st half of the pizza. Then, choose the 2nd half requirement. Select the modifiers that apply to the 2nd half of the pizza', with pricing handled per section - 'Each modifier is priced at 1/2 its normal price. If pepperoni is $2 for a whole pizza, on the 1st half modifier it will be $1. If both halves want pepperoni, each half will be charged $1 to equal the $2 total.' Because each half is a required item carrying its own modifiers, the placement reaches the kitchen as labelled 1st-half and 2nd-half groupings on the prep ticket, and the Epson KDS renders modifiers in their own colour beneath their item. Shortfalls: the model is halves only - no quarters and no named sections appear in the pizza article, the V3 Menu Admin Modifiers article or anywhere else in the 207-article knowledge base; sections are built by duplicating modifier groups per half rather than by a portion or placement attribute on the topping; and no article describes a visual or graphical rendering of placement on the make-line screen, only the ticket text. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Pizza-Menu-Orderflow · retrieved 2026-09-01

kitchen-recall-refire

Both halves exist in part. Recall on the KDS: the Epson KDS out-of-the-box colour defaults include a dedicated 'Recall Tab: Blue' alongside 'Void Items: Blue' and 'Alerts: Red', and bumping itself is granular - 'Item-level bumping: Staff can bump individual items or entire tickets, with final review available on the expediter screen where applicable', with an expo override 'by pressing the bump button on the bump bar and then pressing the number for the order'. Re-firing from the POS without re-entering the order: the Receipts and Refunds module covers 'Resending an Order to the Kitchen - Select the receipt you want to resend. Click the blue Resend button above the receipt. Choose Send from the options to resend the order to the kitchen', and the same module reprints guest receipts and reopens voided orders. Shortfalls: the resend acts on the whole order, not on one item - no article describes selecting a single item to refire or reprint to its station - and CAKE's own KDS support position limits what can be relied on for the recall path ('Support is very limited as we do not have direct access to the KDS system. You must take responsibility for configuring the KDS'), with recall documented only as a colour setting rather than a described workflow. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Receipts-and-Refunds · retrieved 2026-09-01

kitchen-order-modification-alerts differentiator

Late changes are flagged on the live ticket in colour. Additions: 'Sending Additional Items - Anything sent after the original ticket will notate with the appended item color. Orders are related via the order number on the ticket. Default color is magenta. You can override this behavior with the KDS configuration tool.' Removals: 'Void Tickets - If you have your CAKE POS system configured to send Void Tickets, the items will notate as such on the KDS display. It will notate with strikethrough formatting', which pairs with the POS behaviour that once an order has been sent to the kitchen 'the Delete button will change to a Void button'. The ticket is amended in place by default rather than duplicated - the General Setup option 'Consider Orders Unique... will treat each send event as a unique ticket instead of modifying a ticket with the same order number' is the opt-out, which confirms the default is to modify the existing ticket - and every one of these colours is configurable ('colors of certain behaviors, can all be customized in the configuration tool'). Bump state stays consistent across screens while this happens: 'If an item is sent to more than one display, the bump statuses will sync.' https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Epson-KDS-Software · retrieved 2026-09-01

kitchen-guest-ready-notification differentiator

Guest-facing ready messaging exists, but it is staff-initiated and lives in a separately purchased product. Guest Manager 'gives you a built-in texting feature that lets your hosts message guests directly from the app', enabled under the gear icon > Settings > Text Messages > 'Text Message Keyboard', with editable pre-set messages; hosts then 'Tap the message icon next to the guest's name' and choose a custom message or a pre-set 'like "Table Ready"', for anyone on the waitlist, the pickup order list or the reservation list, and the pickup workflow for CAKE POS online takeout orders is documented on the same footing. Shortfalls: nothing is triggered by a bump - the KDS attaches to the POS as a printer (ChefTab is added under Device Manager > Printers as type IMPACT-PMP; the Epson KDS is driven by print jobs and syncs bump state only among its own displays), and no article connects a bump event to a guest message; every text in the documented flow is sent by a host tapping an icon. And Guest Manager is a separate purchase, with its own article on adding it to an existing CAKE account, so the notification path is not available without buying another product. CAKE's own online ordering emails the guest on approval and decline, not on ready. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Custom-Guest-Messaging · retrieved 2026-09-01

kitchen-waste-logging

CAKE has no waste entry and no inventory to deplete. The POS stock tool is fully enumerated in its own article - tap the notepad icon on the order screen, select an item, tap Stock Count, enter a number, 'Tap Update Stock Count to save', or toggle the 'In Stock' switch off - and its behaviour is a countdown on sale only: 'Each time the item is ordered, the number counts down automatically. When it hits 0, the item becomes unavailable for ordering.' There is no waste, spoilage or remake action, and no reason codes; reason codes in CAKE attach to discounts, comps, voids and 3rd party payments on the POS, not to kitchen waste. The tool's scope is stated in the negative as well: 'Stock Count only reflects on the POS, OrderPads, and CAKEpop. It does not affect: Online Ordering (OLO), Kiosks, Reports', and the Online Ordering article repeats that 'The system does not automatically update or adjust stock levels'. Nor can the entry be made at the kitchen screen: the KDS attaches to the POS as a printer (ChefTab 'connects in place of your kitchen printer', added under Device Manager > Printers as type IMPACT-PMP), so it has no data path back into the POS. Ingredient-level inventory is delegated to a partner, Orca, which is a separate cloud product bought from Orca. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Stock-Counts · retrieved 2026-09-01

kitchen-speed-of-service-reporting

CAKE does report kitchen times, from the KDS. The Kitchen Operations Report is one of the thirteen report families in Mastering CAKE Reports and has four sub-reports whose columns the vendor enumerates: Tickets by Station (Station Name, # of Fulfilled Tickets, Avg Time - 'the average time to fulfill an order at each station'); Tickets by Fulfillment (Time Interval, Stations, Tickets Fulfilled, with a Time Interval drop-down); Ticket Details (Open Time, Sent to Kitchen Time, Completed Time, Receipt, Order #, Table #, Station Name, Station Type Prep or Expo, Cook Time, Employee); and Item Details (Item Name, Sent to Kitchen, Fulfilled Time, Quantity, Cook Time, Receipt, Order #, Station). Every report carries an Export action offering PDF or Excel. Shortfalls: only averages are published - no percentile or distribution appears in any enumerated column; the report is scoped to CAKE KDS users only ('This report is only available for CAKE KDS users'), so a site on paper tickets or a third-party KDS gets nothing; there is no order-channel dimension in the enumerated columns, only station and time interval; the time slicing is a Time Interval selector rather than named dayparts; and the export is PDF or Excel with no CSV or API path documented. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Dashboard-Kitchen-Operations-Report · retrieved 2026-09-01

kitchen-prep-forecasting

Assessed 2026-09-04 and unresolved. The only evidence offered for a forecast was a marketing bullet on the parent's CAKE landing page — 'Predicts ingredient demand, provides menu insights, and optimizes ordering from Sysco and other distributors' — which is a purchasing forecast aimed at distributor ordering, not prep quantities surfaced to kitchen staff, and is a marketing claim rather than documentation. CAKE's own documented KDS material covers station routing, Prep and Expo roles, ticket timers and bumping with no prep list or par-level screen, and the POS stock tools are manual counts; but the help centre is not enumerable (out-of-sitemap articles are demonstrably retrievable), so that silence cannot carry a `no`. The Orca partner integration is separately credited with 'advanced budgeting tools, sales predictions, weather forecasting' off CAKE data and its own documentation has not been read. Neither presence nor absence is established. adversarially verified

delivery-driver-roster

A delivery order in CAKE carries no driver. The Custom Order Type article enumerates, as a table, the order-detail fields each order-type attribute exposes; the Delivery column is Name, Server, Order Notes, Phone Number, Email, Address and Promised Time -- no driver field, no assignment state, no run. On the configuration side, Configuring Online Ordering Settings enumerates the whole Pickup & Delivery tab -- Pickup Toggle, Show Orders in Guest Manager, Curbside Pickup, Make Curbside Pickup Mandatory, Delivery Toggle, Delivery Radius, Delivery Fee, Delivery Time, Minimum Delivery Order, Default To Leave At Door -- so the delivery surface CAKE ships is a radius, a fee and a promised time, not a dispatch model. Clock-in/out exists only as employee timekeeping (Employee Clock In and Out, System Options > Clock In/Out, Timesheets), with no driver job state, and no per-driver run history report appears among the thirteen report families in Mastering CAKE Reports. CAKE states the gap directly on the one delivery integration it operates: the DoorDash Integration FAQ's menu-error table gives 'The store is enabled for Self-Delivery, but your integration does not support it. Contact DoorDash Support to disable Self-Delivery or process a financial rate change', so even a merchant's own couriers fall outside what CAKE handles. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Custom-Order-Type · retrieved 2026-09-02

delivery-dispatch-board

There is no driver to dispatch. The Custom Order Type article's order-detail field table gives a Delivery-attribute order exactly Name, Server, Order Notes, Phone Number, Email, Address and Promised Time - no driver, no assignment, no run - and Configuring Online Ordering Settings enumerates the complete Pickup & Delivery tab (Pickup Toggle, Show Orders in Guest Manager, Curbside Pickup, Make Curbside Pickup Mandatory, Delivery Toggle, Delivery Radius, Delivery Fee, Delivery Time, Minimum Delivery Order, Default To Leave At Door), which carries no driver availability or batching control. The only order-staging screens CAKE documents are the POS Order Queue, the Online Ordering Queue that third-party orders drop into ('Orders will automatically flow into your CAKE POS Online Ordering Queue'), and the KDS; none exposes undispatched-order state, driver availability or multi-order run batching. Guest Manager, the nearest coordination surface, handles pickup and curbside, not delivery runs. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Custom-Order-Type · retrieved 2026-09-01

delivery-route-map differentiator

Assessed 2026-09-04 and unresolved in both directions. CAKE asserts a dispatch surface exists in its own voice — trycake.com/solutions/pizza/pos carries a feature card headed 'Driver-Friendly Order Flow' reading 'Support delivery tracking, printed labels, and organized driver dispatch' (retrieved 2026-09-04, HTTP 200) — but publishes nothing that describes what is on it. The only documented delivery configuration is the Admin Portal OLO Pickup & Delivery tab (Delivery Toggle, Delivery Radius, Delivery Fee, Delivery Time, Minimum Delivery Order, Default To Leave At Door) and the order carries one spatial field, Address. No map view, geocoded stop or route-sequencing construct is documented, and no mapping-service dependency is named — but that is absence over a settings screen that does not purport to describe dispatch, and the help centre is not enumerable, so it cannot support a finding of absence. Olo is additionally a named CAKE partner of unstated module scope. adversarially verified

delivery-driver-tracking differentiator

Assessed 2026-09-04 and unresolved. CAKE's pizza POS page carries a feature card headed 'Driver-Friendly Order Flow' — 'Support delivery tracking, printed labels, and organized driver dispatch' (retrieved 2026-09-04, HTTP 200) — an affirmative first-party claim about drivers with no gloss anywhere on what 'tracking' or 'dispatch' consists of. Against that, CAKE documents no driver-facing application (the named companion apps are OrderPad, Kiosk, Guest Manager and the guest app 'The List'), no driver record, no assignment and no position field, and 'GPS' appears in the corpus only in the parent's generic device-telemetry privacy clause. But the documented delivery surface is a settings tab that does not describe dispatch at all, and the help centre is not enumerable, so nothing establishes whether live driver GPS reaches a dispatch screen. Olo is a named partner of unstated module scope. adversarially verified

delivery-zones-polygon differentiator

The Admin Portal Online Ordering settings article enumerates the Pickup & Delivery tab's Delivery Options completely, and the only geography control among them is 'Delivery Radius: Set a maximum distance (in miles) for delivery orders'. There is no polygon editor, no drive-time isochrone and no ZIP or postcode list; the older FAQ describes the same single control from the Menu Admin side ('You will see the option to adjust the mileage radius here. NOTE: Delivery must be toggled on to see this setting'). 'Zones' in CAKE POS are seating areas, not delivery geography. The one other address-related setting, Order Entry's 'Default Delivery Address Zip', is described as a typing default -- 'a default zip code for delivery addresses... minimizing the need for manual entry' -- not a zone definition, and only one such default exists. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Online-Ordering-Settings-Menu-Admin · retrieved 2026-09-01

delivery-zone-pricing

The only documented delivery-geography control is a single mileage radius: Menu Admin > Settings > Online Ordering > 'pickup and delivery' tab, where 'You will see the option to adjust the mileage radius here. NOTE: Delivery must be toggled on to see this setting.' There is no delivery-zone object in CAKE — 'Zones' in CAKE POS are seating areas ('large areas in your restaurant, such as the dining room, patio, or private room… Zones are not server sections'). No per-zone delivery fee, order minimum or quoted promise time is configurable; the OLO settings and Activate Online Ordering articles document no delivery fee table at all, and the multi-location Online Orders report shows a single 'Delivery Fee ($)' figure per restaurant. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/How-do-I-set-mileage-radius · retrieved 2026-08-03

delivery-address-validation

What is missing is a runtime mechanism, and no CAKE surface describes one. The delivery zone control is a single mileage field, the POS carries only Order Entry's 'Default Delivery Address Zip' ('This setting allows you to configure a default zip code for delivery addresses... minimizing the need for manual entry'), and Custom Order Type's field table shows a delivery order carries a free-text Address with no validation companion. New this session and genuinely relevant: the legal set does name a mapping dependency — 'To the extent that Mad Mobile incorporates the Google Places or Maps API product(s) into the Sites or Services, then by using the Sites or Services you agree to be bound by Google's Terms of Use' — but it is a conditional flow-down clause, not an assertion of incorporation, and the one Places use CAKE actually documents is Guest Manager identifying the restaurant itself, not validating a guest's address. A radius setting implies distance computation but a settings enumeration cannot bound a runtime behaviour.

delivery-driver-comp differentiator

The Payroll report's data tables are enumerated column by column, with formulas. Labor Costs carries Employee, Assignment, Employee Type, Regular Hours, OT Hours, OT 2 Hours, Paid Hours, Paid ($), Declared Tips ($) and Total Amount ($), computed as 'Total Amount: Paid + Declared Tips'. Tips & Cash carries Card Tips, Service Charge, Total Card Tips, Cash Sales, Gift Card Cash Sales, Gift Card Cash Redemption and Owe to Merchant ($), computed as 'Owe to Merchant = (Cash Sales - Total Card Tips) + (Gift Card Cash Sales - Gift Card Cash Redemption)'. No mileage, distance, per-run or reimbursement term appears in either table or either formula, so there is no reimbursement line that could be exported separately from wages. The Payroll System Options tab is likewise enumerated -- Payroll Start of Week/Day, Paid Breaks, Paid Meals, Weekly Overtime, Daily Overtime, 7th Consecutive Day Overtime, Overtime Carryover, Audit Trail -- and configures only time and overtime. CAKE has no driver role at all, so per-delivery compensation has nothing to attach to; tips from online and third-party orders are assigned wholesale to one nominated user under Tip Sharing, or 'to the Owner O. user' by default. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Dashboard-Payroll-Reports · retrieved 2026-09-01

delivery-cash-reconcile

A shift-end cash settle-up exists, but it is per employee and not per driver. The Payroll: Tips & Cash report 'helps staff determine the amount to return to the restaurant or vice versa' and computes, per employee, 'Owe to Merchant = (Cash Sales - Total Card Tips) + (Gift Card Cash Sales - Gift Card Cash Redemption)'. The Server Banking article describes the matching practice: staff 'carry their own cash bank during shifts', 'at the end of each shift, they settle up with the restaurant, covering any losses themselves', with three worked examples producing 'Total due to the Restaurant' figures including a negative one where the business owes the server. Shortfall: there is no driver role and no assignment of orders to a driver, so nothing reconciles cash collected against orders carried -- the figure derives purely from whoever rang the sale. For delivery specifically that attribution fails outright on the channels that matter: auto-approved online and DoorDash orders are attributed at random, since 'CAKE POS will automatically assign a random server from the user list -- even if that user is not currently clocked in', and their tips go to one nominated user or 'to the Owner O. user' by default. No mileage or per-run reimbursement enters the figure. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Dashboard-Payroll-Reports · retrieved 2026-09-01

delivery-daas-dispatch

CAKE's DoorDash integration is a marketplace storefront connection, and the vendor names the courier-network products as explicitly out of scope. Its error table reads 'DoorDash Drive stores cannot be onboarded to DoorDash. Contact DoorDash Support.' and 'The store is enabled for Self-Delivery, but your integration does not support it. Contact DoorDash Support to disable Self-Delivery or process a financial rate change.' No courier hand-off exists on the first-party side either: the Admin Portal OLO Pickup & Delivery tab is enumerated in full (Delivery Toggle, Delivery Radius, Delivery Fee, Delivery Time, Minimum Delivery Order, Default To Leave At Door) with no courier, quote, dispatch or status field among the options, and trycake.com/products/online-ordering states the feature as 'Delivery - Delivery available with your own fleet'. Uber Direct, Nash and Relay appear nowhere in CAKE University or on trycake.com. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/DoorDash-Integration-FAQ · retrieved 2026-09-01

delivery-daas-fallback differentiator

Hybrid dispatch presupposes a courier hand-off, and CAKE states it has none: 'DoorDash Drive stores cannot be onboarded to DoorDash' and 'The store is enabled for Self-Delivery, but your integration does not support it.' Nor is there a rules surface to hold an overflow condition. The Admin Portal OLO settings article enumerates all four tabs and every Pickup & Delivery option -- Delivery Toggle, Delivery Radius, Delivery Fee, Delivery Time, Minimum Delivery Order, Default To Leave At Door -- with no rule, threshold, wait-time trigger or fallback among them, and the POS-side Online Ordering System Options tab is enumerated as exactly four options (Online Ordering Toggle, Auto-Approve Online Orders, Phone Call Alert, Remind Me Alert Frequency), none of them conditional. With no in-house driver record either, there is no 'no driver available' state for a rule to test. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/DoorDash-Integration-FAQ · retrieved 2026-09-01

delivery-3p-direct-integration differentiator

One of the three is first-party. CAKE ships and documents its own DoorDash integration: 'Login to CAKE Admin Portal via Dashboard.cake.net... Select the Integrations tab on the left-side menu... In the Integrations tab, find the DoorDash option and click Connect', then authenticate 'with DoorDash Business Admin credentials', map each CAKE location to a DoorDash store, and 'Push your CAKE menu to DoorDash for processing', with CAKE-side status labels, Re-Sync and an error grid; the article calls the mechanism 'DD SSIO'. Shortfall: nothing equivalent is published for Uber Eats or Grubhub. CAKE University's only other marketplace article is Checkmate-Onboarding, which is explicitly middleware -- 'Checkmate is a leading integrator for third-party and online delivery platforms, connecting services like Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub, Postmates, Slice, and more with your CAKE point of sale system' -- and it is gated: '10 or more locations required. This integration is designed for multi-location businesses and is not available for single-location restaurants.' trycake.com/products/integrations routes the other two through people rather than software ('Get started with UberEats - Contact CAKE'), while DoorDash is 'via CAKE Marketplace in the Admin Portal'; Grubhub appears only in site navigation. Slug probes on 2026-09-01 for Uber-Eats-Integration, UberEats-Integration and Grubhub-Integration all returned the fabricated-slug Aura shell. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/DoorDash-Integration · retrieved 2026-09-01

delivery-3p-injection

'Once your DoorDash integration is active, orders from DoorDash will automatically flow into your CAKE POS system... All DoorDash orders are auto-accepted and immediately sent to the kitchen for preparation -- no manual review or approval required.' The FAQ repeats it and closes off the tablet: 'orders go straight to the kitchen and the receipt is available in Main Menu > Receipts & Refunds', and 'Should I manage orders from the DoorDash tablet once the integration is active? No... Do NOT use the DoorDash tablet to view or accept orders. Doing so will cause orders to not be processed correctly in CAKE POS.' Orders land in the CAKE Online Ordering Queue, and per the online-ordering process article 'Accepted orders automatically route to your kitchen printers or displays, just like orders placed in person or over the phone.' The Checkmate route behaves the same way for the other marketplaces: 'The technology automatically accepts orders from over 100 platforms and routes them directly into your POS and kitchen printers -- no manual entry required.' Two side effects are documented rather than hidden: each auto-accepted order is attached to 'a random server from your user list... even if that user is not currently clocked in', and refunds must be issued on both systems. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/DoorDash-Integration · retrieved 2026-09-01

delivery-menu-push

Publishing works for one channel and stays current: 'Push your CAKE menu to DoorDash for processing', and 'Any menu changes made in CAKE Menu Admin will update on DoorDash in near real-time.' Categories, items, modifiers and menu hours all travel, and failures are surfaced by name ('Menu job failed due to missing hours', 'Menu job succeeded, but no items were processed'). Shortfalls: the channel selector is a single shared flag rather than a per-marketplace one -- a component missing from DoorDash 'likely means the component isn't set to display on OLO in Menu Admin... make sure the OLO checkbox is checked' -- so the DoorDash menu is the CAKE online-ordering menu and cannot diverge from it; no channel-specific price markup or per-channel price field is documented anywhere in Menu Admin; photos are never named as part of the payload; the integration 'requires the Enterprise Menu version of Menu Admin', which the vendor says it is still migrating merchants onto; and no push at all is documented for Uber Eats or Grubhub, whose published route is the Checkmate middleware, where menus are managed in Checkmate's own platform ('Manage all online orders and menus from a single platform') under a ten-location minimum. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/DoorDash-Integration-FAQ · retrieved 2026-09-01

delivery-86-sync

CAKE now propagates an 86 to third-party channels at both the levels DoorDash requires. Enterprise Menu: Stock Status lets an operator mark Items, Modifier Groups and Modifier Options In Stock or Out of Stock, individually or in bulk via Edit Stock mode, and states the propagation directly: 'Whether an item is marked Out of Stock in Enterprise Menu (EMS) or directly from the POS, supported ordering channels automatically receive the updated availability.' The supported platforms are enumerated - 'CAKE Online Ordering, CAKE Kiosk, Paytronix Online Ordering, DoorDash, Other supported integrated ordering platforms'. Restoration is the same control in reverse (toggle back to In Stock and Publish), and the DoorDash Integration FAQ times the channel: 'Any menu changes made in CAKE Menu Admin will update on DoorDash in near real-time.' Changes are attributable through the Activity Log. Prerequisite worth recording: Stock Status requires the Enterprise Menu (EMS) version of Menu Admin, which the DoorDash integration itself already requires, and an EMS-side change applies to the live menu only after a Publish step. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Stock-Status · retrieved 2026-09-01

delivery-store-pause

The control exists for one channel and is operated from CAKE rather than the marketplace's tablet: on the Admin Portal Integrations page, 'Deactivate: Temporarily disable the store. You will be prompted to provide a reason (e.g., Out of Business, Operational Issues)', and 'You can also deactivate the store by using the toggle on the grid view. The toggle will be gray when deactivated. Reactivate anytime by toggling it back on. The toggle will be orange when activated.' The FAQ confirms the scope -- 'Can I deactivate a location without disconnecting the integration? Yes, you can temporarily toggle off a location in the integration dashboard without fully disconnecting it' -- and a Status filter lists Live, Inactive, Ready for Live and Has Error. Shortfalls: reactivation is manual, with no timed or scheduled auto-reactivation documented and no duration field in the deactivate prompt; the control covers DoorDash only, with no equivalent published for Uber Eats or Grubhub, whose route is the Checkmate platform; and CAKE's own online-ordering site is paused by a separate, equally untimed mechanism -- 'If you need to temporarily disable Online Ordering, toggle off both Pickup and Delivery. This will make your OLO site unavailable for customer orders.' https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/DoorDash-Integration · retrieved 2026-09-01

delivery-3p-reconciliation differentiator

No payout data reaches CAKE, so no report can match deposits to orders. The DoorDash FAQ states the split explicitly: 'Refunds must be processed on both CAKE POS and the DoorDash tablet... The true financial refund happens through DoorDash, but processing it on both systems ensures your reports are accurate', and the online-ordering refund article repeats it -- 'Refunding 3rd Online Orders, like DoorDash or UberEats, through the POS will update the CAKE report but does not complete the refund with the third party.' On the ledger side, marketplace revenue is a merchant-typed tender: 3rd Party payment types are created by hand ('Enter a descriptive name for the payment type, e.g. Uber Eats, Corporate Account') and the reports bucket them, recording 'unique third-party payment types' under Others. The only payout-facing report is for the vendor's own processing -- the Payments report is 'For CAKE Payments users; view credit card processing information such as captured transaction batches, CAKE fees, and deposits'. No commission, marketing-fee, adjustment or missing-order field appears in any documented report, and the multi-location Online Orders report carries only Orders (#), Delivery Fee ($), Sales ($) and Tips ($). https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/DoorDash-Integration-FAQ · retrieved 2026-09-01

delivery-injection-error-visibility differentiator

Health is visible for the connection and for the menu. The Integrations page shows 'a Connected status... next to the DoorDash Integration once all stores are set to live'; a per-location Status filter -- 'Has Error: Shows stores with syncing or menu issues. Inactive: Lists stores that are deactivated. Live: Displays active stores accepting orders. Ready for Live: Shows stores that are synced but not yet live'; a Menu Error (x) label opening 'a detailed grid view' with a Re-Sync action; and on completion 'you'll receive both an email and a notification in the Admin Portal'. The FAQ carries a full error table with remedies ('Menu job failed due to missing hours', 'This store is using a non-restaurant UI on DoorDash and is ineligible for integration', and so on). Shortfall: none of this covers order injection. There is no failed- or rejected-order view, no order-level error queue and no alert when an order fails to arrive -- the documented handling assumes the operator spots it first: 'I see orders coming through DoorDash, but they are not appearing in my CAKE POS. What should I do? Make a dummy change in CAKE Menu Admin (such as updating an item name) to force synchronization. If the issue persists, contact CAKE Support.' Verifying a live connection is manual too: 'Place a test order on DoorDash and verify that it appears in your CAKE Online Ordering Queue.' https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/DoorDash-Integration-FAQ · retrieved 2026-09-01

delivery-tracking-page

Guest-facing order status exists in a thin form. At checkout customers enter 'Name, Mobile Number, Email' and 'can also opt in to receive text notifications for order updates', and on approval 'customers will receive a confirmation email with the order details, including: Pickup time or delivery time. Itemized order summary.' Shortfalls: no branded status or tracking page is documented at all -- the customer flow, described end to end, terminates at that email -- and nothing is driven by driver state, because CAKE holds no driver record (delivery is 'available with your own fleet' per trycake.com/products/online-ordering, and the enumerated Pickup & Delivery settings contain no driver object). Nor is the surface on the restaurant's own domain: the ordering site is a CAKE-issued address obtained by opening the Menu Admin preview and copying 'the URL from your browser's address bar', with branding limited to an uploaded logo and banner image. The one live-status feature CAKE does publish, Guest Manager's order queue with its second 'Order Ready' text and optional automated phone call, is scoped to pickup -- 'For restaurants offering pickup orders: Enable Pickup Orders' -- and is fed by the OLO setting 'Show Orders in Guest Manager', described throughout as importing pickup orders. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Online-Ordering-Flow-for-Customers · retrieved 2026-09-01

delivery-promise-time differentiator

The delivery promise is a stored constant, not a computed estimate. On the OLO General tab, 'Prep Time: Define the standard preparation time for online orders (in minutes)'; on the Pickup & Delivery tab, 'Delivery Time: Define the expected delivery time (in minutes)'; and the article states the arithmetic twice -- 'Customers will be notified of the expected delivery time in their confirmation email, calculated as prep time + delivery time.' Nothing in the enumerated settings varies either term: the only load-related control is Order Pacing, which caps throughput rather than moving a quote ('Manage how many orders can be processed per 15-minute interval'), the only distance control is a single Delivery Radius with no per-distance time, and there is no driver record whose availability could enter the calculation. The POS-side equivalent is also a constant -- Order Entry's Default Promised For Time sets 'a default preparation time for orders... you can set the system to automatically promise that orders will be ready 10 minutes from the current time'. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Online-Ordering-Settings-Menu-Admin · retrieved 2026-09-01

delivery-offline-behavior

CAKE does publish an explicit offline-behaviour statement, and delivery is absent from it. The Offline Payments article's table, 'What Works (and What Doesn't) in Offline Mode', enumerates ten rows -- Discounts (Yes), Service Charges (Yes), Comps (Yes), Tips (Yes), Receipts (Yes), Reports (Delayed), Loyalty (No), Gift Cards (No), Pre-Authorization (No), Manual Card Entry (No) -- and is followed by a risks section and an FAQ covering restart, close cash, supported card-entry methods and the 72-hour expiry. No row, note or FAQ entry concerns delivery: cash delivery orders, driver assignment and driver settlement are never named, and CAKE holds no driver record for any of them to attach to. The nearest settlement statement is not delivery-specific -- 'Can I close cash while Offline Mode is active? No. Close Cash is not available while Offline Mode or Recovery is active.' Online and third-party order intake, which both depend on the connection that is down, are not addressed either. So the vendor documents offline behaviour, but not for delivery. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Offline-Payments · retrieved 2026-09-01

digital-first-party-web

Commission-free online ordering sold as a first-party product that integrates with the POS. https://trycake.com/en-us/products/pos · retrieved 2026-08-01

digital-menu-single-source

Online ordering is marketed as seamlessly integrating with the POS; single-menu-record propagation is implied but not documented. https://trycake.com/en-us/products/pos · retrieved 2026-08-01

digital-native-app differentiator

CAKE's guest ordering channel is a hosted web link, stated three times in the product's own overview article (republished 2026-04-16): 'With OLO, your restaurant gets a unique online ordering link that makes it easy for customers to browse, customize their orders, and pay—all in one place'; numbered feature 4, 'Convenient Access — Each restaurant gets a custom online link that can be shared on social media platforms'; and activation is 'Call CAKE Support... to request to activate your Online Ordering website.' The article's five numbered features (Menu Sync, Payment Integration, User Accounts, Convenient Access, Orders Sync to POS) close the product's feature set with no app in it. No branded app is sold anywhere in the trycake.com product catalogue (read in full from the live site nav 2026-09-04), and the partner CAKE names for a restaurant's own-brand digital presence delivers websites: 'CAKE POS now offers integrated website design solutions through our partnership with Fisherman.' The apps CAKE documents are staff-facing (OrderPad, Kiosk, Guest Manager) or CAKE's own multi-restaurant guest app, 'The List' — the shared-marketplace shape this claim excludes. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/CAKE-Online-Ordering · retrieved 2026-09-04 adversarially verified

digital-account-saved-payment

Guest accounts exist: 'Customers can create accounts to save their details and view past orders, ensuring a faster checkout experience in the future', and 'saved accounts for faster reordering' is named as a benefit. Shortfall: what is saved is never enumerated — no documentation of tokenized card-on-file, no saved delivery addresses, and no one-tap reorder action (the article says only that past orders can be viewed). Customers 'must pay online when placing their order' through CAKE Payments, and 'Payment at pickup is not available for online orders', but card storage is not described. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/CAKE-Online-Ordering · retrieved 2026-08-03

digital-upsell-engine differentiator

Menu Admin > Promotions > Cross-Selling lets the operator build Cross-Sell Groups: pick the items to recommend, then "Choose the categories that will trigger the recommendations during checkout", so that when a guest orders from a trigger category "At checkout, 6 recommended items will appear below the subtotal. Customers can click on these items to instantly add them to their cart". That is a genuine configurable, rules-based digital upsell engine. Shortfalls: the selection is neither personalized nor algorithmic -- "During the checkout process, the system will randomly display 6 items from your selected list as recommendations" -- so there is no recommendation from order history despite guests having accounts that "view past orders"; and there is no attach-rate reporting on the suggestions. The Online Orders Information in Reports article enumerates every place OLO data surfaces (Dashboard, Transactions, Payments and Payroll reports) and the Cake Dashboard Sales Reports article enumerates all ten Sales sections (Overview, Payment Type, Order Type, Employee, Register, Zone, Revenue Center, Discounts, In-Store Channels); none reports cross-sell impressions, acceptances or attach rate. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cross-Selling · retrieved 2026-09-01

digital-scheduled-pacing

Guests choose a promise time and saturated slots close themselves. The Admin Portal's Online Ordering General tab carries "Order Pacing: Manage how many orders can be processed per 15-minute interval" and "Prep Time: Define the standard preparation time for online orders (in minutes)", with pickup guests "notified of the pickup time in their confirmation email based on the prep time you've set" and delivery guests notified of a time "calculated as prep time + delivery time". The Order Pacing article works the example: with a five-order cap, "The first 5 orders will go through" and "The 6th customer will no longer see promise time of between 12:15 PM to 12:30 PM as an available time for pickup/delivery". Shortfalls: the throttle is a single global number rather than per-daypart -- the four OLO settings tabs (General, Pickup & Delivery, Customization, Gifting) expose one orders-per-15-minute value and one Prep Time, with no daypart, weekday, channel or fulfilment-mode variation and no per-item capacity limit; and no advance-day or lead-time scheduling is documented, the only timing fields in the entire OLO surface being Prep Time and Delivery Time. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Online-Ordering-Settings-Menu-Admin · retrieved 2026-09-01

digital-fulfillment-modes

The Pickup & Delivery tab is the entire fulfilment surface of CAKE OLO and the article enumerates it field by field: Pickup Toggle; "Show Orders in Guest Manager"; "Curbside Pickup: Enable a curbside pickup checkbox for customers making a pickup order" plus "Make Curbside Pickup Mandatory"; Delivery Toggle; "Delivery Radius: Set a maximum distance (in miles) for delivery orders"; "Delivery Fee: Specify a flat fee for delivery orders"; "Delivery Time: Define the expected delivery time (in minutes)"; "Minimum Delivery Order"; and "Default To Leave At Door". Mode-specific fees and prep timing therefore exist: a delivery-only flat fee and a separate delivery minimum, with the guest's promised time computed as prep time for pickup and "prep time + delivery time" for delivery. Shortfalls: there is no dine-in or QR table-ordering mode in the flow -- the tab offers only Pickup and Delivery, and "If you need to temporarily disable Online Ordering, toggle off both Pickup and Delivery" takes the whole OLO site down; and curbside arrival check-in is not part of the ordering flow, it is run out of the separate Guest Manager product, where staff send an Order Ready text and "can ask the guest to reply with their parking spot number for curbside pickup", then tap the takeout-box icon to Assign the spot manually. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Online-Ordering-Settings-Menu-Admin · retrieved 2026-09-01

digital-qr-table

CAKE does have a guest-facing QR payment path attached to the POS check. The POS Extra Fee FAQ answers "How does the Extra Fee work with QR Pay?" with "The fee is automatically included in the total for QR Pay transactions. While it's not shown as a separate line item on the QR receipt, the total reflects the fee" -- so a QR Pay transaction carries the POS order's own total and renders its own receipt. Mad Mobile's Privacy Policy independently lists "contactless order and pay-at-table functionality" among the Cake Services. Shortfalls: that single FAQ answer is the only description of QR Pay anywhere in the customer-facing knowledge base -- CAKE University's sitemap has no QR, contactless or pay-at-table topic among its 117 topics and no such article among its 207, so nothing documents scan-to-order, how a guest reaches the QR, or which order types support it; splitting and tipping through the QR flow are undocumented (the Splitting Payments and Split Order by Item articles cover POS-side splitting only, and the Tip Sharing article's tip-assignment settings name POS, online-ordering and future kiosk tips but not QR); and the fee is not itemised on the QR receipt. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/POS-Extra-Fee · retrieved 2026-09-01

digital-kiosk differentiator

CAKE ships a first-party self-order kiosk on the POS's own menu spine, now documented rather than only marketed. CAKE Kiosk Overview enumerates the Key Features (MicroTouch premium touchscreen, floor or countertop stand, dark/light mode, portrait or landscape, improved menu experience, 'Customers Also Ordered' upsell prompts, integrated loyalty, custom branding, tip suggestions) and the Requirements (Kiosk Hardware Kit and a per-device Kiosk Subscription from CAKE Shop, 'Access to Menu Admin (EMS 2.0)', POS version 7.41.0.0+). Menu parity is explicit: items carry a 'Show This Item On' field choosing POS, Online Ordering and/or Kiosk, modifier groups carry the same control, Enterprise Menu stock status syncs to CAKE Kiosk, and the Dashboard Sales report's In-Store Channels section compares POS, CAKEpop and CAKE Kiosk side by side. Unattended EMV is documented in the guest-flow article - guests build the cart, choose an order type, enter contact info and 'complete payment using: Tap, Swipe, or Insert card', with an SMS-or-none receipt prompt and no staff step anywhere in the flow. Shortfalls: no accessibility compliance is claimed anywhere - ADA, WCAG, Section 508, screen reader, audio jack and tactile navigation appear on neither trycake.com nor in any CAKE University article, and the Key Features table has no non-visual access mode; the 2025 kiosk is 'currently in an Early Adopter phase and not yet available to all users'; it requires the Enterprise Menu (EMS 2.0) version of Menu Admin and POS 7.41.0.0+; and it is a separate hardware purchase plus a per-device subscription. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/CAKE-Kiosk-Overview · retrieved 2026-09-01

digital-group-ordering

Two complete first-party enumerations of the OLO product close this. The overview's numbered feature list — '1. Menu Sync / 2. Payment Integration / 3. User Accounts / 4. Convenient Access / 5. Orders Sync to POS' — describes one cart bound to one identity ('Customers can create accounts to save their details and view past orders'), with upsell 'prompts during checkout' and no shareable participant link or shared cart. Configuring Online Ordering Settings in the Admin Portal (retrieved 2026-09-04) states 'you'll find four main tabs to configure' and enumerates every field in each — General (Minimum Order Amount, Prep Time, OLO Tip, Order Pacing, Price Range), Pickup & Delivery (Pickup Toggle, Show Orders in Guest Manager, Curbside Pickup, Make Curbside Pickup Mandatory, Delivery Toggle, Delivery Radius, Delivery Fee, Delivery Time, Minimum Delivery Order, Default To Leave At Door), Customization (Restaurant Logo, Banner Image), Gifting — so there is no per-person cap, total cap or invite construct to configure, and the POS-side OLO tab closes at Online Ordering Toggle, Auto-Approve, Phone Call Alert and Remind Me Alert Frequency. The residual hazard is Olo, a named partner whose module scope CAKE does not state. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Online-Ordering-Settings-Menu-Admin · retrieved 2026-09-04 adversarially verified

digital-catering-portal differentiator

CAKE's digital ordering has no catering flow, and its own settings surface and payment rules refute the specific mechanics the claim asks for. Configuring Online Ordering Settings in the Admin Portal enumerates the entire configurable surface -- 'When you access the Online Ordering settings, you'll find four main tabs to configure' -- as General (Minimum Order Amount, Prep Time, OLO Tip, Order Pacing, Price Range), Pickup & Delivery, Customization (restaurant logo and banner image) and Gifting ('toggle the ability to accept CAKE Gifts (donations) via OLO'). That is one order minimum, one prep time, and no catering menu, no lead-time or advance-notice rule, no quote or proposal and no deposit field. Payment terms close the rest: Overview of the Online Ordering Process states 'Payment Requirements: Customers must pay online when placing their order. Payment at pickup is not available for online orders', and the accepted tenders are credit cards through CAKE Payments plus CAKE gift cards, so there is no deposit, invoice, house-account or ACH path. The only catering construct documented in the product is a name: the full-service settings guide suggests 'If you have any additional order types, like Catering, click Add Order Type and set the name, attribute (dine in, take out, delivery), and an icon for it', which inherits the ordinary order-type fields and carries no catering-specific rule. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Online-Ordering-Settings-Menu-Admin · retrieved 2026-09-02

digital-voice-ai-phone differentiator

Assessed 2026-09-04, unresolved on the partner limb. Natively there is nothing: the parent's dedicated CAKE restaurant AI page markets one phone agent and it is the wrong one — 'AI Customer Support: NLP Phone Agent can service hundreds of calls simultaneously referencing a knowledge base, the web, and past case histories to solve customer issues in real time' — while CAKE's own documented phone features run outbound only (System Options' 'Phone Call Alert' notifying the restaurant of new online orders; Guest Manager's 'Enable Order Ready Phone Call'). No voice product appears in the trycake.com product catalogue. But the claim also admits 'a named certified partner', and no surface enumerates CAKE's certified partners: trycake.com states 'Connect with hundreds of third-party applications', so the 19-name catalogue is self-declared non-exhaustive, and partner integrations are documented in the help centre (the DoorDash article is the pattern) which is demonstrably not enumerable — out-of-sitemap articles return real article ids. adversarially verified

digital-drivethru-ai

CAKE has no drive-thru surface for a lane agent to attach to. Read live 2026-09-04, trycake.com's own navigation enumerates the segments it sells — service models Quick Service and Full Service, concepts Asian, Bar & Lounge, Cafe & Bakery, Indian, Mexican, Multi-Location and Pizza — with no drive-thru segment, and the same nav enumerates the entire product line, hardware included (POS, CAKEpop handheld, KDS, Customer Touch Display, Self-Service Kiosk, thermal, impact and label printers, POS Wraps, Payments, Integrations, Reporting, Loyalty, Gift Cards, Inventory, Scheduling, Tip Management, Online Ordering, Payroll), with no order confirmation board, headset or lane timer. 'Drive Thru' occurs in the documentation only as an example custom order-type name. The parent's restaurant AI page, where a lane agent would be sold, markets only an NLP phone agent for support cases plus purchasing, operator analytics and customer-display upsell. The claim is conjunctive — a lane, a voice agent, POS menu/modifier integration and human handoff — and CAKE sells no lane hardware, which no undocumented software partnership could supply. https://trycake.com/solutions/pizza/pos · retrieved 2026-09-04 adversarially verified

digital-sms-ordering

CAKE's messaging surface is enumerated in the Guest Manager In-App Settings guide and it is outbound status only: 'Text Messages — Customize automated texts for key events: Add or edit pre-set messages like: Welcome / Table is Ready / Reservation Confirmation / Order Notifications', with the Order Settings section closing at Enable Pickup Orders, Enable Dedicated Order Mode Login and 'Enable Order Ready Phone Call'. The companion article closes the send paths — 'Once texting is enabled, you can text message any guest added to the: Waitlist / Pickup order list / Reservation list' — and the composer is a host tool. The only documented inbound use is a manual curbside reply ('Please let us know when you are here by responding with your parking spot number'), handled by hand. The ordering channel itself is enumerated elsewhere and contains no text channel: the OLO overview's five numbered features end at a shareable web link, and Configuring Online Ordering Settings in the Admin Portal (retrieved 2026-09-04) enumerates all four tabs and every field in them with no messaging channel. CAKE's own campaign product is email-only. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Settings-Overview · retrieved 2026-09-04 adversarially verified

digital-google-order differentiator

CAKE's documented route onto Google is manual link placement. Driving Business to CAKE Online Ordering has a Google Business section telling the operator to "Keep your Google Business profile up-to-date so customers can always find your OLO link" and to "Ensure your custom CAKE OLO link is prominently featured on your Google Business page", with a link out to instructions for adding it -- the same treatment it gives Facebook's Shop Now button, an Instagram bio link and TripAdvisor. So the restaurant's direct ordering link can be the ordering option on its Business Profile. Shortfalls: the merchant does it by hand. No Order with Google or Google Food Ordering integration exists, nothing provisions the ordering link into the profile automatically, and no "Preferred by Business" designation is mentioned anywhere on either host. CAKE University's 117 sitemap topics contain no Order-with-Google topic, and the only first-party Google integrations documented are Guest Manager's reservations ("Toggle 'Accept Google Reservations' to ON", after which "The 'Find a Table' button will go live on your Google listing within 24 hours") and Enable Join Waitlist from Google -- both booking, not ordering. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Driving-Business-to-cake-Online-Ordering · retrieved 2026-09-01

digital-apple-business-connect

CAKE ships no map place-card ordering action on any platform, which settles the Apple case without relying on corpus silence. Its documented place-card integrations are two, both Google and both non-ordering: Enable 'Join Waitlist' from Google ('The Join Waitlist button appears on your restaurant's Google Places card—on both Google Search and Maps', with enumerated setup steps and a How to Turn It Off section) and Google Reservations via the Find a Table button in Managing Reservations with Guest Manager. For ordering, Driving Business to CAKE Online Ordering enumerates the channels CAKE advises — Facebook, Instagram, Google Business, TripAdvisor — and its instruction for every one of them is to paste the OLO link manually, linking out to Google's own support page to do it; there is no ordering action, integration or Place-ID binding for ordering anywhere, and Apple Maps is not among the four channels. Apple appears in CAKE's material only as iPad hardware requirements, an Epson KDS iOS configuration app, an iOS update guide and 'Payments - Take Apple Pay and cards'. Four plausible Apple article slugs probed against the help centre's article endpoint 2026-09-04 returned no article, using a discriminator that returns real ids for unlisted articles. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Driving-Business-to-cake-Online-Ordering · retrieved 2026-09-04 adversarially verified

digital-loyalty-attach

Both halves work inside the first-party ordering flow on one guest identity. CAKE Loyalty: Overview & Requirements describes it as 'a comprehensive rewards program integrated directly into your CAKE POS and Online Ordering (OLO) systems' with 'Cross-Channel Integration: CAKE Loyalty works seamlessly across your POS and OLO platforms', the account keyed on phone number or email. Enrolment is inline rather than post-purchase: 'When guests proceed to the payment information page during the online ordering process, they will encounter a prompt inviting them to sign up for the Loyalty Program', with a preview of the points the order would earn plus any sign-up bonus. Redemption is documented step by step for the online cart: entering a phone number or email at the Payment Information page means 'the order is seamlessly linked to the guest's loyalty account'; 'Available rewards are displayed prominently above the total order amount in the cart'; and 'With one click, the reward is applied to the order', the cart updating to show the adjusted total. An existing member entering their details sees the points earned for the current order. Commercial gate to note: CAKE Loyalty is bought separately - 'Visit the CAKE Shop via the Admin Portal to purchase and enable the CAKE Loyalty feature' - and requires POS version 6.36.12.0 or above. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/CAKE-Loyalty-How-Customers-Redeem-Points-on-an-Online-Order-OLO · retrieved 2026-09-01

digital-subscriptions

Two complete settings-screen enumerations cover both surfaces where a guest subscription could be configured, and neither contains a recurring-billing, entitlement or paid-tier construct. Configuring Online Ordering Settings in the Admin Portal states 'you'll find four main tabs to configure' and then enumerates every field in each: General (Minimum Order Amount, Prep Time, OLO Tip, Order Pacing, Price Range); Pickup & Delivery (Pickup Toggle, Show Orders in Guest Manager, Curbside Pickup, Make Curbside Pickup Mandatory, Delivery Toggle, Delivery Radius, 'Delivery Fee: Specify a flat fee for delivery orders', Delivery Time, Minimum Delivery Order, Default To Leave At Door); Customization (Restaurant Logo, Banner Image); Gifting (accept CAKE Gifts). The delivery fee is a single flat figure with no waiver, no member rate and no billing plan — that is the fee engine the delivery-fee-waiver limb would have to live in, enumerated in full. The paid-loyalty-tier limb fails on the other surface: How to Activate CAKE Loyalty enumerates the entire Loyalty Options tab — Include Locations, Enrollment Method, Loyalty Marketing QR Code, Guest Portal URL, then Earning Points (Dollar-to-Points Conversion, Sign-Up Bonus, Profile Completion Bonus) and Redeeming Points (Points-to-Dollar Conversion, Minimum Order Amount, Maximum Redemption Limit) — with no tier, membership or entitlement, and the Loyalty FAQ answers 'Can I customize the rewards offered through CAKE Loyalty?' with the two conversion rates only. The only subscriptions documented anywhere are the merchant's own purchases from the CAKE Shop and the Pay-As-You-Please Subscription in the POS Terms — all merchant-to-CAKE billing, never guest-to-merchant. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/How-to-Activate-CAKE-Loyalty · retrieved 2026-09-04 adversarially verified

digital-promo-parity

Discounts are defined twice, on two different systems, with no shared definition and no channel eligibility control. Online Ordering discounts are created in the Admin Portal at Menu Admin > Promotions > Discounts, and the Add Discount form is enumerated in full -- Name, Description, External ID ("Currently an inactive field"), Type (Order Discount, applying "to the subtotal of the order"), Amount (Percentage or Fixed Amount), Promo Code, and a Start Date and End Date schedule -- with no channel selector, and the only redemption path described is that "Customers can enter the promo code during the checkout process on your Online Ordering page." POS discounts are separate objects configured on the terminal at Main Menu > Settings > System Options > Discounts & Comps, whose add form is likewise enumerated in full -- Reason and Discount Amount, with 0 meaning the amount is "customizable at the order screen" -- carrying no promo code, no schedule and no channel selector. Neither surface can express the other's fields, so a promotion cannot be defined once, and neither carries channel eligibility. CAKE does ship channel controls elsewhere in the same Menu Admin: a modifier group has "Show This Modifier Group On", and the Featured tab covers "Featuring Items on OLO or Kiosk" -- so their absence from both discount forms is a positive fact about the product rather than a gap in the writing. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Online-Ordering-Discount-Codes · retrieved 2026-09-01

digital-guest-data-ownership differentiator

CAKE's own contract documents the opposite of operator ownership, and no bulk guest export exists in the product. The Operator POS Terms' section 13.1 "Data Ownership" partitions the data into "Cake Data" and "Operator Data" and states that "Operator Data does not include Buyer Data" -- guest records are assigned to neither party -- while section 9.5 restricts what the operator may do with them: "Operator will keep will use such data solely for the purposes of (a) fulfilling the applicable Buyer's transaction or experience; (b) complying with Operator's obligations in the Agreement; or (c) complying with applicable law. Operator will not share or use any Buyer Data for marketing, advertising, or other commercial purposes without the express consent of the Buyer or other third party to which that Buyer Data relates." Buyer Data is defined to be exactly the records the claim is about -- "names, mailing addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, payment card numbers and other financial account-related information, and purchasing preferences". No clause grants an export right, in bulk or otherwise, and on termination "Cake has the right (but has no obligation) to delete all Operator information and any data". On the product side there is no guest or customer report to export: the documented Cake Dashboard suite is Dashboard, Sales, Transactions, Payments, Payroll, Gift Card, Taxes, Staff and Multi-Location, and the reporting FAQ's export answers cover sales and transaction data only; Guest Manager email-offer sign-ups are viewable in the control center's members tab with no documented export. https://trycake.com/legal-agreements · retrieved 2026-09-01

digital-checkout-pci-sca

The digital checkout is entirely vendor-hosted, so card data never touches a restaurant-controlled page: activation produces a CAKE-generated ordering site reached by "A custom Online Ordering link will be generated for your restaurant and emailed to you", the operator's only job being to paste that URL onto their own site or social profiles, and payment runs through CAKE Payments, which must be enabled for Online Ordering "even if you use a third-party processor for in-store transactions". The Operator POS Terms state "Cake adheres to PCI DSS. Cake agrees that it shall comply with the applicable PCI DSS requirements, as such may be amended from time to time, with respect to all cardholder data received by it in connection with this Agreement", and the PCI Compliance article describes encryption at the point of swipe, tokenisation, SSL/TLS in transit and that "Credit card data is never stored unencrypted". Shortfalls: no PCI DSS version is published -- "4.0", the March 2025 client-side script-integrity requirements (6.4.3 and 11.6.1) and the phrase "script integrity" appear nowhere on trycake.com or university.cake.net, no Attestation of Compliance is linked, and the one article that would carry it, "PCI DSS Service Provider and Customer Responsibility Matrix", renders a title and no body at all; and 3DS, 3-D Secure and SCA appear nowhere in the 207-article knowledge base, on trycake.com's 42-page site, or in the legal agreements. https://trycake.com/legal-agreements · retrieved 2026-09-01

digital-surcharge-transparency differentiator

CAKE's fee feature is POS-only and the vendor says so twice on the same page. The Customizing and Managing POS Extra Fee article's feature summary reads "Automatically Applied to POS Orders: The Extra Fee is not linked to specific payment types. It automatically applies to all eligible POS orders... (Note: It does not apply to Online Orders or Kiosk orders.)", and its FAQ answers "Will the fee apply to Online Orders or Kiosk orders? No. The Extra Fee only applies to orders placed through the POS system." So the digital channels cannot carry the POS's service-fee configuration at all. The POS feature is also not a card surcharge or dual price: it is a universal fee that "must apply to all tender types (credit, debit, and cash) to remain compliant", cannot be named after a payment method (only Operational Fee, Admin Fee, Restaurant Fee or Universal Service Fee are permitted), cannot vary by payment type ("Can I charge different fees for different payment types? No"), and escapes Visa's 3% cap precisely because it is not a surcharge; CAKE answers "Will CAKE offer a more flexible surcharge option? Yes. A more advanced feature is in development, but this current method is required in the meantime." Jurisdiction and card-brand handling is pushed onto the operator -- "Restaurants must follow Visa rules and comply with local laws" -- with no state or brand rule engine, and CAKE passes any Visa fines through to the restaurant. The Admin Portal Online Ordering settings (General, Pickup & Delivery, Customization, Gifting) carry no fee field other than a flat delivery fee. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/POS-Extra-Fee · retrieved 2026-09-01

guest-loyalty-unified-profile

Accrual does span channels: 'The CAKE Loyalty feature integrates with OLO, giving customers a seamless way to earn points', on top of in-store POS rewards. Shortfall: no guest-profile object is documented on the POS side — rewards are configured purely as stamp counts under Settings > Rewards ('You can only have 1 reward Active at anytime'), with no customer record described; the only 'Customer Profile' article in CAKE University belongs to the separate Guest Manager waitlist product and its consumer app 'The List'; and no phone/email identity matching, dedup or merge behaviour is documented. Kiosk is not named as a loyalty-earning channel. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/CAKE-Online-Ordering · retrieved 2026-08-03

guest-loyalty-thirdparty-identity-attach differentiator

The twelve CAKE Loyalty articles recovered on 2026-09-02 enumerate how a guest identity attaches to an order, and no marketplace path exists. CAKE Loyalty: Adding Points to Loyalty Accounts is explicit - "Methods for Adding Points: Customer Touch Display (CTD), Cashier Interaction via POS, Credit Card Linking" - and How Customers Enroll into CAKE Loyalty gives the matching enrollment set: the CTD "EARN REWARDS" button, a cashier tapping "the yellow loyalty button at the top of the order", a prompt during the payment process, the restaurant's marketing QR code, and the OLO checkout page where guests "enter their contact information, such as their phone number or email". Every one of them requires the guest to be at a CAKE terminal or checking out on CAKE's own online-ordering site. A DoorDash order can use none: How to Integrate DoorDash with CAKE POS says such orders "are auto-accepted and immediately sent to the kitchen for preparation - no manual review or approval required", and "Since there's no manual approval to assign a staff member, a random server from your user list will be assigned to the order", the only artifact produced being a receipt under Main Menu > Receipts & Refunds. The DoorDash FAQ repeats it and adds that tips from third-party orders route to one nominated staff member. Marketplace orders therefore land as tickets with no native guest profile attached; the only guest-related attributes CAKE records for them are money and tip routing (Cake Dashboard: Sales Reports files them under "Credit Card (Card Not-Present)"). https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/CAKE-Loyalty-Adding-Points-to-Loyalty-Accounts · retrieved 2026-09-02

guest-loyalty-accrual-models

One accrual model is documented as configuration: Settings > Rewards awards 'virtual stamps (instead of punch cards) for items they purchase', where you 'Enter the required number of stamps needed to receive that reward (5 or 10 is most common)' - i.e. punch-count. A points model exists but its rule is not documented: Accepting Payments' Loyalty step is 'Enter the customer's loyalty information before payment so they can earn points for their purchase', and CAKE Online Ordering says 'The CAKE Loyalty feature integrates with OLO, giving customers a seamless way to earn points'. Shortfall: the only statement that a points-per-dollar RATE is configurable is marketing - trycake.com/products/customer-engagement, 'Adjust your point-to-dollar conversion rates to align with your restaurant's unique goals' - and no CAKE Loyalty admin article exists anywhere in the 207-article knowledge base; no spend-tier accrual appears on either host; and the stamp side is single-track: 'You can only have 1 reward Active at anytime.' https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Creating-Rewards · retrieved 2026-09-01

guest-loyalty-tiers differentiator

The complete CAKE Loyalty configuration screen is now documented and it has no tier concept. How to Activate CAKE Loyalty (Admin Portal > Settings > Loyalty Options, retrieved 2026-09-02) lists the settings in full: Include Locations, Enrollment Method (phone number or email), Loyalty Marketing QR Code, Guest Portal URL, then "Earning Points - Dollar-to-Points Conversion: Set how much customers need to spend to earn one point (e.g., $10 = 1 point). Taxes and fees are excluded. Sign-Up Bonus... Profile Completion Bonus" and "Redeeming Points - Points-to-Dollar Conversion: Define how many points customers need to redeem $1 (e.g., 15 points = $1). Minimum Order Amount... Maximum Redemption Limit". The programme is therefore a single flat point economy with no status level, no qualification window and no promotion or demotion rule. The Loyalty FAQ closes it from the other side: "Q: Can I customize the rewards offered through CAKE Loyalty? A: With CAKE Loyalty, loyalty points can be redeemed for dollars. You have the ability to customize the rewards by setting the Dollar to Points conversion and the Points to Dollar conversion within the CAKE Admin Portal Loyalty Options settings." The separate stamp-card screen, Settings > Rewards, is likewise tier-free and allows only one active reward ("You can only have 1 reward Active at anytime"), and the Loyalty Report's metrics are sales, points earned, points redeemed and sign-ups with a loyalty-versus-non-loyalty split and no segment above member. A grep of all 290 articles for 'tier' returns only Payroll's overtime Tier 1 / Tier 2. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/How-to-Activate-CAKE-Loyalty · retrieved 2026-09-02

guest-loyalty-offline-behavior differentiator

Offline Payments carries an explicit 'What Works (and What Doesn't) in Offline Mode' table, and loyalty is a named row: Loyalty - Supported in Offline Mode? 'No' - Notes 'Requires live connection'. The risk section repeats it: 'Some payment types and features (such as gift cards, manual entry, and loyalty) are not available while offline.' The documented answer is therefore blocked, not queue-and-reconcile - and the same table states the queueing cases explicitly for contrast (Tips 'Can be added and adjusted; processed after reconnecting to the internet'; Reports 'Delayed - Sync after reconnecting'), while card transactions are 'securely stored locally' and auto-submitted on reconnect, expiring after 72 hours. The claim asks that the behaviour be documented explicitly; it is, and it covers lookup, accrual and redemption together by making the whole feature unavailable. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Offline-Payments · retrieved 2026-09-01

guest-loyalty-offer-stacking-rules differentiator

Every discount surface CAKE documents is now enumerated field by field and none carries an exclusivity, combinability or precedence control. Menu Admin > Promotions > Discounts, the online-ordering promo-code screen (retrieved 2026-09-02): Name, Description, External ID ("Currently an inactive field"), Type ("Order Discount: Applies to the subtotal of the order"), Amount (Percentage or Fixed Amount), Promo Code, Start Date and End Date - and "Customers can enter the promo code during the checkout process... the discount will automatically adjust the order total", with no rule about a second code or a coexisting reward. System Options > Discounts & Comps: Reason, Discount Amount and the display order of reasons. Discounts at Payment (recovered 2026-09-02): a percentage or dollar amount applied to the entire order, plus Comp by reason, gated by permissions. And the offer engine that was unexaminable at the last pass is now readable: CAKE Loyalty redemptions are applied as an ordinary discount - the Loyalty FAQ states "the Discount Type will be displayed as 'Loyalty'... the Discount Reason will be displayed as 'Loyalty Discount'", with redemptions listed under Discounts & Comps on the Close Cash and Transactions reports - while the loyalty settings screen's only interaction controls are a Minimum Order Amount and a per-order Maximum Redemption Limit. CAKE Marketing, the campaign product, composes emails and configures no offer object at all. A grep of all 290 articles for 'stack' returns nothing. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Online-Ordering-Discount-Codes · retrieved 2026-09-02

guest-loyalty-targeted-offers differentiator

Asserted only by the vendor's Loyalty & Marketing page: 'Targeted Email Campaigns - Send personalized offers to specific customer segments like "Top Spenders" or "Recent Visitors" to drive foot traffic and increase sales', with 'Loyalty feeds your contacts automatically, so you can send targeted campaigns that drive real results'. Shortfall: this is grade D marketing and no audience-rule configuration is documented anywhere - CAKE University's 207 articles contain no CAKE Marketing or CAKE Loyalty admin article, so the segment definitions, their refresh, and whether an operator can author new ones are all unstated. The only offer mechanism actually documented is the opposite shape: Guest Manager's Email Offers is one offer at a time, shown to every guest who checks their place in line, configured under Account > general settings, 'redeemed on the next visit for guests (+12 hrs from issue)'. https://trycake.com/products/customer-engagement · retrieved 2026-09-01

guest-loyalty-rfm-segmentation differentiator

Pre-built segments are named by the vendor rather than built by the operator: offers go 'to specific customer segments like "Top Spenders" or "Recent Visitors"' - monetary and recency in the operator's language - and the page adds 'Automatically collect valuable customer data - from emails and phone numbers to spending habits - to build a powerful marketing list'. Shortfall: grade D marketing only; no segment inventory, no membership rule, no refresh cadence and no lifecycle states (new, regular, at-risk, lapsed, VIP) are documented, and the 207-article knowledge base has no CAKE Marketing article to check them against. The only automatically computed lifecycle metric in the documentation is Guest Manager's control-centre 'Regulars count' on the Waitlist and Reservation summaries, which is a headline number rather than an addressable audience. https://trycake.com/products/customer-engagement · retrieved 2026-09-01

guest-loyalty-lifecycle-automation

Automated rewards, personalized offers and built-in email marketing are marketed; named birthday/first-visit/win-back triggers are not documented. https://trycake.com/en-us/products/pos · retrieved 2026-08-01

guest-loyalty-native-email-sms differentiator

Email is native to the platform: the User Management permission list carries 'Email Marketing Access: Manage email campaigns and marketing settings' next to 'Customer Management: Manage customer data and profiles', and trycake.com/products/customer-engagement markets 'built-in email marketing' with 'Easy-to-Use Email Marketing Templates ... professionally designed, ready-to-use email templates'. Guest Manager separately emails a configured offer to guests who sign up. Shortfall: SMS is transactional, not campaign - Guest Manager's texting sends pre-set or typed messages to one guest at a time from the host stand ('Tap the message icon next to the guest's name'), scoped to the waitlist, pickup-order and reservation lists, with pre-set messages like 'Table is Ready' - and no SMS campaign, list send or broadcast to a marketing audience appears anywhere in the 207-article knowledge base or on trycake.com. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/User-Management · retrieved 2026-09-01

guest-loyalty-consent-management

Consent is captured and revocable, but it is one flag with no provenance. The CAKE Dashboard: Customers article (recovered 2026-09-02) enumerates the entire guest record: "Email: The customer's email address, if provided. Phone Number: The customer's phone number, if provided. Loyalty Registered: Displays 'Yes' if the customer has signed up for the loyalty program. Email Consent: Indicates whether the customer has consented to receive marketing emails." Capture is documented at every enrollment point - on the POS Customer Touch Display, "Agree to Terms & Conditions: Guests are prompted to agree to the terms and conditions to receive marketing emails from the restaurant"; via a cashier, "ensure the guest agrees to the terms & conditions for receiving marketing emails"; and on OLO, "guests will have the option to agree to sign up for rewards (loyalty) and accept the terms & conditions to receive marketing messages" - and CAKE Marketing: Enrolling Customers states the linkage: "If they agree to the Terms & Conditions, the customer is automatically enrolled in CAKE Marketing." Revocation is honoured two ways: recipients unsubscribe from a campaign (CAKE Marketing reports "Total Unsubscribed" over 30 days and an Unsubscribed percentage per campaign, and its "All Subscribers" segment is "everyone who has opted in to receive emails"), and an admin can revoke on the guest's behalf, since the Edit Customer pop-up allows updating "the customer's email, phone number, first name, last name, and consent for marketing emails". Shortfalls: the record carries a single boolean Email Consent with no timestamp and no source-of-consent field, so provenance is not evidenced; consent is not per-channel - CAKE Marketing is email-only, and the SMS Guest Manager sends (waitlist links, Table is Ready, order-ready notifications) has no consent field documented anywhere; and no article describes handling a revocation arriving outside the unsubscribe link or that admin screen. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/CAKE-Dashboard-Customers · retrieved 2026-09-02

guest-loyalty-10dlc-registration

Nothing readable states who registers the A2P brand and campaign. The legal set (621,678 bytes, read whole 2026-09-04) returns zero hits for 10DLC, A2P, short code, campaign registration and brand registration, and its messaging clauses allocate statutory consent liability rather than carrier provisioning: POS Terms 8.1 binds Operator not to send messages 'in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act (2003) ... [or] the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991', and the Guest Manager terms add CASL and disclaim delivery ('Cake is not responsible for the timeliness or final delivery of the messages'). 10DLC is a carrier/CTIA provisioning programme, not a statute, and is normally documented in onboarding help articles rather than in master terms, so silence in a liability-allocation clause is not evidence of absence. The KB cannot close it either: the corpus read here is 207 articles and contains none of the CAKE Loyalty or CAKE Marketing family, and out-of-sitemap articles were confirmed live by Aura probe on 2026-09-04. adversarially verified

guest-loyalty-campaign-attribution differentiator

Asserted at marketing grade: 'Actionable Performance Reporting - Track the success of your loyalty program and email marketing campaigns with detailed reports on key metrics like new sign-ups, points redeemed, and sales attribution.' Documented reporting stops short of that: the Summary Report gives 'Rewards - Brief summary of the number of reward stamps given and rewards redeemed'; the Discounts & Comps report tracks all discounts 'differentiated by Discount Type (e.g. $5 off, 5% off)' and lets you expand a type to 'see the details or the sale to which they were applied'; and Guest Manager's Email Offers are tracked only as sign-up status, 'in the members tab of the control center'. Shortfall: redemption counts and the individual checks a discount touched, but no campaign or offer object to group by, no per-campaign revenue line, and no incremental-sales measurement in any documented report. https://trycake.com/products/customer-engagement · retrieved 2026-09-01

guest-loyalty-data-export-portability differentiator

Transaction-side export is genuinely self-serve and needs no ticket: dashboard reports download directly ('Export Options: Export the report as a CSV or PDF', Sales: In-Store Channels), the Payroll report downloads as Excel with a Timesheet Details tab and as a zip of per-employee PDFs, and a dedicated 'How do I download a report' article documents the flow. Shortfall, restated on the corpus as it now stands at 291 articles: no self-serve export of the guest list with contact PII is documented anywhere. 'Understanding Guest Manager Reports in the Control Center' walks all three tabs (Overview, Waitlist, Reservations) and describes the 'Detailed Guest List' -- 'Status (seated, reservation, cancelled, no show), Party size, guest name, arrival time ... Click "show details" for more information: Phone numbers, Past visits, Notes' -- entirely as an on-screen view, with no export, download or CSV control named anywhere in the article, and 'export'/'download' never co-occur with guest, customer or loyalty anywhere in the corpus. Guest records instead leave through the vendor on written request: 'Forward the direct request from health authorities to gm-team@trycake.com (this is necessary to meet privacy requirements) ... CAKE will provide: ... Primary Guest Name ... Primary Guest Phone Number ... Timestamp of time added to Waitlist'. An API route still cannot be claimed: no API is documented on any readable CAKE host. The developer.cake.net leg is withdrawn as refuted: probed on 2026-09-02 with redirects NOT followed, the host returns HTTP 301 Moved Permanently (Server: awselb/2.0) to https://trycake.com:443/ for every path tried including /robots.txt, so it serves no document of any kind -- the 224,679-byte 'catch-all body' was trycake.com's, attributed to the wrong origin. Nothing is gated there and no policy question remains, but that closes only that host: CAKE could still document an API in a partner-gated portal, a PDF or the SSO-walled Admin Portal, none of which we can read. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Dashboard-Sales-Reports · retrieved 2026-09-02

guest-loyalty-review-capture-routing differentiator

No feedback, survey, rating-request or score-routing surface appears in the KB or on any marketing page; the only 'reviews and ratings' in the corpus belong to Mad Mobile's own consumer platform, as User Media the Terms of Use govern ('merchant reviews, images, and postings') and as a Privacy Policy data category ('(h) reviews and ratings'), which is a consumer posting to cake.net, not a POS-triggered post-transaction request routed by score. CAKE Marketing, the only campaign product, ships a single one-time-send campaign object and is self-declared beta, so its tab set does not bound the product; feedback capture would as plausibly sit in Guest Manager, whose post-visit messaging is documented only as manual staff texting. Unresolved in both directions.

guest-loyalty-referral-program

The one referral construct CAKE publishes is provably a different thing, and nothing bounds the guest side. The CAKE Customer Referral Program Terms (Last Updated November 13, 2023) are merchant acquisition — 'rewards by recommending customers for Cake branded point of sale ... $700 for each referred POS customer and $100 for each referred GM customer', a lead form at trycake.com/pages/cake-referral, a 2-month Qualifying Period and a W-9 to support@madmobile.com — so the trycake.com 'Refer a Friend' ambiguity is closed, but that is a distractor removed, not evidence about guest referrals. The contract clauses cited against the claim are not feature enumerations: POS Terms 3.6.2 is a three-item list of the Operator's 'Responsibilities' (disclose programme terms, give notice on amendment, honour Canadian points expiry) and Terms of Use section 5 allocates liability with a hedged 'including determining eligibility, how and when points may be earned and redeemed'. The knowledge-base leg cannot substitute: the 207-article corpus read here contains none of the CAKE Loyalty family. adversarially verified

guest-loyalty-wallet-pass differentiator

'wallet', 'Apple Wallet', 'Google Wallet', 'passbook' and 'pkpass' return nothing loyalty-related across the 207-article KB and all 55 pages; the only occurrences are 'digital wallet payments' in the Cake Payments fee definition and the historical note that 'Cake Gift Card (formerly Wallet) is a service ... to assist in your purchasing and/or receiving of Gift Cards', which is a gift-card brand name, not a pass format. The guest's documented credentials remain a phone number or email, a magic-link Guest Portal, a per-location marketing QR code and a receipt-footer Loyalty Summary. None of these articles is an enumeration of supported credential formats - each documents one flow - and no CAKE document states that a wallet pass is unavailable.

guest-loyalty-privacy-rights-tooling

A published, working rights-fulfilment route reaches guest loyalty records, but it is vendor-mediated email rather than operator admin tooling, and no propagation is stated. What exists: the Privacy Policy expressly covers the guest's loyalty data - Transactional Data includes '(l) if you are a member of a Merchant's loyalty/gift card program, information in relation to your points balance and redemptions; and (n) waitlist or reservation details' - and grants 'The Right to Deletion or Erasure' and 'The Right to Access Your Data'; POS Terms 9.3.2 binds the vendor that 'Cake shall provide reasonable assistance and cooperation to Operator in relation to any individual rights requests made pursuant to the applicable Privacy Laws'. The exact shortfall: the mechanism section is a declared-complete account of how a right is exercised and names only off-platform channels - 'You may exercise any of the rights in this section or otherwise available to you under law by emailing us at support@trycake.com, or by contacting the Mad Mobile Privacy Office' - with the only self-serve artifacts being an opt-out link, Global Privacy Control signal handling, and the CCPA Form, which is scoped to sale opt-out alone. No admin control is documented: the Guest Portal lets a guest 'Update personal details like name, phone number, and birthday' and manage linked cards but not delete an account, and CAKE Dashboard: Customers documents an Edit Customer pop-up with no delete or export. Deletion propagation to loyalty and marketing records is stated nowhere, in either direction. https://trycake.com/legal-agreements · retrieved 2026-09-04 adversarially verified

guest-loyalty-redemption-fraud-controls

Two enforcement levers exist on the loyalty screen and the three controls the claim names do not. How to Activate CAKE Loyalty (Admin Portal > Settings > Loyalty Options, retrieved 2026-09-02) enumerates the Redeeming Points block as "Points-to-Dollar Conversion... Minimum Order Amount: Set a minimum purchase requirement for redeeming points. Maximum Redemption Limit: Optionally, limit the maximum points a customer can redeem per order", and redemptions are traceable afterwards: the Loyalty FAQ states "the Discount Type will be displayed as 'Loyalty'... the Discount Reason will be displayed as 'Loyalty Discount'", with redemptions appearing under Discounts & Comps on the Close Cash report and in the Transactions report's Discounts & Comps tab. Shortfalls: the cap is per order rather than per period, so there is no redemption velocity limit; there is no manual point-adjustment surface at all - points arrive only from the three documented methods (CTD, cashier via POS, credit-card linking) plus the sign-up and profile-completion bonuses, and the only corrective flow is the guest self-claiming missing points by scanning the receipt QR - so there is nothing for a manager approval to gate; and nothing flags employee self-redemption. The adjacent controls remain non-loyalty ones: gift-card transactions log "Employee" and "Approved By", POS permissions gate Refund, Cash Redemption, POS Discount Approval and Custom Discount Approval, and Guest Manager's separate Email Offers rely on staff judgement ("restaurant staff should only honor offers with a valid recent timestamp... look for the fireworks animation which will only show for the first 15 minutes after redemption"). https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/How-to-Activate-CAKE-Loyalty · retrieved 2026-09-02

guest-loyalty-ai-offer-recommendation differentiator

This claim is claim-level - whether the vendor DOCUMENTS AI/ML recommendations - and CAKE's marketing product is now documented end to end without any. Mastering CAKE Marketing: A Step-By-Step Guide (retrieved 2026-09-02) enumerates the whole feature: four tabs (Get Started, Overview, One-Time Campaigns, Settings); campaign creation as "Choose a Pre-set Template" (Announcement, Event, Promotion), Subject Line, Customer Segment, Preview Text, then Email Content (Main Image, Paragraph 1, Paragraph 2, Button Text, Button Link) and Schedule ("Send Now" or a chosen date and time); and a Settings tab holding only Logo Image, Sender Name and Website/Facebook/Instagram/X URLs. Audience is a choice among five fixed, rule-defined segments - "All Subscribers: Includes everyone who has opted in to receive emails. Subscribers (not in the loyalty program)... Top Spenders: Customers in the top 70% of spending over the last 90 days. Regulars: Frequent visitors to your restaurant. Recent Visitors: Guests who have visited within the last 30 days" - not a generated recommendation, and send timing is chosen by the operator with no suggested time. Nothing recommends content either: the templates are pre-set and the copy is typed. CAKE Marketing: Overview & Requirements lists the product's key features as targeted campaigns, ready-to-use templates, loyalty contact integration and analytics. A grep of all 290 CAKE University articles for AI, artificial intelligence, machine learning and recommendation returns nothing in a marketing context - the only 'predictive' hit is Guest Manager's "Predictive Wait" estimate - and trycake.com/products/customer-engagement names no AI capability. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/CAKE-Marketing · retrieved 2026-09-02

guest-loyalty-stored-value-gift

Stored value is native to the POS and does span a brand's locations: cards are sold and reloaded from the Gift Cards module ('Swipe the card and choose a preset value or enter a custom amount'), redeemed as a payment type with any remainder payable another way, and the Balances report aggregates over a 'Cluster: A group of restaurants managed collectively under the same ownership or brand. Customers can use gift cards at any of the clustered locations.' Transactions are reported as Activation, Reload, Redemption and Cash Redemption with employee and approver. Shortfall: the balance is tied to a card, not to a guest profile - every gift-card report keys on 'Card #: First four and last four digits of the gift card' plus an activation date, no link to a loyalty or customer record appears anywhere in the documentation, the cards are physical stock ordered from eCard Systems, and gift cards do not work offline ('Gift Cards - No - Not supported offline'). https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Dashboard-Giftcard-Reports · retrieved 2026-09-01

labor-clock-in-at-pos

Clocking in and out happens on the POS itself: Main Menu > Settings > System Options > Clock In/Out configures 'Auto Clock Out (Elapsed)', 'Auto Clock Out (Time of Day)' and 'Print Employee Closing Receipt' — 'Automatically prints a receipt summarizing the employee's shift details upon clocking out.' Identification is a per-user credential: the User Management guide's POS Setup tab assigns 'an initial 4-digit password' that the employee resets at first POS login, with 'POS Self Clock-In' and 'POS Self Clock-Out' as separate grantable permissions and 'POS Clock Out with Open Orders' as a third; CAKE Market also lists Swipe Cards as a POS accessory. No separate time-clock hardware appears in the catalogue, and hours are edited afterwards in Admin Portal > Timesheets. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Clock-In-Out-System-Options · retrieved 2026-08-03

labor-photo-punch-verification differentiator

A biometric punch route exists and its modality is unstated. The Biometric Information Use Policy (updated 2023-05-16) says 'Cake may offer biometric authentication functionality through the Services ... the Biometric Functionality enables Restaurants to grant designated authorized users access to applicable Cake Services, document clock in/out time(s) and locations', and defines 'Biometric identifier' by statutory recitation as 'a retina or iris scan, fingerprint, voiceprint, or scan of hand or face geometry' — a recitation of the Illinois BIPA set, not a statement of what CAKE's hardware captures. POS Terms 9.7 and the Privacy Policy describe 'a biometric or finger scanning device', a disjunction rather than a restriction. Because the policy is scoped by definition to Biometric Data, its silence about a non-biometric photo-only capture mode is not an exclusion of one; and no article, product page or SKU in the Equipment Replacement Fee Schedule establishes a camera at the clock either. Both limbs of the claim — photo or facial verification attached to the timecard entry, and a photo-only mode storing no template — are unevidenced in either direction. adversarially verified

labor-offline-time-punch differentiator

Re-read Offline Payments in full. Its 'What Works (and What Doesn't) in Offline Mode' table is a genuine supported/unsupported enumeration - Discounts Yes, Service Charges Yes, Comps Yes, Tips Yes ('Can be added and adjusted; processed after reconnecting'), Receipts Yes, Reports Delayed ('Sync after reconnecting'), Loyalty No, Gift Cards No, Pre-Authorization No, Manual Card Entry No - but every row is payment-adjacent and no row is a time punch, so the table's completeness is over a different domain. System Options: Clock In/Out (Auto Clock Out Elapsed, Auto Clock Out Time of Day, Print Employee Closing Receipt) and Timesheets (adjust time, delete a period, add a missed punch) never mention connectivity. CAKE does declare offline behaviour where it exists, which makes the silence suggestive, but no article states either that a punch taken offline is retained and reconciled or that it is lost.

labor-granular-rbac

Permissions are individually checkable per discrete action rather than fixed tiers. The guide enumerates roughly fifty named permissions including Item Void, Order Void, Refund, 'Cash Drawer (No Sale) Button', 'Register Actions (Cash In/Out)', POS Discount Approval, Custom Discount Approval, 'Item Edits Approval: Edit names, prices, and taxes of items', 'Sent Item Edits', POS Split Check, POS Assign Drawer, POS Close Cash and POS All Tips Access, with report access split four ways (POS / Intel / Payments / CRM Reports) and Menu Admin split into Full, Edit-only, Publish and Read-only. Preset roles are a convenience only: 'You can easily copy permissions from another user or a preset role (like Owner, Manager, or Employee) by using the Copy From dropdown.' Users are registered to a location, the Users tab lets you 'toggle between locations', and Group Management is a separate permission for multi-location operators. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/User-Management · retrieved 2026-08-03

labor-manager-override-audit

Overrides are attributed to the individual approver and queryable by date range after the fact. The Audit Trail Report comprises the Transfer Report — 'Approved By: Name of the employee who approved the transfer', with employee-from/employee-to, current and target receipt and table — and the Timesheet Audit Report, which records 'Edited By: User (employee name) who made the modification', the Edited User, original vs modified clock-in/out, job and tip amounts, and an Action of Create / Time In Edit / Time Out Edit / Role Change / Delete / Declare Tips Change. The Transactions reports add an 'Approved By' column to Sales & Refunds, Voids & Deletes and Discounts & Comps, and the Close Cash receipt prints cashier and approver for every void and every discount/comp. CAKE nowhere states that these logs are immutable. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/audit-trail-transfer-report · retrieved 2026-08-03

labor-native-scheduling differentiator

The Staff area of the CAKE Admin Portal is enumerated twice and contains no schedule. CAKE Dashboard: Staff lists its whole contents as Create New User, Edit Current User, Create New Job Assignments, Manage Timesheets, Manage Swipe Cards and User Options; the User Management Guide gives the same area independently as three tabs -- 'In the Staff section, you'll find the following tabs: Users, Jobs, Timesheets' -- and its add-user flow is 'three tabs to fill out: General, Permissions, and POS Setup'. Timekeeping is unmistakably present (Timesheets, Employee Clock In and Out, System Options > Payroll, System Options > Clock In/Out) and scheduling is bought in: CAKE Market's Operations section lists 7shifts, whose CAKE University listing is entirely about building schedules and whose staff app is where shifts are viewed ('Staff receive free iOS and Android apps to view their shifts, submit requests, and chat'), and trycake.com/products/integrations offers 'Simplify your employee scheduling, labor management, and payroll with mobile-friendly restaurant tools. Get started with 7shifts' plus Dolce for 'labor and scheduling'. The vendor's own product menu makes the architecture explicit by pointing 'Manage Your Staff > Scheduling' at /products/integrations#payroll-scheduling-tips. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Dashboard-Staff · retrieved 2026-09-02

labor-demand-labor-forecast differentiator

Available only through a partner, and what it forecasts is cost rather than headcount. CAKE University's 7shifts listing says 'Real-time sales are plotted directly into your schedules', 'Accurately forecast labor costs vs projected sales to stay on budget' and 'Forecast sales and labor to build more accurate schedules'. Shortfall: 7shifts is a separately-priced third-party product (listed in CAKE Market with its own developer, support line and 14-day trial; 'Get started with 7shifts' on trycake.com/products/integrations), not a CAKE capability; no recommended staffing level or labor-hour target by daypart is documented as CAKE output; and natively CAKE reports labor only after the fact - the Sales vs Labor report compares net sales to clocked-in labor cost for each hour of the day and claims no more than that 'using this report can optimize the number of staff required during the day'. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/7Shifts · retrieved 2026-09-01

labor-realtime-labor-percent differentiator

The Sales vs. Labor Cost report 'displays net sales compared to clocked-in non-exempt labor costs for each hour of the day', and its summary table carries '% of Net Sales: Non-exempt labor cost as a percentage of the total net sales ((Non-Exempt Labor Cost / Total Net Sales)*100)'. It is a during-service view rather than an end-of-day artefact: 'Labor cost calculation during an open shift does not consider any overtime or breaks. These will be adjusted once the employee clocks out', and 'Today's Staff Table displays clocked-in and clocked-out employee data for the day ... Through Net Sales Detail and Current Staff, managers can make staffing decisions.' It is also a manager-view widget - the CAKE Dashboard overview lists 'Sales vs Labor - This shows net sales, exempt and non-exempt labor costs, and % of net sales' - and filters by revenue centre and daypart. Recorded caveat rather than shortfall: the in-progress percentage excludes overtime and breaks until clock-out. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/What-is-the-Labor-vs-Sales-report-for · retrieved 2026-09-01

labor-overtime-prevention differentiator

Overtime in CAKE is a pay calculation, not a gate at clock-in. System Options > Payroll is the entire overtime surface and its eight settings - Payroll Start of Week/Day, Paid Breaks, Paid Meals, Weekly Overtime, Daily Overtime (Tier 1/Tier 2), 7th Consecutive Day Overtime, Overtime Carryover and Audit Trail - are enumerated in the body and again in the article's Quick Summary Table. Every threshold is paired with a rate, never with an alert or a block: 'Toggle ON and enter the threshold (e.g., 40 hours) and the applicable pay rate multiplier (e.g., 1.5x or 2x).' System Options > Clock In/Out, the only other punch-time surface, holds three settings (two auto-clock-out timers and a closing receipt) and none concerns hours accrued. The live report cannot see it in flight either: 'Labor cost calculation during an open shift does not consider any overtime or breaks. These will be adjusted once the employee clocks out.' Overtime is recognised afterwards, as the Payroll: Labor Costs report's OT Hours and OT 2 Hours columns. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Payroll-Settings · retrieved 2026-09-01

labor-break-compliance-by-state differentiator

Breaks are configurable and recorded: System Options > Payroll offers Paid Breaks - 'designate a specific amount of paid break time for employees during their shifts ... When employees clock out for a break, the system displays the allotted paid break time' - and Paid Meals on the same pattern; timesheets can 'Add Break ... without adjusting the time in and time out stamps manually'; the Timesheet Audit Report's Type column is 'Shift, Break, or Meal'; and 'POS Break Override Approval: End breaks early if needed' is a separate permission. Shortfall: this is one global duration pair, not per-state or per-jurisdiction rule sets - the article's own framing puts the law on the operator ('Configure settings based on your state and local overtime and break laws', 'Enable if required by labor laws') - and the enumerated tab has no jurisdiction selector, no break attestation prompt, and no missed-break or premium-pay flag anywhere in the payroll settings, the timesheet fields or the reporting documentation. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Payroll-Settings · retrieved 2026-09-01

labor-minor-labor-rules

Neither half of the claim has a surface in CAKE. Scheduling-side enforcement cannot exist because there is no native scheduler: the Admin Portal's Staff area is enumerated as Users, Jobs and Timesheets, and scheduling is a partner capability (7shifts, Dolce). Clock-in-side, System Options > Payroll (eight settings, enumerated and restated in a Quick Summary Table) and System Options > Clock In/Out (three settings) are the entire configurable timekeeping surface, and they carry no age field, no prohibited-hours window and no school-day limit - the auto clock-out timers are the only time-of-day rules and they apply to everyone. The employee record has no age attribute either: User Management's fields are name, mobile phone, login email, permissions, job assignment and pay rate, and a Job is Job Title, Job Code, Default Hourly Rate and colour, with exempt/non-exempt as the only classification. A grep of all 207 CAKE University articles for minor, underage, youth and school returns nothing. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Payroll-Settings · retrieved 2026-09-01

labor-tip-pooling-rules

Tip-outs are computed automatically per shift from configurable rules: System Options > Tip Sharing takes named groups (e.g. Bartenders, Bussers, Kitchen Staff), each with a percentage, and 'the system calculates percentages of total net sales and displays the suggested amounts on the employee close-out receipt at the end of their shift'; 'Percentages are based on total net sales, ensuring an accurate reflection of sales after discounts', and multiple roles at different percentages are explicitly supported. Online-order tips are separately assignable, including to a pooled account ('Assign online order tips to a "Tip Pool" account for group sharing'). Shortfall: it is advisory arithmetic rather than a distribution - 'The Tip Sharing feature is calculation-only. It does not automatically deduct or process these amounts' - so the money still moves by hand; percentage of the server's net sales by role is the only rule basis offered (no hours-worked or points weighting); and kiosk tips are excluded for now ('Assign Kiosk Tips To (Coming Soon) ... Currently, this setting is inactive'). https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Tip-Sharing · retrieved 2026-09-01

labor-tip-distribution-audit-trail

Tips received are retained per employee per shift and exportable: Timesheets show 'date, assignment, time in, time out, paid hours, declared tips, and card tips' by employee or by date; Payroll: Labor Costs adds Declared Tips ($) per employee and downloads as Excel with a Timesheet Details tab or as a zip of per-employee PDFs; Payroll: Tips & Cash breaks out Card Tips, Service Charge, Total Card Tips, Cash Sales and Owe to Merchant per employee and 'details any tip adjustments and distinguishes between card tips, auto-gratuities (like those for large parties), and online tips'; and the Timesheet Audit Report logs a 'Declare Tips Change' action with Original Tip Amount, Modified Tip Amount and 'Edited By'. Shortfall: the pool half is not retained - Tip Sharing is 'calculation-only', its suggested tip-outs are printed on the employee's close-out receipt at end of shift, and no report column anywhere records the amount an employee contributed to or received from a pool, so the distribution itself cannot be audited from the system. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Dashboard-Payroll-Reports · retrieved 2026-09-01

labor-qualified-tips-w2-reporting differentiator

The prior pass held this open on the ground that a payroll export spec would live outside the help centre. That is refuted: CAKE's payroll export IS the payroll report - the Timesheets article directs 'Need timesheet data from more than 30 days ago? Simply download the Excel version of the Payroll report for your desired date range' - and both reports declare their contents complete. 'The data table in the Payroll: Labor Costs Report consists of the following columns' - Employee, Assignment, Employee Type, Regular Hours, OT Hours, OT 2 Hours, Paid Hours, Paid ($), 'Declared Tips ($): Total amount of tips declared by the employee', Total Amount ($). 'The data table in the Payroll: Tips & Cash Report consists of the following columns' - Card Tips ($), Service Charge, Total Card Tips ($), Cash Sales ($), Gift Card Cash Sales ($), Gift Card Cash Redemption ($), Owe to Merchant, with header metrics Online Tips, POS Card Tips, Total Card Tips and 'Total Declared Tips: Total declared tip amount from labor cost report'. Charged tips are therefore separable; CASH tips are not - there is no cash-tips column anywhere, only a single self-reported Declared Tips figure that Managing Tips defines as '100% of credit card tips and 100% of cash tips' combined. No Treasury tipped-occupation code exists in either enumerated column set, and a Job record carries only Job Title, a free-text Job Code, Default Hourly Rate and a colour. Caveat recorded rather than concealed: the operator could repurpose the free Job Code field by hand, and CAKE's labour partner 7shifts has its own export spec that CAKE does not publish - but on CAKE's own declared-complete export the two required fields are absent. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Dashboard-Payroll-Reports · retrieved 2026-09-04 adversarially verified

labor-native-payroll differentiator

CAKE computes hours and a partner runs payroll. System Options: Payroll Settings publishes its own field list twice, in the table of contents and again in a Quick Summary Table, and the whole Payroll tab is eight time-and-overtime rules: Payroll Start of Week/Day, Paid Breaks, Paid Meals, Weekly Overtime, Daily Overtime, 7th Consecutive Day Overtime, Overtime Carryover and Audit Trail. There is no pay run, no tax filing, no direct deposit and no employee payment of any kind on that surface. The Timesheets guide points the numbers outward -- 'Payroll systems use decimal hours to calculate wages accurately. Converting minutes into hundredths of an hour ensures consistency ... across reports and exports' -- and the remaining payroll artefacts are reports (Payroll: Labor Costs, Tips & Cash). The vendor files the function under partners itself: its product menu puts 'Pay Staff > Payroll' at trycake.com/products/integrations#payroll-scheduling-tips, and that page's Scheduling & Labor section offers exactly two names for it, 'Simplify your employee scheduling, labor management, and payroll with mobile-friendly restaurant tools. Get started with 7shifts' plus Dolce for 'labor and scheduling'. CAKE's own first-party financial integrations are accounting rather than payroll (QuickBooks and Xero, both powered by Shogo). https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Payroll-Settings · retrieved 2026-09-02

labor-payroll-export-formats

Timecards, wages and tips do export self-serve: the Payroll: Labor Costs report downloads as Excel for any date range - 'This downloadable report provides a comprehensive overview of historical timesheet details' with a Timesheet Details tab - and as a zip of per-employee PDFs, carrying regular, OT and OT2 hours, paid hours, paid dollars and declared tips; Payroll: Tips & Cash covers card tips, service charges and cash owed. Shortfall: no payroll-provider format and no direct payroll integration is documented for any provider, let alone two. The files are generic Excel and PDF, no Gusto, ADP, Paychex or QuickBooks Payroll mapping or import layout is named anywhere in the 207-article knowledge base, and the QuickBooks and Xero integrations that do exist are Shogo accounting postings of daily sales ('automatically posting your CAKE POS or eCommerce sales data directly into your accounting system'), not payroll. trycake.com routes payroll itself to 7shifts as a partner. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Dashboard-Payroll-Reports · retrieved 2026-09-01

labor-shift-swap-workflow differentiator

Available only through the 7shifts partner listed in CAKE Market: 'Staff receive free iOS and Android apps to view their shifts, submit requests, and chat', 'Managers can approve shift trades and requests on the go', and 'Staff requests and availability are instantly incorporated into your schedule'. Shortfall: nothing native - CAKE has no schedule object at all (the Admin Portal's Staff area is Users, Jobs and Timesheets), so open-shift claiming and swap approval sit entirely inside a separately-priced third-party product with its own developer, support line and trial; and no documentation on either host says that approval step enforces overtime thresholds or role eligibility. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/7Shifts · retrieved 2026-09-01

labor-server-performance-metrics differentiator

Sales: Employee reports per-employee Quantity (orders processed), 'Avg ($) / Order: Average revenue generated per order by each employee, calculated as Total Net Sales ($) divided by Quantity', Guest (#), Avg ($) / Guest, Avg Guest (#) / Order, Total Net Sales ($) and gift-card sales count and value - average check by server, plus a per-server sales total. The void and comp side is attributed too: the Deleted Items report 'shows the total number of items deleted by each employee, transaction type, close cash, order type, receipt, approved by, zone, and revenue center', and the Transactions reports' Voids & Deletes view covers items voided after being sent to the kitchen with an Approved By column. Employee Sales is also a CAKE Dashboard widget for at-a-glance use. Not present in any documented report: an item or category attachment rate. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Dashboard-Sales-Reports · retrieved 2026-09-01

inventory-recipe-bom-costing

Recipe costing exists for CAKE operators only as a partner capability. CAKE University's Orca article describes Orca as 'a cloud-based inventory management solution' whose 'Flexible reporting Provides real-time P&L statements, loss tracking, cost variance reports, and recipe costing tools that adjust as vendor prices change', with the POS side limited to 'Imports menu items and sales data from CAKE POS'; getting started means contacting Orca sales for a demo at orcainventory.com. Shortfalls: (1) no native recipe or ingredient record in CAKE -- the CAKE Admin Portal Overview enumerates the portal's modules (Help Center, Menu Admin, Reports, POS Terms, Lease Terms, Payments Onboarding, Billing & Payment, Market, User Management, Timesheets, Shop) with no inventory module, and the POS System Options Overview lists all 17 settings tabs with none for inventory or recipes; (2) multi-level sub-recipes (a prep item used inside another recipe) and automatic plate-cost recalculation when a component ingredient's cost changes are not documented for Orca or for CAKE anywhere in the 207-article CAKE University knowledge base. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Orca · retrieved 2026-09-01

inventory-unit-conversion-yields

CAKE's only native stock feature is a per-item countdown keyed on the POS order screen: 'Use the keypad to enter the number of items available… Each time the item is ordered, the number counts down automatically. When it hits 0, the item becomes unavailable for ordering.' The article scopes it explicitly — 'Stock Count only reflects on the POS, OrderPads, & CAKEpop. It does not affect: Online Ordering (OLO), Kiosks, Reports.' There is no ingredient record, no purchase/recipe/count unit, no conversion factor and no yield or waste percentage. Recipe costing is delivered by the Orca partner integration ('recipe costing tools that adjust as vendor prices change'), not by CAKE, and the Admin Portal overview enumerates the portal's modules — Help Center, Menu Admin, Reports, POS and Lease Terms, Payments Onboarding, Billing & Payment, Market, User Management, Timesheets, Shop — with no inventory module among them. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Stock-Counts · retrieved 2026-08-03

inventory-theoretical-vs-actual differentiator

Not native. CAKE POS holds no ingredient or recipe record at all: the only first-party stock objects are the per-item Stock Count countdown on the POS order screen, which Stock-Counts scopes to 'the POS, OrderPads, &CAKEpop' and says 'does not affect ... Reports', and Enterprise Menu Stock Status, whose entire configurable surface is the binary In Stock / Out of Stock toggle enumerated at https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Stock-Status. The construct exists only through the Orca partner integration that CAKE University documents at https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Orca ('Imports menu items and sales data from CAKE POS to help align inventory with actual sales', 'loss tracking, cost variance reports'). Orca's own pages (retrieved 2026-09-02; robots.txt read whole, 'User-agent: * / Disallow:') state it: /reporting/ offers 'reporting for theoretical inventory counts, variance reporting for loss prevention, recipes, vendor price increases, usage reports'; /inventory-purchasing-receiving/ says 'Users can check theoretical inventory amounts' and 'Before ordering you can ask Orca how much product theoretically is on the shelf'; /recipes-prep-plate-costing-recipe-cards/ says 'We factor yield, customize measurements in any format' and 'Orca tracks the cost of the recipe automatically based on the daily invoice prices'. Shortfalls: (1) it requires a separately purchased third-party subscription (Orca sells direct - 'Visit https://orcainventory.com/pos/ to sign up for a demo'), not a CAKE module; (2) the evidence is Orca's marketing page, grade D, and no document states that the variance report expresses variance in both units and currency, nor that actual usage is composed of counts plus receipts for a defined count period. https://orcainventory.com/reporting/ · retrieved 2026-09-02

inventory-realtime-depletion differentiator

CAKE does deplete a live count as orders fire, but the object is a menu ITEM counter, not an ingredient on-hand quantity. How to Update Stock Count on the POS: 'Once a stock count is applied: A small number appears on the item button to show how many are left. Each time the item is ordered, the number counts down automatically. When it hits 0, the item becomes unavailable for ordering.' Three shortfalls, all stated by the vendor itself: (1) it is per-item, with no ingredient, recipe or modifier object anywhere in the 207-article KB ('depletion', 'theoretical', 'par level', 'ideal usage' all return zero); (2) it is channel-limited - 'Stock Count only reflects on the POS, OrderPads, & CAKEpop. It does not affect: Online Ordering (OLO), Kiosks, Reports', and CAKE Online Ordering Process states flatly 'The system does not automatically update or adjust stock levels for limited menu items when ordered online'; (3) even the binary cross-channel sync is unbuilt - 'The ability to update stock counts in Menu Admin is coming soon!'. The ingredient-level object exists only with partner Orca, whose CAKE-side description is a batch pull - 'Imports menu items and sales data from CAKE POS to help align inventory with actual sales' - and states no near-real-time or modifier-driven depletion. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Stock-Counts · retrieved 2026-09-04 adversarially verified

inventory-86-auto-sync differentiator

Automatic 86 exists but only on the ordering devices: 'Each time the item is ordered, the number counts down automatically. When it hits 0, the item becomes unavailable for ordering', and staff can also 'toggle OFF the In Stock switch'. Shortfalls, stated by the vendor in the same article: 'Stock Count only reflects on the POS, OrderPads, &CAKEpop. It does not affect: Online Ordering (OLO), Kiosks, Reports.' Third-party delivery menus are not mentioned at all. The trigger is a per-menu-item count, not a component ingredient hitting zero or a configured threshold -- CAKE has no ingredient record. The article closes by promising cross-platform sync as future work: 'The ability to update stock counts in Menu Admin is coming soon! Once live, this will sync stock availability across all CAKE platforms -- including POS, CAKEpop, OrderPad, Online Ordering, and Kiosk', which confirms it does not sync today. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Stock-Counts · retrieved 2026-09-01

inventory-count-modes

The Stock Count tool is the whole of CAKE's native counting capability and it has no count session at all: tap the Notepad icon on the order screen, tap an item, tap Stock Count, key a number, tap Update Stock Count. The number then decrements per sale and the item goes unavailable at zero. There is no full physical count, no ad-hoc spot count of a subset, no scheduled recurring cycle count and no variance history — re-entering a number simply overwrites the previous one, and the article states 'It does not affect: Online Ordering (OLO), Kiosks, Reports.' Counting workflow is delivered by the Orca partner integration instead, which 'Automates audits, prevents counting errors, and allows inventory input directly at the storage location using a mobile app'. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Stock-Counts · retrieved 2026-08-03

inventory-mobile-count-offline

Read the whole 207-article KB and all 55 trycake/madmobile pages. CAKE ships no counting tool of its own; trycake.com/products/integrations routes the entire category outward under an 'Inventory & Restaurant Management' heading to Orca and CheddrSuite, and the KB's Orca article ends 'Visit https://orcainventory.com/pos/ to sign up for a demo, or contact the team at (888) 713-9309 or sales@orcainventory.com', i.e. a separately sold partner product. The mobile half is affirmed for the partner - Orca 'allows inventory input directly at the storage location using a mobile app' - but barcode/QR scanning and offline-with-sync-on-reconnect are stated by neither host (the only barcode device CAKE documents, the Zebra DS9208, is a USB scanner cabled to a terminal for order entry, and it appears in the Equipment Replacement Fee Schedule as 'Barcode Scanner $279.00' with no mobile variant). Absence in CAKE's corpus cannot bound a partner's product, so this resolves in neither direction.

inventory-vendor-catalogs-edi differentiator

Not native, and delivered by a partner. CAKE POS has no purchasing or receiving surface of its own and no article in the 290-article CAKE University corpus describes a vendor catalog, a purchase order or an electronic invoice; Sysco appears in this record as a channel and backer relationship, never as a data integration. The capability is Orca's, the inventory partner CAKE documents at https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Orca ('one-click vendor ordering', 'Gain insights into vendor pricing trends'). Orca's own page (retrieved 2026-09-02; robots.txt read whole, 'User-agent: * / Disallow:') states it directly: 'Distributor - EDI We seamlessly integrate with over 25+ vendors. Invoices and all purchases automatically go into Orca within 24-48 hours of purchase. All prices will update. New items will be automatically created in Orca for future inventory, purchasing and reporting', over a named list that includes Performance Foods, Sysco, US Foods, Gordon Foods, Shamrock Foods, Reinhart Foods, Ben E Keith and Cheney Brothers; the purchasing page adds 'We can automate all orders to all vendors in one click via email, EDI, or just click save and call in your order'. Shortfalls: it requires a separately bought third-party subscription rather than anything in CAKE, invoice arrival is 24-48 hours rather than transactional, and the evidence is the partner's marketing page (grade D) - CAKE publishes nothing describing the data path. https://orcainventory.com/distributor-edi-photo-capture/ · retrieved 2026-09-02

inventory-invoice-ocr differentiator

Not native. Every 'invoice' in the 290-article CAKE University corpus is CAKE billing the merchant (Account and Billing: 'Invoices are issued on the 4th of each month'); CAKE has no inventory ledger to ingest a supplier invoice into. The capability belongs to Orca, the inventory partner CAKE documents at https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Orca. Orca's page (retrieved 2026-09-02; robots.txt read whole, 'User-agent: * / Disallow:') states: 'ORCA Invoices Capture gives you the ability to automate invoice data entry by snapping a picture of your invoice and emailing it in or simply scanning and uploading a set of images', and 'Within 24 hours, invoices will appear in the ORCA system'; the receiving section adds 'If they are a small or local vendor just take a pic or upload all your invoices at once and send it to us. We will handle the rest. Check Purchase Orders against deliveries to ensure accuracy. Users also have the ability to return items, track credits, tax, and other various charges.' Shortfalls: it is a separately purchased third-party product; the capture service is itself an extra-cost line ('Pricing for the service, 1-50 invoices $55 / 51+ invoices $99'); turnaround is up to 24 hours rather than immediate; and the page does not enumerate which line-item fields are extracted. Grade D partner marketing. https://orcainventory.com/distributor-edi-photo-capture/ · retrieved 2026-09-02

inventory-price-change-alerts differentiator

CAKE holds no purchase prices at all: there is no receiving, supplier-invoice or vendor-cost surface in the 207-article KB (the 32 'invoice' hits are all CAKE's own billing invoices to the operator, in Account and Billing), so the subject of the claim can only be the partner. The CAKE-side Orca article does assert the price-tracking substrate - 'Flexible reporting ... loss tracking, cost variance reports, and recipe costing tools that adjust as vendor prices change' and 'Gain insights into vendor pricing trends' - but nothing on either readable host describes the operative half of the claim: a received item price compared against a prior or contracted price with a configurable threshold alert. Partner-product silence measured from CAKE's corpus is not evidence of absence.

inventory-par-auto-suggest differentiator

Not native. CAKE has no purchasing surface and its per-item Stock Count is a number typed on the POS order screen with no par or minimum field (https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Stock-Counts). Both halves of the claim are documented on the site of Orca, the inventory partner CAKE publishes at https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Orca ('Automated ordering and budget management ... advanced budgeting tools, sales predictions, weather forecasting, and one-click vendor ordering'). Orca's own purchasing page (retrieved 2026-09-02; robots.txt read whole, 'User-agent: * / Disallow:') says: 'Enjoy one click ordering for a fast order to par or use our world famous algorithm that not only orders the perfect amount every time but improves automated orders based on sales trends, events, and weather. After the suggested order is presented you always have the power to review and edit the order amount', and 'Before ordering you can ask Orca how much product theoretically is on the shelf. Then press a button to automate suggested orders.' The forecast mode is described further at /sales-forecasting/ - 'projections based on YOY sales trends, projected sales verse actuals, historical and future weather predictions in your zip code, and event tracking'. Shortfalls: this is a separately purchased third-party product rather than a CAKE module; the pages never state that par levels are held per item PER LOCATION (Orca describes filtering inventory 'by location, category, vendor' but not location-scoped pars); and the evidence is partner marketing, grade D. https://orcainventory.com/inventory-purchasing-receiving/ · retrieved 2026-09-02

inventory-waste-logging

CAKE has no stock ledger for a waste entry to debit - Stock Count 'does not affect ... Reports' - and its reason-code surfaces are transactional only (discount, comp, void, cash in/out). All nine occurrences of 'waste' in the 207-article KB are paper waste (ChefTab, receipt settings), kitchen sanitation, or Orca marketing outcomes ('prevent theft, reduce waste'). The function is routed to Orca and CheddrSuite by name on the integrations page, and neither CAKE document describes a waste or spoilage entry screen, reason codes, or waste cost reported separately from usage variance. Absence of a workflow in the corpus of a vendor that does not ship the module cannot carry a no.

inventory-shelf-life-expiry

Re-run against the 207-article KB: 'shelf life' appears once, in the glossary definition, and 'expiration' once, unrelated; there is no lot, receiving or prep record for a date to attach to. One new surface was checked and is not dispositive: trycake.com/pricing sells a Label Printer - 'Create professional labels for food items, inventory, and organization. Streamline food safety and stock management' - which is grade-C marketing for a printing device, not date tracking and not an expiring-soon report or alert. The module that would hold such dates is a partner's (Orca/CheddrSuite), and neither CAKE page publishes a field enumeration for it.

inventory-bar-partial-bottle

CAKE's hardware fleet is now enumerable from a real table: the Equipment Replacement Fee Schedule at https://trycake.com/legal-agreements lists 21 leasable SKUs (POS Terminal, POS Terminal w/CTD, power supplies, CAKE Payment Cube and cable, thermal and impact printers, Router, Cash Drawer, Barcode Scanner, Access Point, iPad Mini, iPad, Payment Reader, KDS 15", KDS 22", KDS Power Supply) and contains no scale or weighing device. That enumeration bounds CAKE's own leasable hardware only; it says nothing about whether the partner inventory product supports scale integration or bottle-fraction entry, and liquid inventory is squarely inside the module CAKE does not ship.

inventory-cogs-gl-export

CAKE's accounting export is sales-only, and the vendor enumerates its payload twice. The SHOGO article - SHOGO being the mechanism behind both of CAKE's named accounting integrations - describes a service that 'takes care of your daily sales accounting by automatically posting your CAKE POS or eCommerce sales data directly into your accounting system', configured by 'Select Your Accounting System... such as QuickBooks for Windows, QuickBooks Online, or Xero' and 'Map Your Data: Match your Point of Sale or eCommerce reference data with your accounting reference data', synced 'each morning'. The CAKE Market article's entire ACCOUNTING section is 'Quickbooks Xero' and states the payload as 'Migrate sales data, refunds, and deposits seamlessly from your CAKE POS'. Neither payload contains period COGS or accounts-payable invoice detail, and the mapping offered is over sales reference data rather than cost accounts per item category. CAKE does hold a per-item cost - the Enterprise Menu Add/Edit Item field table carries 'Item Cost: Enter the cost of the item for internal reference, if necessary' - but no article carries that field into an accounting export, and CAKE documents no supplier, receiving or invoice object anywhere to source AP detail from. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Shogo · retrieved 2026-09-01

inventory-native-not-partner differentiator

Inventory and recipe costing are not CAKE's. The Admin Portal Overview enumerates the whole back office -- Help Center, Menu Admin, Reports, POS Terms & Conditions, Lease Terms & Conditions, Payments Onboarding, Billing & Payment, Market, User Management, Timesheets, Shop -- with no inventory module, and describes its Market tile as 'Explore 3rd party integrations CAKE works with, such as Doordash, ItsACheckmate, Restaurant365, and more!'. The POS System Options Overview likewise lists all 17 settings tabs with none for inventory. The only native stock object is the per-item POS counter in Stock-Counts, which the vendor scopes to 'the POS, OrderPads, &CAKEpop' and says 'does not affect ... Reports'. Everything this claim describes is delivered by a separately contracted third party: the Orca article is headed 'Orca & CAKE Integration: Smarter Inventory Management', calls Orca 'a cloud-based inventory management solution', credits it with 'recipe costing tools that adjust as vendor prices change', and ends by sending the operator to orcainventory.com or Orca's own sales line to sign up. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/CAKE-Admin-Portal-Overview · retrieved 2026-09-01

inventory-menu-margin-linkage differentiator

The sales side is confirmed cost-free: the payroll and sales report families are column-enumerated in the KB and carry no cost, margin or contribution column ('margin' returns one hit, in an unrelated blog essay; 'item cost' one, as an internal-reference field). The cost side is the partner's - the CAKE-side Orca article promises 'recipe costing tools that adjust as vendor prices change' and 'cost variance reports' - but neither CAKE document states that contribution margin is reported per menu item against actual sales mix, nor that a margin (as opposed to cost) threshold raises a flag. The distinguishing half of the claim is undocumented on the host that permits us, and CAKE's corpus cannot bound Orca's.

reporting-realtime-dashboard

The live dashboard is documented and browser-based: 'The dashboard provides a glance at day-to-day activities at a Restaurant', with widgets for Sales Summary, Sale Category Sales, Order Type Sales, Payments, Online Sales, Register Sales, Employee Sales, Sales vs Labor, Cash Log, Taxes, Tips, Gift Card Sales, Discounts & Comps and Voids, reached by logging in at dashboard.cake.net or admin.cake.net from anywhere. The reporting FAQ confirms the intent -- 'On the Dashboard page is the Sales Summary for Today. The Dashboard is intended to be today's at-a-glance data' -- and the reporting changelog records live refresh on the labor widget: 'Open shifts for Sales v. Labor Employee shifts will be updated in real time, making the Labor Cost percentage more accurate and enabling you to make in-the-moment decisions.' Shortfall: no CAKE mobile app for reporting is documented anywhere in the 207-article knowledge base -- the only mobile apps it names belong to partners (7shifts' free iOS and Android staff apps) or to Guest Manager's iPad app -- so off-premise access is by browser only, and no explicit refresh interval is published for the sales widgets. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Dashboard-Dashboard · retrieved 2026-09-01

reporting-eod-closeout

Close Cash 'zeroes out the cash drawer, generates a Close Cash Receipt (or 'Z' report), and batches credit card transactions for processing', and the receipt breakdown enumerates fourteen sections: Sales Summary (net sales, tax, extra fee, gross sales, total tips, order and guest counts), Taxes by rate, Payments broken out by card type and cash, Online Orders, Voids (order number, items, cashier and approver), Discounts & Comps (type, amount, cashier and approver), Sales by Sales Category / Employee / Order Type / Register / Zone, Cash by Employee, and Cash in Drawer; the close prompt shows 'Cash You Should Have' and 'highlights any discrepancies'. Shortfall: refunds are not one of the enumerated sections, and receipt Net Sales is defined as 'Total sales amount after discounts and comps' only — refunds must be pulled separately from the Transactions: Sales & Refunds report. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Understanding-the-Close-Cash-Receip · retrieved 2026-08-03

reporting-pmix-modifier-level

Item-level product mix exists: in the Sales Report, 'Under the first tab labeled TOTAL SALES there will be a drop-down box. In that drop-down box select Items', producing a top-selling-items view for a chosen date range, exportable to PDF or Excel. Shortfall: the Sales Report article enumerates its nine sub-reports (Overview, Payment Type, Order Type, Employee, Register, Zone, Revenue Center, Discounts, In-Store Channels) and the Transactions article its four (Sales & Refunds, Voids & Deletes, Discounts & Comps, Cash Log), and none is modifier-level, despite the introduction's passing mention of 'understanding modifier sales'. Daypart and revenue-centre breakouts appear only in the Revenue Center report, which reports sales, tax, orders, guests and discounts but neither items nor modifiers. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Dashboard-Sales-Reports · retrieved 2026-08-03

reporting-comps-voids-audit

Three of the four elements are documented with full attribution. Transactions: Discounts & Comps carries 'Date: Date and time stamp of the transaction. Receipt ... Discount Type ... Employee: Name of the employee who performed the transaction. Approved By: Name of the employee who approved the transaction. Reason: For discounts and comps the reason selected on the POS will be displayed.' Transactions: Voids & Deletes carries the same Date, Receipt, Employee and Approved By set across item voids, order voids, payment voids and pre-send deletes, and the Deleted Items report adds close cash, order type, zone and revenue centre. The Close Cash receipt repeats both sections with 'cashier, and approver'. Shortfall: price overrides are not covered. The Transactions suite is enumerated as Sales & Refunds, Voids & Deletes, Discounts & Comps and Cash Log, and no report of item price or tax edits appears in that list or anywhere else in the 207-article KB, even though the User Management permission list includes 'Item Edits Approval: Edit names, prices, and taxes of items' and 'Sent Item Edits'. A second limit: 'Only orders that have been voided, deleted, comped, discounted, or closed with a captured payment method can be viewed in the Transaction reports. Open orders cannot be viewed from CAKE Reports at this time.' https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Dashboard-Transactions-Reports · retrieved 2026-09-01

reporting-cash-over-short

The over/short comparison is an explicit setting: 'Cash In Drawer Entry: When toggled ON, this setting prompts you to input the amount counted during the close directly into the CAKE system', and 'Cash You Should Have: When toggled ON, this setting displays the expected amount of cash that should be in the drawer before counting down. Any variance between the expected and actual amounts will be shown on the screen and final closing receipt, facilitating quick identification of discrepancies' -- the article's summary table repeats it as 'Displays expected cash and highlights discrepancies'. The Close Cash Process Guide shows the same prompts in the flow: 'Enter Cash In Drawer ... Cash You Should Have: The prompt displays the expected cash amount and highlights any discrepancies, allowing you to address them before finalizing.' Granularity: per shift, since each close is a sequence with start and end date-time and cashier in the receipt header; per drawer, since the receipt's 'Cash in Drawer' section is 'organized by each register' with Cash In, Cash Out, Total Cash In-Out, Total Cash Payments, Gift Card Redemption and Total Register; per employee, since the receipt's 'Cash by Employee' section gives each employee's cash sales, gift-card cash sales, card tips, service charge and 'Owe to Merchant', and receipt sections are configurable for 'both the main and employee closing receipts'. Paid-outs are included through the Cash Log, which records cash in and cash out with reason, register and employee and is also a Dashboard Transactions report. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Close-Cash-Settings · retrieved 2026-09-01

reporting-labor-productivity

The hourly half is documented: 'The Sales vs. Labor Cost Report displays net sales compared to clocked-in non-exempt labor costs for each hour of the day', with a summary of Total Net Sales, Exempt Labor Cost, Non-Exempt Labor Cost and '% of Net Sales: Non-exempt labor cost as a percentage of the total net sales', plus 'The report displays filtered data based on the Revenue Center. The Net Sales table will display the revenue center and dayparts to which the sales and labor cost belongs to.' The hours are actual clocked hours -- 'Labor cost calculation during an open shift does not consider any overtime or breaks. These will be adjusted once the employee clocks out' -- and Payroll: Labor Costs gives each employee regular, OT and OT2 hours, paid hours, pay and job assignment. Shortfalls: sales per labor hour is not a published metric in any report; the labor percentage is not broken out by employee; and there is no department dimension beyond revenue centre and job assignment. The Payroll report is cost-only (no sales column) and the Sales: Employee report is sales-only (no hours column), so joining them is left to the operator's export. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/What-is-the-Labor-vs-Sales-report-for · retrieved 2026-09-01

reporting-server-scorecards differentiator

The Sales: Employee report gives, per employee, 'Quantity (#): Total number of orders processed by each employee. Avg ($) / Order ... Guest (#) ... Avg ($) / Guest ... Avg Guest (#) / Order ... Total Net Sales ($)' plus gift card sales count and value, so average check per server is directly reported. Tips per server are in Payroll: Tips & Cash (Card Tips, Service Charge, Total Card Tips, Cash Sales, Owe to Merchant) and declared tips per employee in Payroll: Labor Costs. Shortfalls: items per check is not a per-employee metric anywhere -- average items per order exists only in the Sales: In-Store Channels report, which compares POS, CAKEpop and Kiosk rather than servers; there is no attachment rate for a named category in any report, since category sales are reported by sales category and never crossed with the server; and tips are reported as amounts, never as a percentage of that server's sales, so the ratio must be computed by hand across two reports. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Dashboard-Sales-Reports · retrieved 2026-09-01

reporting-channel-profitability differentiator

The revenue side is well covered. Sales: Order Type breaks sales out by 'Dine-In, Takeout, Call-In, Delivery, and more' with quantity, average ticket and total net sales; Sales: In-Store Channels gives 'a side-by-side view of how guests order inside your restaurant across POS, CAKEpop, and CAKE Kiosk' with revenue, order count, share of total store sales, period-over-period change, AOV and average items per order; the Multi-Location Online Orders report reports orders, delivery fee, sales and tips; and the Transactions reports carry a 'Channel: The source of the order' column. Shortfalls: there is no margin or commission netting anywhere. The Sales: Overview fee definition is 'Fee: The total amount of fees; this includes Extra Fee, Card Fee, CAKE OLO Fee, and other applicable fees' -- CAKE's own fees, not a marketplace's. Third-party marketplace orders are not reported as separate channels either: they fall under 'Credit Card (Card Not-Present): ... keyed-in card information, online orders, and transactions through third-party integrations like Doordash and UberEats' or under Non-Card 'third-party payment platforms' recorded as 'Others', so DoorDash and Uber Eats cannot be compared side by side net of their commissions. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Dashboard-Sales-Reports · retrieved 2026-09-01

reporting-scheduled-delivery

Automatic recurring delivery exists for exactly one report. Close Cash Settings: 'Close Cash Email: Receive Reports via Email: Enter an email address to receive a close cash report when close cash is completed. Additional email addresses can be added for other stakeholders such as accountants or managers. To add another email address click + New Row', summarised in the same article as 'Sends detailed Close Cash reports to designated recipients'; the Close Cash Process Guide adds 'A copy of the Close Cash slip will be emailed for record-keeping purposes. You can manage the list of recipients through Close Cash Settings', and the close itself can be automated with 'Close Cash (Time of Day) ... automatically finalize the cash drawer at a specified time (e.g., 4:45 AM)'. Shortfall: no Dashboard report can be scheduled. The report page's action surface is manual -- 'There are 3 gray icons to the left of the orange calendar ... The email icon will allow you to send the report to yourself. The down arrow icon will allow you to download the report straight to your computer' -- and the emailed Payroll and Transactions exports described in the reporting changelog are one-off requests ('The report will be emailed to the address you enter, in less than 24 hours'). Nothing in the 207-article knowledge base describes a cadence, schedule or recipient list for any report other than close cash. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Close-Cash-Settings · retrieved 2026-09-01

reporting-public-api differentiator

Re-evidenced 2026-09-02; value unchanged, reasoning corrected. WITHDRAWN: the two sentences asserting that developer.cake.net serves 'no document of any kind' and that 'there is nothing to be gated or barred'. Those are inferences from a routing measurement and do not follow from it - a blanket 301 is a present-tense fact about where requests go today, not evidence that nothing was ever published, and withdrawn, moved and un-routed look identical from outside. The measurement itself stands, attributed rather than re-made here: two independent passes on 2026-09-02 recorded a bare 134-byte HTTP 301 (Server: awselb/2.0, Location: https://trycake.com:443/) for every path tried under POSAtlasBot, Googlebot and desktop Chrome with redirects not followed, on a hostname that CNAMEs to a live production API-gateway ALB. WHAT CARRIES THE NO IS THE PORTAL'S OWN TEXT, which is positive evidence and not silence. Reproduced by me on 2026-09-02 via a web search restricted to developer.cake.net alone, which returns four indexed pages (/, /apis, /getting-started and /apis/5eaa7e51e5b3c000113e86b7/documentation/raw): CAKE does document a partner API surface - an Integrations API, a Labor API, a Sales Summary API, and a third-party order API that 'provides functionality to get restaurant information, calculate taxes, place third-party online orders and to track third-party order statuses' - and it states that 'Before accessing resources from CAKE restaurants, the third-party integrator should be onboarded with the restaurant', with an API key requested from the portal. This claim is a conjunction whose second clause asks for self-service developer credentials obtainable without a signed partner agreement; per-restaurant onboarding plus a requested key is that clause failing on the vendor's own words, which is the ground on which foodtec and speedline are scored no. Corroborating and unchanged: across the 290-article CAKE University dump (1,059,438 chars) the terms api, rest, graphql, endpoint, token, developer and credentials return nothing but a firewall port label ('POS API' in White-List-Ports); the 604k-char legal set uses 'API' once, in a Google Maps clause; trycake.com's 42-URL sitemap carries no developer, api or docs page; and how a third party is actually joined is documented as the opposite of self-service - DoorDash-Integration has the operator click Connect on an Integrations tab in the Admin Portal, and Cake-Market enumerates a vendor-brokered partner catalogue with no app-listing or developer signup. Grade F: the portal text reached me through a search index rather than a page I fetched, the origin serves no readable robots.txt of its own, and I did not fetch it. The sibling extensibility-public-api-docs is now unknown, and that is consistent: whether a public reference is currently PUBLISHED is unmeasured, while whether credentials are SELF-SERVICE is answered no by the portal's own statement.

reporting-webhooks differentiator

'Emits outbound webhooks ... to a customer-supplied endpoint' is a capability of the partner API, not of anything CAKE publishes. 'webhook' returns zero hits across the knowledge base and 55 pages, and there is nowhere in the merchant-facing Admin Portal documentation to register an endpoint — but the Admin Portal is not where a partner endpoint would be registered, a member-gated tier provably sits behind the public help centre (Ordering-Additional-Hardware returns a ~9.6 KB 200 titled 'Login | CAKE University'), and the developer portal that would carry the answer is withdrawn and, per the Wayback CDX index, was never archived. EMS Stock-Status ('Enterprise Menu (EMS) automatically synchronizes stock status across supported ordering channels') is a menu how-to that makes no completeness statement about how CAKE emits events.

reporting-api-not-upcharged differentiator

Raw-data access is included and unmetered; the API half cannot be read, so partial. Re-fetched https://trycake.com/pricing 2026-09-02 (HTTP 200): it does carry a plan matrix -- 'Inside Each Plan Features & Benefits | Core | Growth (Most Value) | Scale', with 'Reporting & Analytics' among the POS & CORE OPERATIONS rows -- and its FAQ answers 'How much does CAKE cost?' with 'CAKE does not charge monthly POS fees. Hardware, software, updates, and support are included in your plan. Your processing rate covers everything, so you never receive a POS bill.' The data side is explicit in the knowledge base's Reporting FAQ: 'CAKE Reports can go back any amount of time, there is no restriction on data ... Transaction reports can be exported for any length of time', with no fee, ticket or per-location gate anywhere in the Dashboard reporting articles. Shortfalls: the string 'API' does not occur anywhere on trycake.com/pricing or trycake.com/products/integrations (both re-fetched 2026-09-02), so no API SKU, revenue share or price can be read at all; the deeper reporting IS tier-gated ('PAYG customers also receive advanced multi-location reporting'; the Scale plan lists 'Enterprise integrations'); and optional capability is sold through an unpublished list, the Admin Portal SHOP's 'Additional Services' section (How-to-Activate-CAKE-Loyalty: 'Fill out the Additional Hardware/Services Request Form ... add the Loyalty Subscription to your cart'), which is exactly where an API SKU would sit. The developer.cake.net leg is withdrawn as refuted: probed on 2026-09-02 with redirects NOT followed, the host returns HTTP 301 Moved Permanently (Server: awselb/2.0) to https://trycake.com:443/ for every path tried including /robots.txt, so it serves no document of any kind -- the 224,679-byte 'catch-all body' was trycake.com's, attributed to the wrong origin. Nothing is gated there and no policy question remains, but that closes only that host: CAKE could still document an API in a partner-gated portal, a PDF or the SSO-walled Admin Portal, none of which we can read. https://trycake.com/pricing · retrieved 2026-09-02

reporting-tier-paywall differentiator

Resolved from unknown on the vendor's own packaging document, which the prior rationale wrongly said did not exist. trycake.com/pricing (re-read 2026-09-02 from the 2026-09-01 capture, 10,265 chars text / 295,912 chars HTML) carries a three-column matrix headed 'Inside Each Plan | Features & Benefits | Core | Growth (Most Value) | Scale'. Parsed from the HTML rather than by eye, its per-plan cells are yes/no icons (comptab-yes-icon / comptab-no-icon) and the matrix does discriminate -- Self-Service Kiosk and Guest Manager are no/yes/yes, KDS is no/Optional/Optional, White Glove Install no/available/available -- so a Core mark is a real statement. 'Reporting & Analytics' is yes/yes/yes, i.e. present on the entry-level plan; the Core package bullets above the matrix list exactly 'POS terminal with payment processing' and 'Reporting and analytics'; and the FAQ says 'Every plan includes lifetime equipment replacement, online ordering, reporting and analytics, and 24/7 U.S. support.' Three independent statements on the one page agree. No analytics SKU exists to buy: the ADVANCED TOOLS & INTEGRATIONS section holds only Smart Handhelds (no/yes/yes) and Processing Rate Lock (yes/yes/yes), and the 291-article CAKE University dump documents labor-vs-sales (What-is-the-Labor-vs-Sales-report-for, titled 'Cake Dashboard: Labor vs Sales Report'), PMIX (Sales report by Item), and the comps/voids audit (Discounts-Comps-Report, Deleted-Items-Report) with no plan, tier or purchase qualifier, while it flags separately sold features with an explicit purchase step (CAKE Loyalty: 'Purchase a CAKE Loyalty Subscription ... via the CAKE Shop'; Guest Manager likewise). SHORTFALL, which is why this is partial not yes: the fourth enumerated capability, multi-location comparison, is gated to the top plan by the same page -- 'PAYG customers also receive advanced multi-location reporting', 'PAYG is designed for multi-location operators and includes enterprise reporting', and the third plan is sold 'For multi-location brands that want customization, deeper data, and enterprise support'; the KB's Cake-Dashboard-Multi-Location-Reports requires selecting the 'Enterprise level' node in the Admin Portal. The FAQ also names 'AI reporting' among what Growth and PAYG add. CAVEAT ON THE SOURCE: the page is internally inconsistent. It names the third plan 'Scale' in the matrix and 'PAYG' seven times in the FAQ, and its FAQ claims every plan includes online ordering and lifetime equipment replacement while the matrix marks both no for Core. The Reporting & Analytics row is not one of the contradicted ones, but this is a grade C sales page and the commercial status of the multi-location tier is stated only in FAQ prose. https://trycake.com/pricing · retrieved 2026-09-02

reporting-history-retention differentiator

The retention statement is explicit and generous: 'What length of time can I go back in reports? CAKE Reports can go back any amount of time, there is no restriction on data.' No archive-retrieval fee appears anywhere in the knowledge base, and the Payroll article confirms long-range access by export ('Need timesheet data from more than 30 days ago? Simply download the Excel version of the Payroll report for your desired date range'). Shortfall, and it is exactly the claim's condition: transaction-level detail is not queryable in the UI for 24 months. The same FAQ answer continues, 'The only exception to this rule is with Transaction reports. Due to the potential number of records, Transaction reports can be exported for any length of time, but on screen, you will only see up to 120 days of data. To get more data for a longer range, simply export to excel.' A second, older article (Summary-Report) states a tighter bound the vendor has not withdrawn: 'Custom reports can only be pulled within 90 days of the current date. Attempting to pull custom reports from further back than that, will issue an error.' https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/FAQ-Reporting · retrieved 2026-09-01

reporting-anomaly-alerts differentiator

Every alert documented anywhere in the corpus is operational rather than analytic — the online-order Phone Call Alert with a Remind Me frequency, the Guest Manager table-turn-time alert, the automatic Close Cash email — and the Admin Portal report toolbar is enumerated in universal-admin as exactly 'Email ... Download ... Info ... Date Picker', a manual send of the report on screen rather than a subscription or a threshold. That enumeration is real but bounds only the toolbar: universal-admin is a 'What's New' article and is demonstrably not a census of the portal, since the Customers tab and the Integrations tab are both real left-menu entries it does not list. madmobile.com/restaurant/cakepos additionally markets NEO as one that 'automates operations and deploys intelligent agents' over CAKE data without documenting any notification. The notification surface is therefore unbounded and its silence cannot carry a no.

reporting-nl-query

The parent company's CAKE POS page carries an 'Analytics and AI Insights' card reading verbatim: 'Conversational AI interface for restaurant operators on CAKE POS. Instant answers & insights about sales, staff, menu, or operations.' The same page adds 'NEO pulls insights from sales, staffing and global data enabling smarter inventory management, predictive analytics, and personalized customer experiences.' That is a first-party vendor claim of a natural-language assistant answering ad-hoc questions against the operator's own sales and labor data, which is the claim's substance. Exact shortfall, and why this is partial and not yes: it is a marketing card on madmobile.com and nothing more. AI, artificial intelligence, assistant, natural language and chat return only human support prose ('chat directly with a support rep anytime on CAKE University') across the whole knowledge base, so no article documents the feature, its availability, its entitlement or its GA status; trycake.com's own reporting product page never mentions it, describing the surface instead as nine named backward-looking report families; the documented reporting path remains two dropdowns plus the Email/Download/Info/Date Picker toolbar; and nothing anywhere establishes the claim's operative distinction, that the response is a figure or chart rather than a generic help-article answer. https://madmobile.com/restaurant/cakepos · retrieved 2026-09-04 adversarially verified

reporting-guest-cohorts differentiator

Guest-level analytics exist in Guest Manager's Control Center: the Waitlist tab's real-time view reports 'Covers seated, Parties waiting, Walk aways %, Phone numbers collected %, Regulars count' and a reservation summary with 'Covers seated, Upcoming parties, Regulars', while the detailed guest list expands per guest to 'Phone numbers, Past visits, Notes' -- so returning-guest identification and per-guest visit history are reported, with the Overview tab comparing this week against last week and the Reservations tab graphing reservations, cancellations and no-shows. Shortfalls: none of it is spend. Regulars are counted, but there is no new-versus-returning guest split, no visit-frequency distribution and no lifetime-spend cohort anywhere; the Control Center is a separate application reached at buzztable.com/controlcenter with its own credentials; and the CAKE Dashboard's own reports carry no guest identity dimension at all -- their guest counts are anonymous headcounts, defaulting to 1 where no count was entered. Loyalty reporting is aggregate rather than cohorted: the Summary report's Rewards section is 'a brief summary of the number of reward stamps given and rewards redeemed'. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Guest-Manager-Reporting · retrieved 2026-09-01

reporting-sales-forecast differentiator

Every temporal control CAKE documents is backward-looking: universal-admin enumerates the Reports toolbar's Date Picker ranges as 'This Week, Last Month, Last Year ... Or select your own custom date range', Mastering CAKE Reports numbers thirteen report families of which none forecasts, the newly readable Loyalty report is marked 'CURRENTLY IN TESTING PHASE' with historical metrics only, and trycake.com's reporting page lists nine report cards all describing past activity. Forecasting on CAKE hosts belongs to partners the integrations page routes the job to — 7shifts 'Forecast sales and labor', Orca's sales-forecasting page — which is a separate product's report. What holds this off no is a hole rather than a silence: madmobile.com/restaurant/cakepos markets NEO as delivering 'predictive analytics' from 'sales, staffing and global data' and 'Predicts ingredient demand ... Predict. Price. Prevent Waste.', with a customer testimonial referring to 'CAKE's hourly ai reporting'. Predictive analytics over sales and staffing data is marketed and no report is documented, so the reporting surface is not enumerated where it matters.

reporting-tip-tax-compliance

Declared versus charged tips per employee are fully reported. Payroll: Labor Costs carries per employee 'Declared Tips ($): Total amount of tips declared by the employee' beside paid hours and pay, and Payroll: Tips & Cash carries 'Card Tips ($), Service Charge ($), Total Card Tips ($), Cash Sales ($) ... Owe to Merchant ($)' with the definitions 'Online Tips: Total online sales tips. POS Card Tips: Total POS card tips. Total Card Tips: Online Tips + POS Card Tips. Total Declared Tips: Total declared tip amount from labor cost report', explicitly distinguishing card tips, auto-gratuities and online tips. The export is payroll-shaped: the reporting changelog records that the Payroll Excel gains a timesheet-detail tab and 'the Employee ID to this excel file, for ease of importing into your Payroll or Accounting system'. Shortfalls: (1) tip pool distribution detail is not a report -- Tip Sharing is 'calculation-only. It does not automatically deduct or process these amounts. Suggested tip-outs are printed for the employee's reference on the End of Day shift report', computed as a percentage of the server's net sales per group, so there is no pooled-distribution ledger to hand to payroll; (2) the tax report is not by jurisdiction -- it reports 'Tax Name, Tax Rate (%), Taxable Items Sold ($), Taxable Items, Tax Amount ($)' per configured tax type, so a jurisdictional summary exists only insofar as the operator has modelled jurisdictions as tax names, and CAKE points filing itself at a third party ('Learn how to automate the sales tax process with the CAKE x DAVO Integration'). https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Dashboard-Payroll-Reports · retrieved 2026-09-01

multi-location-org-hierarchy

A real hierarchy exists and reporting scopes to it: 'Upon logging in, you will be prompted to select a location. Choose the Enterprise level, indicated by a black arrow to the left. Clicking this arrow will reveal all individual locations', which unlocks cross-location Summary, Sales, Online Orders and Voids reports. Permissions include 'Group Management: Manage multiple restaurant locations if applicable', and users are registered to a location. Shortfall: only two levels are documented — enterprise and location. No named region or group tier sits between them, and nothing states that reports or permissions can be scoped to an intermediate group. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Dashboard-Multi-Location-Reports · retrieved 2026-08-03

multi-location-central-menu-publish

Enterprise-level menu authoring is documented: 'If you manage multiple locations with CAKE, here's how to configure Online Ordering menus for enterprise groups: Set all components (items, categories, etc.) to show on OLO at the enterprise level. Create a new menu (Menu Admin > Availability) for OLO at the location levels.' The EMS intro adds that 'Enterprise Menu is the latest version of Menu Admin, featuring... the capability to support multi-location restaurants' (https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Intro-to-Enterprise-Menu), and the vendor's multi-location page claims 'Centralized Menu Management: Control menus, pricing, and item availability across all your locations from a single admin portal' with 'Flexible Pricing - Set prices by store' (https://trycake.com/solutions/multi-location/pos, grade D). Shortfalls: publishing is documented only as a two-level enterprise/location split - every Publish button in the V3 Menu Admin, Printer Assignments and Shift Based Menus articles pushes 'across your POS terminals' or 'to the live menu on the POS and/or Online Ordering', never to a set of locations chosen at publish time; and no publish log or version history showing what was pushed, when, and by whom is documented in any of the 207 sitemap-enumerated CAKE University articles. User Management exposes a 'Publish Menu' permission without stating its scope. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Navigating-Availability-and-Menu-Admin-for-OLO · retrieved 2026-09-01

multi-location-price-zones

CAKE's own best practice is to duplicate the item record rather than price it by tier. For daypart pricing: 'Before creating a menu instance for your Happy Hour menu, you'll need to create new categories and items within those for your Happy Hour Menu. We recommend naming your items and categories beginning with HH to be able to distinguish between your regular categories and Happy Hour. (I.E.: Bud Light Draft $5, HH Bud Light Draft $2.50).' The Add Item screen is enumerated in full in V3 Menu Admin: Items — Item Name, Price, Price + Tax, Online Description, Categories, Tax, To Go Tax, Printers, Modifiers, Prep Ticket Name, Receipt and Online Name, Sales Category, Item Code, Show This Item On — a single Price field, with channel handled only as a visibility toggle and no price tier, price zone or per-location price anywhere in the field list. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Menu-Admin-Shift-Based-Menus · retrieved 2026-08-03

multi-location-consolidated-reporting

Above-store reporting exists: 'Choose the Enterprise level, indicated by a black arrow to the left. Clicking this arrow will reveal all individual locations', after which 'Multi-Location Reports Include: Summary Report, Sales Report, Online Orders Report, Voids Report'. Sales and discounts are covered (Summary data table: 'Discounts & Comps = Total amount of % or $ discounts, free items, or rewards', Net Sales, Gross Sales, Total Orders, Total Guests) and voids have their own cross-location report ('Restaurant Name, Item Void (#), Item Void ($), Order Void (#), Order Void ($), Void Payment'). Shortfalls, taken from that article's own enumeration of the multi-location set: no labor or payroll report at the enterprise level (Payroll and Labor vs Sales are single-location Dashboard reports); no item-mix report above store - the multi-location Sales table is Restaurant Name / Quantity / Total / Take Out / Delivery / Dine In / Others, with no item or category dimension; and no store-vs-store ranking or variance flagging is described anywhere, only side-by-side rows. The Summary report also notes that voids 'are not considered in this report'. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Dashboard-Multi-Location-Reports · retrieved 2026-09-01

multi-location-cross-location-giftcard

'Cluster: A group of restaurants managed collectively under the same ownership or brand. Customers can use gift cards at any of the clustered locations. Clusters enable data aggregation and reporting across multiple locations, providing a comprehensive view of performance and transactions. For clustering assistance, contact CAKE Support at (855)696-2253.' Outstanding liability is reported across the cluster: the Balances report summary shows 'Number of Restaurants: Total number of restaurants in the cluster (displayed only if the restaurant belongs to a cluster)', 'Number of Cards' and 'Total Outstanding Balance: Total outstanding balance of all the gift cards... a current snapshot', and the Transactions report carries a 'Location: The location where the transaction occurred' column alongside Activation, Reload, Redemption and Cash Redemption types. Shortfalls: clustering is not self-service - it is arranged by calling CAKE Support; and no inter-store settlement or redemption reconciliation between separate owners (the franchisee-to-franchisee money movement the claim asks about) is described in this article or anywhere else in the 207-article knowledge base, only the per-location transaction column from which it would have to be derived by hand. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Dashboard-Giftcard-Reports · retrieved 2026-09-01

multi-location-cross-location-loyalty

CAKE Loyalty is configured once for the account, not per store. How to Activate CAKE Loyalty documents activation in the Admin Portal at dashboard.cake.net under Settings > Loyalty Options, where the first setting after the Activate Loyalty toggle is 'Include Locations: Specify which restaurant locations will offer the loyalty program', followed by one Enrollment Method, one Dollar-to-Points and one Points-to-Dollar conversion, one Minimum Order Amount and one Maximum Redemption Limit for the whole program. The guest side is a single account keyed to a phone number or email, or to a linked credit card so that 'points are automatically added to their account each time the card is used for payment', and the CAKE Loyalty Guest Portal gives that account 'Real-Time Transparency: Track point balances, review transaction history, and access past purchase details in real-time'. The member list is likewise one list: the Admin Portal's Customers tab 'provides a comprehensive list of customers who have signed up for your loyalty program', with a single bulk contact upload and a single migration of prior contacts carrying their 'loyalty points balance' (CAKE Loyalty: FAQ). Earning and redemption are documented across POS, Customer Touch Display, Kiosk and Online Ordering with no per-location scoping anywhere in the ten-article Loyalty family. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/How-to-Activate-CAKE-Loyalty · retrieved 2026-09-02

multi-location-multi-brand differentiator

The claim is conjunctive — separate menus AND receipts/branding AND separately reportable revenue on the same hardware and drawer — and the branding limb is refuted by a complete settings-screen enumeration. System Options: Receipt Settings walks the Receipts tab in full and its option list is exactly five items: 'Print Receipts', 'Printing Menu Item Modifiers', 'Tip Line', 'Tip Suggestions' and 'Footer', the last being 'a custom footer (up to 200 characters) to be printed at the bottom of itemized receipts'. One footer, singular, per system, and no logo, header or brand selector appears on the tab at all; the restaurant logo is a single upload elsewhere, enumerated in Configuring Online Ordering Settings in the Admin Portal as 'Restaurant Logo: Upload an image to be displayed as the restaurant logo', again singular. There is no construct anywhere that gives a second brand its own receipt identity on the same terminal. The menu limb points the same way from an independent surface: the Enterprise Menu family makes the LOCATION the unit throughout, with an 'Availability Field ... to specify which locations should display each element' and a Price Variation tab assigning 'different prices to the same item across various locations', while Menu-Variations treats a location-level edit as a defect. The in-store segmentation constructs — Zones, Revenue Centers with Day Parts, and Custom Order Type — yield reportable revenue slices but no second brand. The silence is load-bearing because these are complete configuration-screen walkthroughs of exactly the two screens where a second brand identity would have to be created, not a marketing feature list. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Receipts-Setting · retrieved 2026-09-04 adversarially verified

multi-location-multi-tax-jurisdiction

Multiple simultaneous rates and jurisdiction-shaped rules are documented. v3 Menu Admin: Taxes enumerates the tax surface: create a tax with 'Tax Name and Tax Rate'; create a Tax Group ('Toggle This Is Tax Group to On... Use the dropdown to add existing taxes to this group'); and Special Tax Treatments - 'To Go Tax: Selecting Yes will enable the To Go tax rate when configuring menu items', 'Service Charge Tax', and 'Default Tax: enable a default tax amount for all new menu items'. Information on Taxes (https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Information-on-Taxes) works a stacked example - 'A restaurant applies a tax of 10% to all items (Standard Tax) and an additional 5% tax to alcohol items only (Beverage Tax)' - and taxes are assigned per item and per category (How do I add taxes to an item). Configuration is per location because Menu Admin is entered after selecting a location in the Admin Portal. Shortfalls: no tax-inclusive (price-includes-tax) mode is documented anywhere - the Items field table exposes 'Price' and 'Price + Tax... auto-populate[d] once a tax rate is assigned', i.e. exclusive tax only; no per-location tax exemption or exempt-customer workflow is documented (tax-exempt items appear only as a reporting category in the Dashboard Taxes report); and no enterprise-level tax administration is described, so multi-location tax setup is repeated per location. CAKE also disclaims the domain: 'CAKE provides tax calculation as a convenience... it is the restaurant operator's sole responsibility to verify this calculation is correct and compliant.' https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Menu-Admin-Taxes · retrieved 2026-09-01

multi-location-central-labor-policy

Labor rules are configurable and act on the terminal, not merely in reporting. System Options > Payroll enumerates the whole surface: 'Payroll Start of Week/Day'; 'Paid Breaks... When employees clock out for a break, the system displays the allotted paid break time'; 'Paid Meals'; 'Weekly Overtime... enter the threshold (e.g., 40 hours) and the applicable pay rate multiplier (e.g., 1.5x or 2x)'; 'Daily Overtime... two tiers for different thresholds (e.g., +8 and +12 hours)'; '7th Consecutive Day Overtime'; 'Overtime Carryover'; and 'Audit Trail: Tracks changes made to payroll settings, including who made the changes and when.' Clock In/Out System Options add 'Auto Clock Out (Elapsed)' and 'Auto Clock Out (Time of Day)'. Shortfalls: these are System Options set on the POS of one restaurant - no location-group or enterprise-level labor policy, and no push of a labor policy to a chosen set of locations, is documented anywhere in the corpus (the enterprise level in the Admin Portal reaches Menu Admin and Reports only); break handling is display-and-record rather than a blocking rule ('the system displays the allotted paid break time'); and there is no predictive-scheduling or fair-workweek compliance feature at all - scheduling itself is a 7shifts integration. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Payroll-Settings · retrieved 2026-09-01

hardware-commodity-devices differentiator

Part of the suite runs on commodity hardware the operator can buy elsewhere: 'CAKE OrderPad, a cutting-edge iPad-based Point of Sale (POS) solution'; 'Hardware Essentials... iPad: The central device for the OrderPad system'; 'You can purchase these components bundled in the CAKE Shop or source your iPad from other vendors while buying the Bluetooth Reader and Vault Connect2 Case separately'; and 'CAKE OrderPad supports any iPad capable of running the latest iOS version. Popular models include: iPad Mini 2-6... iPad Air 1-2.' The Epson KDS also accepts a third-party display - 'Widescreen VGA Monitor: Any monitor which supports 1680x1050 resolution with VGA interface' and an 'Elo 2202L Touchscreen Monitor'. Shortfalls: the primary station is vendor-supplied and proprietary - the V3 Installation Guide ships a CAKE POS terminal, CAKE Payment Cube, CAKE Router and CAKE-supplied Epson printers, states 'only one CAKE Router is permitted in a network setup', and warns 'Only CAKE equipment is permitted on the CAKE network. Do not connect non-CAKE devices to the CAKE Router'; the Operator POS Terms add that 'certain POS Hardware components (including card readers) are configured for use with designated terminals and are not interchangeable' (https://trycake.com/legal-agreements). No Android, Windows or PC client exists, and the POS software itself is never offered for a terminal bought from a third party. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/OrderPad · retrieved 2026-09-01

hardware-os-platforms

Client platforms are partly named. OrderPad: 'CAKE OrderPad supports any iPad capable of running the latest iOS version. Popular models include: iPad Mini 2-6 (Note: The Vault Connect2 Case in the CAKE Shop houses the iPad Mini 6.) iPad Air 1-2' - a device list rather than a version floor. Epson KDS: 'You must use the KDS Configuration Tool from Epson. The software requires a windows computer to run' and 'Widescreen VGA Monitor: Any monitor which supports 1680x1050 resolution with VGA interface.' Shortfalls: the CAKE POS terminal's own operating system is never named in any of the 207 sitemap-enumerated CAKE University articles - the terminal is treated as an appliance, and Pre-Installation Requirements specifies only power, 'one always-active and available Ethernet port on an Internet Service Provider modem set to DHCP' and counter dimensions ('12"H x 10"W x 10"D of existing counter space per POS w/o Cash Drawer'); no minimum iOS/iPadOS version number is stated anywhere ('the latest iOS version' is the only floor given, and the Update to iOS 10 article is legacy); and there is no Android, Windows or browser POS client at all. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/OrderPad · retrieved 2026-09-01

hardware-handheld-purpose-built

A purpose-built handheld exists and is documented as a device in its own right: 'CAKEpop - Pocket-sized POS that helps your team serve faster, smarter, and with fewer mistakes', listed beside CAKE OrderPad, CAKE Kiosk and CAKE KDS among the devices that connect to the CAKE Access Point. Its payment flow is on-device: the Customer Touch Display settings article documents a 'Tip Suggestion' setting that governs 'when the tip screen appears during the CAKEpop payment process - either before or after payment', and notes it 'Applies only to CAKEpop devices (not POS or OrderPads)'. The vendor's product page adds 'accept contactless payments at the table' and 'CAKEpop is splash-proof, drop-resistant, compact' (https://trycake.com/products/handheld-pos, grade D). Shortfalls: no drop rating (no drop height, no MIL-STD reference) and no IP ingress rating are published for CAKEpop on the product page or anywhere in the 207-article knowledge base - 'splash-proof, drop-resistant' is the whole of it; and the other handheld CAKE sells, OrderPad, is exactly the excluded shape - a commodity iPad in an nClose/Vault Connect2 case with a separate VP3300 Bluetooth reader. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/CAKE-Access-Point-for-OrderPad · retrieved 2026-09-01

hardware-handheld-battery-swap differentiator

The claim is disjunctive and both limbs fall outside any enumeration that covers the right device. No rated battery life is published anywhere: 'battery life' and 'hot-swap' return zero hits across the knowledge base, and trycake.com/products/handheld-pos contains no occurrence of 'batter' at all, offering only 'splash-proof, drop-resistant, compact, and built to handle the heat'. The Equipment Replacement Fee Schedule at trycake.com/legal-agreements is a real enumeration — twenty-one SKUs read in full: POS Terminal, POS Terminal (w/CTD), POS Power Supply, CAKE Payment Cube, Payment Cube USB Cable, Thermal Printer and PSU, Impact Printer and PSU, Router and PSU, Cash Drawer, Barcode Scanner, Access Point and PSU, iPad Mini, iPad, Payment Reader, KDS 15", KDS 22", KDS PSU — with no spare battery among them, but it enumerates no CAKEpop SKU either, so it is an enumeration of the wrong device. An unpublished battery life does not establish that the battery is not field-replaceable.

hardware-handheld-lte

The documents pull in opposite directions and the one enumeration in play is about a different thing. Pre-Installation-Requirements' 'Unsupported Connections: Wireless connections such as Satellite, Radio Frequency, Microwave, Cellular, or "Antenna" Internet are not supported' sits under the heading 'Internet Requirements', beside 'Ethernet Port: 1 always-active and available Ethernet port on an Internet Service Provider modem set to DHCP' and 'Recommended Connection: Business-class DSL or Cable Internet' — it bars fixed-wireless ISP service for the store uplink, not an LTE radio in a handheld, and the same KB recommends a cellular mobile hotspot for outages ('connect the hotspot to your POS using an Ethernet cable; Wi-Fi is not supported'). Against the claim: handhelds are documented only as Wi-Fi clients of the CAKE Access Point, and the recommended outage fallback is the operator's own hardware rather than a vendor-supplied failover. For it: CAKE-Router states 'You either have a Cradlepoint router ... Or you have the Zyxel router' and White-List-Ports reserves *.cradlepointecm.com, and Cradlepoint's line is cellular-failover routing. No CAKE document states whether the supplied unit carries a SIM, and no network-architecture or router specification is published on any readable host. adversarially verified

hardware-offline-mode

The degradation-documentation half of the claim is fully satisfied: the Offline Payments article enumerates exactly what works offline (discounts, service charges, comps, tips, receipts 'includes full order details') and what does not (loyalty 'requires live connection', gift cards, pre-authorization, manual card entry all 'not supported offline'; reports delayed; Close Cash unavailable 'while Offline Mode or Recovery is active'). Card payments are store-and-forward — stored locally up to 72 hours, auto-submitted on reconnect, with the decline risk stated. Shortfalls: offline card acceptance is conditional on the network-level 'Offline Card Payments' setting being enabled before the outage ('If it was not enabled beforehand, card payments cannot be accepted while offline') and on device generation (original Payment Cube is swipe-only offline); kitchen printing during an outage is never stated in the article or anywhere else in the 218-URL CAKE University sitemap; and cash-sale recording offline is not explicitly documented — the article is card-centric and Close Cash is blocked until the system returns to Online. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Offline-Payments · retrieved 2026-08-04

hardware-kds

Kitchen Display System is a named first-party product in CAKE's own catalog, integrating with CAKE POS; bump-bar input and course/fire timing are not documented. https://trycake.com/en-us/products/pos · retrieved 2026-08-01

hardware-kiosk differentiator

The kiosk is a real, POS-integrated product in the merchant documentation, not only in marketing: 'CAKE Kiosk - Self-service station where guests can browse the menu, order, and pay' (Access Point device list); the Dashboard Sales report carries an In-Store Channels report that compares 'POS, CAKEpop, and CAKE Kiosk' revenue and order counts side by side; and the Stock Counts article describes stock availability syncing 'across all CAKE platforms - including POS, CAKEpop, OrderPad, Online Ordering, and Kiosk', which places the kiosk on the same menu and availability engine. Form factors and payment come from the product page (https://trycake.com/products/self-ordering-kiosk, grade D, retrieved 2026-09-01): 'Choose between countertop or floor-standing models', 'Available as countertop or floor-standing configurations adaptable for different restaurant formats', 'Fully integrated with CAKE POS and CAKE Admin Portal - orders and payments sync in real time', 'tap, swipe, and chip options via supported CAKE payment readers', and 'Supports modifiers, combos, and dynamic upsell prompts'. Shortfall: accessibility is entirely undocumented - neither the kiosk product page nor any of the 207 CAKE University articles mentions ADA, WCAG, screen-reader or reach-range compliance; and the two form factors rest on marketing copy alone, with no help-centre article or spec sheet for the kiosk hardware. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/CAKE-Access-Point-for-OrderPad · retrieved 2026-09-01

hardware-drive-thru

CAKE's own Equipment Replacement Fee Schedule enumerates its hardware line SKU by SKU: 'POS Terminal $1,199.00, POS Terminal (w/CTD) $1,399.00, POS Power Supply $59.00, CAKE Payment Cube $239.00, CAKE Payment Cube USB Cable $19.00, Thermal Printer $279.00, Thermal Printer Power Supply $39.00, Impact Printer $319.00, Impact Printer Power Supply $39.00, Router $219.00, Router Power Supply $19.00, Cash Drawer $79.00, Barcode Scanner $279.00, Access Point $199.00, Access Point Power Supply $39.00, iPad Mini $559.00, iPad $31.00, Payment Reader $119.00, KDS 15in $799.00, KDS 22in $879.00, KDS Power Supply $79.00' -- no outdoor menu board, no order confirmation display, no speaker and no headset. The V3 Installation Guide's optional-equipment section is likewise 'OrderPad, Impact Printers, Access Point' only. On the software side, the Dashboard Sales report enumerates its own sections -- 'Overview, Payment Type, Order Type, Employee, Register, Zone, Revenue Center, Discounts, In-Store Channels' -- with no timer or speed-of-service measure. The only drive-thru construct documented in the product is a name: two settings guides suggest Drive Thru as an example when creating a custom order type ('Enter a name for your new order type (E.g. Drive Thru, Retail, etc)'), which inherits the ordinary order-type fields. The vendor's product navigation (POS, CAKEpop, KDS, Customer Touch Display, Self-Ordering Kiosk, thermal/impact/label printers, POS Wraps) lists no drive-thru product either. https://trycake.com/legal-agreements · retrieved 2026-09-02

hardware-printer-compatibility

Printers are third-party and network-attached. The V3 Installation Guide connects an 'Epson Thermal Printer' by 'connect[ing] the provided Ethernet cable to the LAN port on the bottom of the Printer... to any yellow port on the CAKE Router', repeated 'for each thermal printer', with an Epson impact printer as optional kitchen hardware; printers are added by address in Device Manager ('Main Menu > Settings > Device Manager > Printers, Click Add New Printer... Set the printer type to "IMPACT-PMP", Enter IP address'), and items are routed to them per item ('Printers: Assign up to 2 printers this item will print at'). The Epson models named across the KDS and paper articles are the TM-T88V-i, TM-L90 and TM-U220i. Shortfalls: every printer documented anywhere in the 207-article corpus is an Epson supplied by CAKE - Star or any other manufacturer appears nowhere, and no supported-printer compatibility list is published; the Equipment Replacement Fee Schedule carries only generic 'Thermal Printer $279.00' and 'Impact Printer $319.00' SKUs; and the installation guide forbids merchant-sourced network hardware outright - 'Only CAKE equipment is permitted on the CAKE network. Do not connect non-CAKE devices to the CAKE Router or any Network Switch connected to the CAKE Router', with the security article adding that connecting any other device 'will void the CAKE warranty'. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/V-3-Installation-Guide · retrieved 2026-09-01

hardware-peripherals

Most of the standard set is documented. Multi-drawer per terminal: 'in order to have 2 Cash Drawers, you must have a splitter cable... go to Main Menu>Settings>Device Manager>Registers... toggle on the Secondary Cash Drawer function. Both A & B will be dark gray when activated', after which 'under Cash In/Cash Out, you can select which drawer to use for that function'. Customer-facing display: the Customer Touch Display has its own settings tab ('Main Menu > Settings > System Options > Customer Display') with Sign By Finger, Tips Option and Smart Tips, and the CAKE Market article describes 'customer-facing displays for easy check out to convenient tipping, signing by finger, and e-receipts with our 15in splash-resistant touchscreen'. Barcode scanning: the V3 Menu Admin item field table carries 'Item Code: Choose a generic code for lookup and bar scan', and CAKE sells a 'Barcode Scanner $279.00' SKU in its published Equipment Replacement Fee Schedule (https://trycake.com/legal-agreements). Shortfalls: there is no scale integration - the Fractional Quantities article is the whole of by-weight selling and it is manual ('Enter the fractional or partial amount as a decimal and type 0 first. i.e. 0.5 or 0.25... Note: The price on the screen will NOT automatically adjust'), and no scale appears among the 21 SKUs of the equipment schedule; and no compatibility list of supported third-party peripheral makes or models is published anywhere in the 207-article knowledge base, which documents only CAKE-supplied units. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Secondary-Cash-Drawer-Setup · retrieved 2026-09-01

hardware-p2pe-terminal

Card data is encrypted at the reader, not in the application: 'With your CAKE POS, credit card data is encrypted the moment you swipe a credit card. This is true whether you are online or using our offline payments mode system option... Credit card data is never stored unencrypted. The data remains encrypted as it is transmitted from your CAKE POS, to the server, and to the credit card processor', with 'SSL protocols and data tokenization' added. Entry happens on dedicated payment hardware - the CAKE Payment Cube on the terminal, a VP3300 Bluetooth reader for OrderPad - and EMV chip entry can be forced ('Main Menu > Settings > System Options... Payment... Toggle on Force EMV Transactions'). Shortfalls: nothing names a PCI-listed PTS device model or a validated P2PE solution listing, and the merchant's SAQ type is never stated - the article pushes the question back to the merchant and the processor ('the business owner taking in the credit card information is also required to comply (that's you)... If CAKE (with its partner Worldpay from FIS) is your payment processor, there's a quick assessment you can take'), and the 'PCI DSS Service Provider and Customer Responsibility Matrix' page in the knowledge base is a title with no body text. So scope reduction is implied by the architecture but never asserted, and no SAQ letter appears anywhere in the corpus. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/PCI-Compliance · retrieved 2026-09-01

hardware-tap-to-phone differentiator

The OrderPad requirements article enumerates the hardware needed to run CAKE on a commodity device and makes the reader the payment path: 'Hardware Essentials. Key hardware components include: iPad: The central device for the OrderPad system. Bluetooth Reader (Optional): If you want to process payments directly on the OrderPad. nClose Case: Integrates the iPad and Bluetooth Reader for a sleek, functional setup.' A dedicated article exists for that reader ('How to Connect the VP3300 Bluetooth Payment Reader with CAKE OrderPad'), the OrderPad navigation hub lists it as step 4 of the five-article setup path, and Enabling OrderPad Payments switches payments on per device in Device Manager while naming manual key-entry as the only alternative to the reader -- there is no software-only acceptance path. Contactless exists, but on CAKE hardware: the Accepting Payments and EMV articles list 'Tap (contactless)' at the terminal, the kiosk takes 'tap, swipe, and chip options via supported CAKE payment readers', and CAKEpop is vendor-built hardware. CAKE also ships no Android or phone client at all -- the only staff phone app documented anywhere in the corpus is the 7shifts scheduling app. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/OrderPad · retrieved 2026-09-02

hardware-pricing-transparency differentiator

Per-SKU dollar figures are published: the Equipment Replacement Fee Schedule lists 'POS Terminal $1,199.00, POS Terminal (w/CTD) $1,399.00, POS Power Supply $59.00, CAKE Payment Cube $239.00, CAKE Payment Cube USB Cable $19.00, Thermal Printer $279.00, Thermal Printer Power Supply $39.00, Impact Printer $319.00, Impact Printer Power Supply $39.00, Router $219.00, Router Power Supply $19.00, Cash Drawer $79.00, Barcode Scanner $279.00, Access Point $199.00, Access Point Power Supply $39.00, iPad Mini $559.00, iPad $31.00, Payment Reader $119.00, KDS 15in $799.00, KDS 22in $879.00, KDS Power Supply $79.00'. Shortfall: those are equipment REPLACEMENT fees, charged when an RMA device is not returned within the RMA period, not a price list to buy from. CAKE publishes no hardware purchase price anywhere: https://trycake.com/pricing (retrieved 2026-09-01) shows three packages each labelled '$0 down. No bill. Ever.' behind 'Get Started', 'Request a Quote' and 'Speak With a Specialist' calls to action, and states 'You can get started with CAKE with no upfront hardware or software costs. There is no lump-sum payment and no financing plan. Everything is included in your processing rate'; the trycake.com sitemap (41 site pages, retrieved 2026-09-01) contains no hardware store or SKU price page; and the CAKE Shop where hardware is actually ordered sits behind the Admin Portal login ('Log in to the CAKE Admin Portal... Click the Shop Icon'). https://trycake.com/legal-agreements · retrieved 2026-09-01

hardware-ownership-vs-lease differentiator

The vendor states which, in its own contract. Operator POS Terms 4.1: 'The POS Hardware components may be sold to Operator or leased to Operator. Any POS Hardware components that are sold to Operator are "Purchased Hardware". The description of the POS Hardware components to be provided to Operator and applicable fees shall be set forth in the applicable Order.' Section 4.6.1: 'Upon full payment for and acceptance of delivery of the Purchased Hardware, Operator will acquire ownership of and title to the hardware components of the Purchased Hardware. Any POS Software provided with the Purchased Hardware is subject to the applicable license terms in Section 7.' Instalment purchase is separately provided for (4.6.2 Payment Plans), and the lease routes are named and documented separately (4.8 EZ Pay Lease Program; 4.9 Legacy Rentals of Hardware, referring to the published POS Hardware Lease Terms for equipment rented under pre-2024 agreements), with the Hardware Return Policy treating the operator as 'original purchaser or lessor'. Buying is therefore a real alternative rather than a mandatory lease, and the marketing side agrees: 'We do not charge monthly POS fees, add-on fees, hardware leasing fees, or software subscriptions' (https://trycake.com/pricing). Note that owning the hardware does not carry the software - 'POS Software is licensed, not sold, to Operator'. https://trycake.com/legal-agreements · retrieved 2026-09-01

hardware-usable-after-churn differentiator

The Operator POS Terms and their exhibits settle the ownership half of this claim and leave the usability half unaddressed. Owned: '4.6.1. General. Upon full payment for and acceptance of delivery of the Purchased Hardware, Operator will acquire ownership of and title to the hardware components of the Purchased Hardware', with Cake's security interest 'released automatically' on payment in full (6.7.3), and no clause anywhere requiring return of Purchased Hardware on termination. Not owned, and this is new: two of CAKE's three acquisition routes are rentals with a mandatory return. The POS Hardware Lease Terms provide 'Title to the Leased Hardware remains with Cake throughout the Lease Period, and Operator will acquire no right, title, or interest in the Leased Hardware' (6) and, absent a Purchase Option exercised at 'then-current fair market value', Operator must 'deinstall, inspect, and properly pack the Leased Hardware' and return it 'within seven (7) calendar days following the expiration of the Lease Period' (8(b)), failing which the equipment replacement fee applies — a twenty-one-SKU table topping out at $1,399.00 for a POS Terminal (w/CTD). The EZ Pay Terms impose the same seven-day return on termination for default or non-exercise of the purchase option. Exact shortfall, and why this is not a yes: nothing in the contract or in the knowledge base states whether an owned terminal will run other software once the licence ends. The software is 'licensed, not sold' (4.1), on termination 'Operator must cease using any Cake Service' and 'any licenses provided to Operator under the Agreement will end' (10.6), 4.3.2 warns that components 'including card readers) are configured for use with designated terminals and are not interchangeable unless expressly authorized in the Documentation', 4.3.3 disclaims all responsibility for 'any use, modification, reconfiguration, swapping of components between terminals', and the Hardware Warranty is void where hardware 'failed as a result of its being used with third party hardware, software or other systems which use has not been previously approved in writing by Cake'. No article describes returning, wiping, unlocking or re-imaging a terminal. So the documentation confirms who owns the box and says nothing about whether it is software-locked. https://trycake.com/legal-agreements · retrieved 2026-09-04 adversarially verified

hardware-rma-sla differentiator

Hardware Return Policy and Limited Warranty, updated 23 September 2025. Term: 'Cake warrants POS Hardware other than Apple products against substantial defects in materials and workmanship for a period of one year (measured from the date of original purchase for Purchased Hardware or the longer period as expressly agreed in the applicable Order)', extendable for an additional payment. Advance-exchange SLA: 'If a replacement has been authorized (a "Return Material Authorization") Cake will send the replacement device via regular ground service within three (3) business days of such determination and Operator must return each device for which a replacement was received (the "RMA Device") within seven (7) calendar days from receiving the replacement (the "RMA Period")', with the operator charged the published Equipment Replacement Fee if the old unit misses that window. Cake's remedy choice is 'repair the device or replace it with a new or refurbished model that is at least equivalent in functionality to the model being replaced'. Caveats worth recording: Apple products are excluded and handled under Apple's own warranty, consumable parts including batteries are excluded, and the pricing page's separate marketing promise of 'Lifetime Equipment Replacement' is a plan benefit rather than this contractual term. https://trycake.com/legal-agreements · retrieved 2026-09-01

hardware-byod

There is no personal-phone ordering or payment app to bring a device to. The OrderPad requirements article enumerates the client hardware -- 'iPad: The central device for the OrderPad system' -- and then enumerates the compatible devices: 'CAKE OrderPad supports any iPad capable of running the latest iOS version. Popular models include: iPad Mini 2-6 (Note: The Vault Connect2 Case in the CAKE Shop houses the iPad Mini 6.), iPad Air 1-2'. No iPhone and no Android device appears in that list, and the other mobile client, CAKEpop, is vendor-built hardware. The network rules prohibit the practice outright: 'Only CAKE equipment is permitted on the CAKE network. Do not connect non-CAKE devices to the CAKE Router or any Network Switch connected to the CAKE Router. Non-CAKE devices on this network may cause system outages', and 'Connecting any other device to the CAKE WiFi network compromises your system's credit card security, is a violation of PCI Compliance and will void the CAKE warranty' (V3 Installation Guide). No BYOD permission model or personal-device security policy is documented -- the User Management add-user tabs are General, Permissions and POS Setup, covering app and feature access, not device ownership. The one staff-owned-phone app in the corpus is the 7shifts scheduling app, which takes no orders and no payments. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/OrderPad · retrieved 2026-09-02

hardware-remote-device-management differentiator

Fleet control belongs to the vendor, not the operator, and CAKE says so. POS Power Options: 'CAKE POS performs daily maintenance and upgrade automatically during after hours. Shutting down your POS daily will prevent these tasks from occurring'. The CAKE Access Point 'will automatically perform firmware updates between 1-2 AM', and the operator cannot even move that window himself - 'To adjust the update window, contact CAKE Support'. The Operator POS Terms reserve the remote channel to the vendor: 'Cake may from time to time with or without notice remotely access certain POS Hardware for purposes such as Operator support, installing software updates, risk analysis' (trycake.com/legal-agreements). So updates are pushed on CAKE's schedule and cannot be staged by the merchant, which defeats the claim on its own. The only device surface documented for the operator is local to a terminal - Main Menu > Settings > Device Manager, with panes for Registers (secondary cash drawer), Printers ('Click Add New Printer... Enter IP address'), OrderPads and Payment Device - and the single status it exposes is a per-terminal payment reader 'Activated = True/False', not network reachability, software version or a reboot action, and never for another terminal. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/POS-Power-Options · retrieved 2026-09-01

hardware-selfpour-scales

Grepped the whole knowledge base and the result is a clean zero: self-pour, selfpour, tap wall, flow meter, pour spout, dispenser, PourMyBeer, iPourIt and Bevchek return no hits across all articles including the bar-specific material and the full hardware family, and the only 'draft beer' occurrence is menu-variety advice in Tips-for-Running-a-Successful-Bar. trycake.com/solutions/bars-lounges-clubs/pos — the page written to sell to exactly these venues — never mentions pour-to-tab. The twenty-one-SKU Equipment Replacement Fee Schedule contains nothing beverage-related. What blocks a no is the shape of the surface: trycake.com/products/integrations names fourteen partners while asserting 'Connect with hundreds of third-party applications' without listing them — a vendor-declared unenumerated set, so absence from the directory establishes nothing. And this session's own finding cuts directly against a no: CAKE runs a partner API surface it no longer publishes, which is precisely the mechanism by which pours would post to a tab.

hardware-callerid-integration

Caller ID, telephony, screen pop and incoming call return zero across the knowledge base; the string 'caller' occurs once, in Driving-Business-to-CAKE-Online-Ordering ('Update your on-hold message to inform callers that they can now place orders online'). The documented phone-order path is entirely manual — phone orders are rung in as an order type and guest lookup begins by keying a number — and the CAKE Loyalty articles confirm the same direction. Nothing is triggered by an inbound call. The peripheral enumeration is genuinely close to closing the hardware limb: Configuring Supporting Hardware for CAKE POS walks the complete supported set — Epson Thermal Printer, Epson Impact Printer, Cash Drawer, Payment Cube, then 'Setting Up Additional CAKE Hardware ... CAKE Thermal Label Printer, CAKE OrderPad, CAKE Kiosk, CAKE KDS' — with no caller-ID device, and no such device appears among the twenty-one SKUs of the Equipment Replacement Fee Schedule. But the claim is disjunctive and the telephony-integration limb survives: the integrations directory is explicitly non-exhaustive, and CAKE's unpublished partner API is exactly where a screen-pop integration would attach.

extensibility-public-api-docs

Measured directly. developer.cake.net returns a bare 134-byte 'HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently' with 'Location: https://trycake.com:443/' for /, /apis, /getting-started, /apis/5eaa7e51e5b3c000113e86b7/documentation/raw and /robots.txt; following the redirect once, deliberately, yields the trycake.com marketing homepage (224,652 bytes) containing no API reference. The claim is a publication claim in the present tense and every candidate publication surface was checked: docs.cake.net, developers.cake.net, developer.trycake.com, docs.trycake.com, api.trycake.com, developer.madmobile.com and api.madmobile.com are all NXDOMAIN; docs.madmobile.com refuses TLS and returns a Google 404 over HTTP; trycake.com/developers, /api and /developer and madmobile.com/developers and /api all 404; and https://trycake.com/products/integrations names fourteen partners and carries no API, developer or webhook row at all. The Wayback CDX index is decisive that this is a withdrawal rather than a retrieval failure on our side: developer.cake.net exact returns zero captures, the developer.cake.net/* prefix returns exactly one — 'https://developer.cake.net/robots.txt' at 20170125155808 with statuscode 404 — and a domain-wide cake.net CDX pull contains no other capture of that host. A search-index residue confirms a portal once existed and was publicly readable (indexed titles 'CAKE Developer Portal' and 'API Developer portal', snippets naming a Third-Party Order API, an Integrations API and a Labor API, with API keys requested from the portal), so this is a moved-or-withdrawn portal rather than a vendor that never had one — but the claim asks whether public self-serve API reference documentation IS readable without a partner agreement, and today, on every host CAKE and Mad Mobile control, it is not. https://developer.cake.net/ · retrieved 2026-09-04 adversarially verified

extensibility-api-access-cost differentiator

Capability claim about the commercial terms of an interface that is no longer published. Confirmed this session that developer.cake.net 301s to trycake.com on every path and that the portal was never archived (Wayback CDX: one capture for the whole host, a 404 on /robots.txt in 2017), so no rate card is recoverable. trycake.com/pricing names Core, Growth and Scale with no API or integration-access row; the legal set contains 'API' once, in a Google Maps clause, and grants no API rights and states no API fee; and optional capability is demonstrably bought per-feature through the Admin Portal SHOP icon's Additional Hardware/Services Request Form, whose contents are published nowhere. A partner-gated API could be priced either way and nothing on any readable surface measures it.

extensibility-free-sandbox differentiator

Capability claim about what is issued to a contracted developer. Re-confirmed there is no published developer programme anywhere — developer.cake.net 301s to trycake.com on every path, was never archived by Wayback, and docs/developers.cake.net, developer/docs/api.trycake.com and developer/api.madmobile.com are all NXDOMAIN — so there is certainly no PUBLISHED sandbox. But absence of publication is not absence of provision: nothing states that a contracted integration partner is denied a test tenant, 'sandbox' and 'test environment' return zero hits across the knowledge base and the whole legal set, and the only test facility CAKE documents is POS Training Mode, a practice mode inside a live production POS.

extensibility-oauth-partner-apps

Capability claim about how a third-party app authenticates INTO CAKE, measurable only against an auth reference we cannot read. The developer portal that carried it is gone — 301 to trycake.com on every path, zero Wayback captures — and its surviving search-index snippet says API keys are requested from the portal, which hints at static keys rather than scoped OAuth grants but is an index summary of a page nobody has fetched, not a read of an auth document. Partner practice points the same way without settling it: 7shifts and Shogo both onboard using a CAKE Client ID found on the POS terminal, a shared credential rather than an operator-granted revocable grant. That is suggestive, not documentation, and the DoorDash article's login flow describes CAKE authenticating AT DoorDash, the opposite direction from the claim.

extensibility-webhooks-push

Capability claim about the transport of an unpublished partner API. 'webhook' returns zero hits across the whole knowledge base and all 55 trycake/madmobile pages, and the only 'API' matches in the corpus are legacy @api/deki/files image URLs — but CAKE University is a merchant help centre and would not document a partner event transport either way, and the interface that would is unreadable and unarchived. The indexed portal snippet names a third-party order API that 'provides functionality to get restaurant information, calculate taxes, place third-party online orders and to track third-party order statuses'; 'track statuses' could describe either polling or push and cannot be relied on. Against a batch-only reading, 7shifts' own integration page describes CAKE sales and labor data syncing 'in real-time' while naming no transport.

extensibility-webhook-reliability differentiator

Capability claim that presupposes a webhook surface whose existence is itself unmeasured. Signing, retry-with-backoff and replayable event logs are properties documented only in a developer reference, and CAKE publishes no developer reference on any host — developer.cake.net 301s to trycake.com for every path, no other developer subdomain resolves, and Wayback holds a single 2017 /robots.txt 404 for the entire host, so nothing is recoverable.

extensibility-order-injection-api

A documented third-party order API places and tracks externally originated orders, and such orders demonstrably become first-class tickets that fire to kitchen printers and land in the Sales report. Shortfall: access is not public or self-serve -- the integrator must be onboarded with the restaurant and request an API key from a developer portal that now redirects to marketing for every path.

extensibility-menu-write-api differentiator

Capability claim about whether an unpublished partner API writes items, modifiers or prices. Every menu route CAKE documents for merchants is a human one ending in Publish, and the Enterprise Menu family is thorough, but a merchant help centre would not document a partner write interface either way. Merchant-Portal-Menu-Submission-Process ('Please allow 48-72 hours for your menu to be completed and uploaded by CAKE') is a one-time purchased onboarding service for new Premium/Basic Menu Build customers, not a statement that no write interface exists. The four APIs named in the surviving index residue (Integrations, Labor, Sales Summary, third-party order) have no readable resource list, and the portal was never archived.

extensibility-doordash-preferred differentiator

DoorDash's own program announcement (posted 2026-05-18, retrieved 2026-09-01) names the roster exhaustively: 'Based on current performance and feature capabilities, the 2026 cohort DoorDash Preferred Integration Partners include Checkmate, Chowly, Deliverect, Otter, PAR, Qu, Square, Stream, Toast, and UrbanPiper.' That is a closed list of ten, published and dated by the program owner, and neither CAKE, CAKE POS nor Mad Mobile appears in it or anywhere else on the page. CAKE does integrate with DoorDash -- trycake.com/products/integrations says 'Get started with DoorDash via CAKE Marketplace in the Admin Portal' -- but being an integration is not being a named Preferred Integration Partner, which is what this claim asks. Scored `no` on an exhaustive named enumeration published by the standard-setter, not on an absence of CAKE-side evidence. https://about.doordash.com/en-us/news/doordash-preferred-integrations-program-2026 · retrieved 2026-09-01

extensibility-first-party-delivery-integrations differentiator

The Online Ordering & Delivery section (page retrieved whole 2026-09-01, 169,669 bytes) names three partners: Olo ('Integrate CAKE + Olo to create a seamless guest experience'), then 'Expand your reach and boost revenue by adding online ordering and offering delivery through Uber Eats and DoorDash', with two calls to action -- 'Get started with UberEats - Contact CAKE' and 'Get started with DoorDash via CAKE Marketplace in the Admin Portal'. Shortfalls: (1) Grubhub is not integrated on this evidence -- the string occurs exactly once in the page source, as the mega-nav label 'Grubhub, Uber Eats, Doordash' linking to /products/integrations#online-ordering, a section that never mentions Grubhub; the 207-article knowledge base names GrubHub only as an example reason code under 3rd-party payment tenders. (2) Uber Eats requires contacting CAKE rather than self-serve activation. (3) The same page offers Checkmate under Operations to 'Manage all your digital orders and menus from one central location', so middleware remains an offered route. (4) All of this is a vendor feature page (grade C); no CAKE documentation at grade A or B describes any certified marketplace integration, so a `yes` is unavailable on a differentiator-weight claim in any case. https://trycake.com/products/integrations · retrieved 2026-09-01

extensibility-middleware-compatibility

CAKE's own help-centre CAKE Market (Point of Sale Integrations) article lists 'itsacheckmate' under OPERATIONS, and the CAKE Admin Portal Overview describes the in-portal Market tile as a place to 'Explore 3rd party integrations CAKE works with, such as Doordash, ItsACheckmate, Restaurant365, and more!'; trycake.com/products/integrations carries the same partner as 'Checkmate -- Manage all your digital orders and menus from one central location'. Named shortfall: that is ONE platform, and the claim asks for at least two. Deliverect, Chowly and Otter return zero hits across the whole 207-article CAKE University knowledge base (630,810 chars, grepped in full) and zero hits on trycake.com/products/integrations (retrieved whole 2026-09-01). Not scored `no` on the second platform: the CAKE Market article is a category directory, and directories are near-universally incomplete, so their absence there is not evidence of absence. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Market · retrieved 2026-09-01

extensibility-accounting-connectors

The KB's SHOGO article documents more than two GL targets and genuine mapped journal entries rather than CSV export: 'Select Your Accounting System: Choose the preferred accounting software you would like to integrate with, such as QuickBooks for Windows, QuickBooks Online, or Xero. Map Your Data: Match your Point of Sale or eCommerce reference data with your accounting reference data within SHOGO. Automate the Sync: Once everything is set up, SHOGO will automatically sync your daily sales data to your accounting system each morning', and the companion Quickbooks and Xero articles repeat 'post accounting entries automatically'. Named shortfall: the connector is NOT vendor-maintained. It is operated and supported by SHOGO -- the article's own block gives 'Developer: SHOGO', 'Email: support@shogo.io', a 14-day free trial and 'Tiered Pricing: per-store pricing decreases as you add more stores' -- and CAKE's Welcome to CAKE article says of its Market partners that 'All onboarding, setup and app support is handled directly by these trusted 3rd-party partners'. The Operator POS Terms reinforce it: Third Party Services are governed by terms 'directly between Operator and the applicable Third Party Provider', and 'CAKE DOES NOT WARRANT OR GUARANTEE ON-GOING ACCESS TO ANY THIRD PARTY SERVICE VIA THE POS SERVICE OR OTHERWISE.' Sync is also a once-daily morning batch. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Shogo · retrieved 2026-09-01

extensibility-payroll-export

CAKE documents machine-readable labor output but no named payroll destination. The Payroll: Labor Costs report 'provides detailed information about employee work hours and associated costs', distinguishing standard from overtime hours per job assignment; 'Accessing Timesheets Beyond 30 Days: Simply download the Excel version of the Payroll report for your desired date range', plus per-employee PDFs delivered as a zip, and every dashboard report offers Email and Download in PDF or Excel. Named shortfall: not one payroll provider is named. Gusto, ADP, Paychex and Paylocity return zero hits across the 207-article CAKE University knowledge base (630,810 chars, grepped in full) and zero hits on trycake.com/products/integrations (retrieved whole 2026-09-01); the trycake.com mega-nav's 'Pay Staff > Payroll' entry links to /products/integrations#payroll-scheduling-tips, whose content is the Scheduling & Labor section naming only Dolce and 7shifts, and the KB's 7shifts article describes data flowing the other way ('Real-time sales are plotted directly into your schedules'). Hours therefore reach payroll only through an operator-handled spreadsheet, which is the re-keying the claim asks about. Not scored `no`: a partner directory cannot bound the integration surface from below. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Dashboard-Payroll-Reports · retrieved 2026-09-01

extensibility-app-marketplace

A marketplace exists and is publicly browsable: the KB's CAKE Market (Point of Sale Integrations) article lists named partners by category -- ACCOUNTING (Quickbooks, Xero), OPERATIONS (Orca, Guest Manager, Swipe Cards, Cheddrsuite, itsacheckmate), PAYMENTS (Gift Cards), HARDWARE (ChefTab, OrderPad), MARKETING -- and the CAKE Admin Portal Overview documents an in-portal 'Market' tile: 'Explore 3rd party integrations CAKE works with, such as Doordash, ItsACheckmate, Restaurant365, and more!'. Named shortfalls: (1) the public marketplace address is broken -- https://market.cake.net/, still cited as the partner WEBSITE in the KB's 7shifts article, 301-redirects to https://madmobile.com/products/cake/integrations/, which returned HTTP 404 on 2026-09-01, so what remains public is a help-centre category list and a marketing page. (2) Self-install is documented for exactly one partner -- 'Get started with DoorDash via CAKE Marketplace in the Admin Portal' on trycake.com/products/integrations -- while every other partner is a hand-off: Uber Eats is 'Contact CAKE', SHOGO is joined by signing up at shogo.io, and Welcome to CAKE states 'All onboarding, setup and app support is handled directly by these trusted 3rd-party partners.' https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Market · retrieved 2026-09-01

extensibility-headless-embedded

Architecture claim about how far a third-party front end can drive the transaction engine. The In-Store Channels report section (POS, CAKEpop, CAKE Kiosk) is a revenue comparison across CAKE's own ordering surfaces, not a supported-integrations table, and by its own scope excludes online and third-party channels that the same report set counts elsewhere. The one relevant fact points the other way without settling it: the withdrawn portal's indexed text describes a third-party order API that places and tracks externally originated orders, which is the beginning of a headless path. Measuring that a document is absent never establishes how a system is built.

extensibility-data-portability-exit differentiator

Real machine-readable export exists at report level: the Reporting FAQ states 'CAKE Reports can go back any amount of time, there is no restriction on data' and that Transaction reports 'can be exported for any length of time, but on screen, you will only see up to 120 days of data. To get more data for a longer range, simply export to excel'; the Payments report offers 'an orange download option ... to export an Excel (.XLS) file'; the Payroll report exports Excel plus per-employee PDFs; every dashboard report carries Email and Download (PDF or Excel). Named shortfalls: (1) scope -- exports are per report, and no article documents an export of the customer/CRM database or of the menu (menu changes are made and published in Menu Admin, with no export path documented anywhere); (2) contract end -- the published Operator POS Terms (trycake.com/legal-agreements, retrieved 2026-09-01) create no export or data-return right at termination and instead place the duty on the operator: 'Operator is responsible for ensuring its payments and data systems are fully protected against unauthorized breaches and maintaining backups of Operator Data at all times. While Cake may archive certain Operator Data while the Account is active and not in default, if there is any loss of Operator Data, Operator's exclusive remedy is for Cake to use commercially reasonable efforts to attempt to replace or restore the lost data from the latest backup (if any)'. So export is available on demand while the account is live, and nothing is promised at exit. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/FAQ-Reporting · retrieved 2026-09-01

reliability-offline-order-entry

Order entry and check printing are documented to continue: when the CAKE network loses connectivity 'all POS devices across your CAKE network automatically switch to Offline Mode', a banner appears 'on the order screen and payment screen', discounts, service charges, comps and tips are 'applied normally', and receipts print with 'full order details' — i.e. staff keep building and closing orders on-terminal through the outage. Shortfall: kitchen ticket routing during an outage is documented nowhere — the Offline Payments what-works table does not mention prep printers or KDS, and no other article in the 218-URL CAKE University sitemap addresses it; the only statement is a 'Stay Operational Offline' bullet on CAKE's KDS marketing page (trycake.com/products/kitchen-display-sytem), which is a vendor claim, not documentation. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Offline-Payments · retrieved 2026-08-04

reliability-offline-card-auth differentiator

'Offline Payments allow your POS devices to continue accepting credit card transactions even when the internet connection is lost. Instead of stopping service, payments are securely stored and processed once connectivity returns.' The mechanism is documented step by step: 'The network detects the loss of connection. All POS devices across your CAKE network automatically switch to Offline Mode. A banner message appears on the order screen and payment screen ... Card transaction data is securely stored locally. Once the internet connection returns, the system automatically submits the stored payments for authorization. Offline transactions can be stored for up to 72 hours before they expire.' A status indicator moves Online -> Offline -> Recovery. Card methods are enumerated per device: the Next Generation Payment Cube supports Tap, Chip and Swipe offline; the Original Payment Cube supports Swipe only; manual entry and gift cards are unsupported offline. Conditions worth recording: the 'Offline Card Payments' setting must be enabled BEFORE the outage ('If it was not enabled beforehand, card payments cannot be accepted while offline'), it applies at CAKE-network level to all devices at the location, and 'This setting is typically enabled by default.' https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Offline-Payments · retrieved 2026-09-01

reliability-offline-decline-liability differentiator

Liability is stated explicitly: 'Because payments cannot be authorized while offline, there is always a risk that a transaction may be declined later by the issuing bank', and under Risks, Limitations, and Merchant Responsibilities, 'You are responsible for managing offline transactions. CAKE is not liable for transactions that are declined, lost due to power loss or disconnection, or expire before they are processed.' The published cap is temporal and is disclosed three times: 'Offline transactions can be stored for up to 72 hours before they expire'; 'Transactions expire after a limited time -- Offline transactions are stored for a limited window (typically up to 72 hours). If not processed in time, they will be permanently lost'; and in the FAQ, 'Why were my offline transactions lost? Transactions may be lost if the POS loses power, the payment device is disconnected, or connectivity is not restored within the 72-hour limit.' Recorded precisely for the reader: the loss falls on the merchant, and the only limit CAKE publishes is that 72-hour storage window -- no per-transaction dollar ceiling and no cumulative offline total appears on this page, anywhere else in the 207-article knowledge base, or in the Operator POS Terms or CAKE Payment Terms at trycake.com/legal-agreements (read whole 2026-09-01). https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Offline-Payments · retrieved 2026-09-01

reliability-lan-degraded-multi-terminal differentiator

Degraded operation is documented at network scope, not per device: 'All POS devices across your CAKE network automatically switch to Offline Mode'; 'This setting is applied at the CAKE network level, meaning when it is enabled, it applies to all POS devices across your location'; 'All POS devices on your CAKE network automatically switch to Offline Mode / All POS devices display an offline notification / Supported card payments can still be accepted / Transactions are stored locally until connectivity returns.' The architecture supports it: the V3 Installation Guide wires every terminal and printer to the CAKE-supplied router or to a switch behind it ('Only CAKE equipment is permitted on the CAKE network'), multiple terminals are onboarded with 'the same Token and PIN for each', and the White List Ports article lists 'Couch Db replication' among the CAKE network's own port uses. Named shortfall: no CAKE article states that a single check or table remains shared, visible and editable from a second terminal while the internet is down. The Offline Payments feature matrix covers discounts, service charges, comps, tips, receipts and reports and says nothing about cross-terminal order state, and Close Cash is explicitly blocked during Offline Mode and Recovery. Per-terminal islands are therefore not ruled out by anything published. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Offline-Payments · retrieved 2026-09-01

reliability-local-transaction-engine differentiator

A local path is documented rather than pure cloud request/response. The installation guide makes a CAKE-supplied router mandatory -- 'The CAKE Router enables communication between CAKE hardware devices and provides internet connectivity to the network ... only one CAKE Router is permitted in a network setup' -- terminals and printers wire into its yellow ports or a CAKE switch behind it, and 'Only CAKE equipment is permitted on the CAKE network. Do not connect non-CAKE devices ... Non-CAKE devices on this network may cause system outages.' The Epson KDS guide reserves 10.10.10.50-59 on that LAN for KDS equipment with the POS printing straight to stations. Offline Payments then documents local persistence: 'Card transaction data is securely stored locally', held up to 72 hours and submitted automatically on reconnect. Named shortfall: CAKE documents no on-premise transaction SERVER or edge appliance. The router (Zyxel or Cradlepoint) is documented purely as a connectivity device, the local state lives on the POS terminals themselves, and the ordering path still depends on the cloud for much of its function -- loyalty, gift cards, pre-authorization and manual card entry all stop offline, reports are 'Delayed / Sync after reconnecting', and Close Cash is blocked. No article describes a local database, edge server or on-premise service as a product component. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/V-3-Installation-Guide · retrieved 2026-09-01

reliability-offline-kds-printing

What CAKE documents: in the Offline Mode feature matrix, 'Receipts -- Yes -- Includes full order details', which shows local printing continuing through an outage, alongside Discounts, Service Charges, Comps and Tips as supported and Reports as 'Delayed'. Kitchen devices sit on the same vendor-controlled LAN the POS prints to directly -- the V3 Installation Guide wires every printer to the CAKE Router or a switch behind it, the Epson KDS setup guide reserves 10.10.10.50-59 for KDS equipment, the Epson KDS Software article has the POS configured to print 'Directly to the IB01 expansion boxes', and ChefTab 'plugs into your network as a replacement for traditional kitchen printers'. Named shortfalls: (1) the Offline Payments article -- CAKE's only outage documentation -- omits kitchen printers and the KDS entirely from its supported/unsupported table, so continued kitchen routing is nowhere stated by CAKE at grade B; (2) the sole positive assertion is a KDS product-page bullet at trycake.com/products/kitchen-display-sytem, 'Stay Operational Offline: Never lose an order, even during network interruptions. Our system continues to operate and syncs orders once connectivity is restored', which is marketing; (3) CAKE limits its own KDS responsibility in the Epson KDS FAQ -- 'Support is very limited as we do not have direct access to the KDS system.' https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Offline-Payments · retrieved 2026-09-01

reliability-printer-fallback

Only static redundancy is documented, not failover. System Options > Sending offers 'Items Sent to Other Printers: When enabled, all items print on every prep ticket, regardless of their initially assigned printer, ensuring kitchen staff are fully informed', plus a Custom Item Station override for open items; V3 Menu Admin: Items allows 'Printers: Assign up to 2 printers this item will print at'; and the Epson KDS group supports 'Backup paper ticket support: Hard copies can be printed through Omnilink printers in the KDS group if needed', each KDS unit including 'a printer that can produce backup paper tickets if needed'. Shortfall: nothing in the Sending, Printers or Printer Assignments articles describes automatic re-routing when a configured printer is unreachable, and no staff alert on printer failure is documented — the redundancy is configured in advance and prints unconditionally. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Sending-Settings · retrieved 2026-08-03

reliability-sync-conflict-handling

No conflict-resolution policy appears in the readable corpus, but that corpus cannot bound CAKE's published documentation. Verified 2026-09-04 through the Salesforce Aura getArticleVersionId action that CAKE-KDS-Workflow (ka0Up000000ELPZIA4), Next-Gen-Payment-Cube (ka0Up000000EhOTIA0) and Checkmate-Onboarding (ka0R30000004ao5IAA) are live KB articles absent from the 207-slug sitemap, while two fabricated control slugs return a null returnValue — so the sitemap is a floor, not a census, and CAKE's own Operator POS Terms 4.3.2 links to Next-Gen-Payment-Cube, one of the unlisted ones. Within what is readable, sync appears only as one-way catch-up (Offline-Payments: 'Once the internet connection returns, the system automatically submits the stored payments') and as a KDS bump-state mirror; the single architectural hint is the 'Couch Db replication' firewall port in White-List-Ports, which implies a replicating multi-master store that must have a resolution rule and states none. That is absence of evidence, not evidence of absence. adversarially verified

reliability-offline-feature-matrix

The article carries a titled section, 'What Works (and What Doesn't) in Offline Mode', laid out as a Feature / Supported in Offline Mode? / Notes table: Discounts Yes 'Applied normally'; Service Charges Yes; Comps Yes; Tips Yes 'Can be added and adjusted; processed after reconnecting to the internet'; Receipts Yes 'Includes full order details'; Reports 'Delayed -- Sync after reconnecting'; Loyalty No 'Requires live connection'; Gift Cards No 'Not supported offline'; Pre-Authorization No 'Not supported offline'; Manual Card Entry No 'Not supported offline'. A second table enumerates payment methods per device (Next Generation Payment Cube: Tap, Chip, Swipe supported, manual entry and gift cards not; Original Payment Cube: Swipe only), and the FAQ adds 'Can I close cash while Offline Mode is active? No. Close Cash is not available while Offline Mode or Recovery is active.' Coverage against the claim's examples: gift cards, loyalty lookup and manual card entry are all explicitly listed as unavailable; refunds and text-to-pay are not addressed by the table either way. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Offline-Payments · retrieved 2026-09-01

reliability-public-status-page

The page exists, is linked from the site's own Resources menu as 'System Status', is listed in trycake.com's sitemap, and requires no login: retrieved anonymously on 2026-09-01, HTTP 200, 91,214 bytes. Named shortfall: after stripping navigation and footer, the page's entire status content is one line, 'All Systems Operational'. There is no per-component breakdown (no POS, payments, online ordering, KDS or Admin Portal rows), no current or past incident entries, no uptime history or timeline, no maintenance schedule and no subscribe control; the HTML embeds no third-party status provider -- the only iframe in the source is Google Tag Manager, and no statuspage.io or status.io host is referenced anywhere in the page. status.cake.net, status.trycake.com and status.madmobile.com do not resolve in DNS. https://trycake.com/cake-status · retrieved 2026-09-01

reliability-247-live-support

The How to Contact CAKE Support article: 'our Support Team is here to assist you 24/7 ... 1. Call -- For direct and immediate assistance: Call (352)772-2253. This is the fastest way to get help if you need live troubleshooting or have urgent questions about your CAKE system', with chat and email alongside, and a Support Availability section, 'The CAKE Support Team is available 24/7 to ensure your restaurant's operations run smoothly. Whether it's day or night, you can always reach out for assistance.' The Welcome to CAKE onboarding article independently states '24/7 Customer Support -- Our in-house Support staff is available by phone, sms, and web chat 24/7. Reach us a 855.696.CAKE', and the Gift Cards and CAKE Secure Login articles both route readers to 'our 24/7 support team at (855)696-2253'. On inclusion: trycake.com/pricing (retrieved 2026-09-01) lists '24/7 U.S. Human Support' as a row present in all three plans -- Core, Growth and Scale -- and answers 'Is support included?' with 'Yes. Support is included for the life of your plan. Core includes 24/7 U.S. human support', the higher plans adding bilingual/platinum support and a dedicated account manager rather than adding availability. No paid support tier appears anywhere in the 207-article knowledge base, and the Operator POS Terms' support clause (3.8, 'Customer support is available for certain Cake Services') names no hours, tier or fee. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Contacting-Support · retrieved 2026-09-01

reliability-onsite-install differentiator

The vendor's own onboarding article is explicit in both directions: 'Your hardware will be shipped directly to you with detailed instructions on installation. Installation is relatively straightforward but if you'd rather have it completed for you we can direct you to one of our CAKE Certified 3rd-Party Installers ... to setup a date and discuss the specifics of your installation. You are also free to contract the installation to a 3rd-party of your choosing. Totally up to you, but Mad Mobile does not offer installation services in-house.' The Pre-Installation Requirements article repeats the referral: 'For large, complex, or unique installations, we recommend contacting one of our CAKE Certified Installers for specialized assistance.' Named shortfalls: (1) the vendor states it performs no installation itself, so a certified-referral network is the ceiling; (2) trycake.com/pricing (retrieved 2026-09-01) shows 'White Glove Install (Best Buy)' as merely 'available' on the Growth and Scale plans and answers 'Is installation included?' with 'Growth and PAYG customers receive virtual installation or white-glove in-person installation through Best Buy. Core customers can set up using guided self-install tools', so the entry plan is remote self-install; (3) go-live support itself is remote by default -- the KB offers a 'Complimentary Virtual Training session with your Onboarding Specialist', while 'Premium on-site training can also be purchased.' https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Welcome-to-CAKE · retrieved 2026-09-01

reliability-menu-build-service differentiator

CAKE does perform the build for customers who buy one: the operator uploads up to 20 menu files (.jpg .png .pdf .doc .xls and others) through Start Menu in the Merchant Portal, 'Your menu is then processed by CAKE. While the menu is being encoded, you will see a Menu Build Status Key', and 'Please allow 48-72 hours for your menu to be completed and uploaded by CAKE to your Merchant Portal/POS'; Premium customers may simply email their menus to their Onboarding Specialist -- 'We'll take it from here.' Named shortfall: it is a paid add-on rather than a standard part of onboarding. The Premium Menu Build article states 'If you are interested in purchasing either a Standard Menu Build or a Premium Menu Build, give our Support Team a call. A Menu Consultant will contact you with a quote', and a Standard build 'only includes the encoding of items, prices, and categories. You get a one-time menu submission and no Menu Consultant. Once the menu build is complete, you will be responsible for any modifiers, timed menu sessions, and edits.' The submission article's first branch is 'No Menu Build Purchased: If you decided not to purchase a menu build from CAKE, you'll want to get started building your menu through the Merchant Portal', and the Pre-Installation Checklist asks 'Did you select one of our menu build services'. Contrary vendor statement recorded rather than resolved: the Welcome to CAKE article says 'Building the menu is an essential part of your initial system setup and included in your hardware order', which conflicts with the purchase language in the other three articles. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Merchant-Portal-Menu-Submission-Process · retrieved 2026-09-01

reliability-hardware-replacement-sla

The Hardware Return Policy and Limited Warranty (published at trycake.com/legal-agreements, and at trycake.com/pages/hardware-return-policy-and-limited-warranty which redirects there; the document is dated 'Updated on September 23, 2025' and was retrieved 2026-09-01) states a one-year warranty and a true advance exchange: 'Cake warrants POS Hardware other than Apple products against substantial defects in materials and workmanship for a period of one year ... Cake will, in its sole discretion, and as Cake's sole obligation and Operator's sole remedy ... either repair the device or replace it with a new or refurbished model that is at least equivalent in functionality to the model being replaced ... If a replacement has been authorized (a Return Material Authorization) Cake will send the replacement device via regular ground service within three (3) business days of such determination and Operator must return each device for which a replacement was received (the RMA Device) within seven (7) calendar days from receiving the replacement.' Claims go to support@trycake.com; late or missing returns are billed per the Equipment Replacement Fee Schedule. Warranty extensions are purchasable 'in consideration for an additional payment as specified in the applicable Order'. Exclusions are stated (Apple products carry only the manufacturer's warranty; cosmetic damage, abuse, third-party repair, use with unapproved third-party hardware). Independently, trycake.com/pricing lists 'Lifetime Equipment Replacement*' as a row in all three plans, asterisked 'Limits may apply.' https://trycake.com/legal-agreements · retrieved 2026-09-01

reliability-pci-dss-4-attestation

The attestation limb is measurably absent and the equivalence limb is still unqueryable, so a disjunctive claim cannot be closed. Absent: trycake.com's complete 42-URL sitemap and madmobile.com's complete 13-URL sitemap contain no security, trust or compliance page; the 625 KB legal set contains no attestation; and across the corpus PCI, DSS, attestation, AoC, QSA and P2PE return only two articles plus incidental warnings. Those two settle nothing — PCI-DSS-Service-Provider-and-Customer-Responsibility-Matrix is 3,838 bytes of title plus roughly thirty Salesforce rtaImage tiles, so the matrix exists only as scanned images with no readable DSS version, assessor or date, and a responsibility matrix is not an Attestation of Compliance in any event; PCI-Compliance is merchant education ('Although CAKE POS enables PCI compliance, the business owner taking in the credit card information is also required to comply') pointing merchants to Worldpay from FIS. The only version-adjacent string anywhere is the Next-Gen-Payment-Cube row 'Improved security aligned with modern PCI payment standards', which names no version, assessor or listing. Unresolved because the 'or equivalent (e.g. validated P2PE listing)' disjunct lives in a third-party registry that still cannot be queried: listings.pcisecuritystandards.org returns the PCI Security Standards Council WordPress catch-all for every API path attempted.

reliability-mfa-role-based-access

The role-based half is documented in unusual depth. The User Management Guide's Permissions tab 'allows administrators to assign roles and access levels to users. This is where you define what each user can do', with a 'Copy From' control that copies 'from another user or a preset role (like Owner, Manager, or Employee)', and the article prints the full permission list: Restaurant Administrator, Guest Manager App Access, Admin Portal Access, CAKE Reports split into POS/Intel/Payments/CRM, Menu Admin split into Full/Edit Only/Publish/Read Only plus Stations, Tax, Time Session, Sales Category, Featured Item and Image management, User Admin (Full or Read Only), Timesheet, Customer Management, Email Marketing, Billing & Payment, System Options, Revenue Centers and Dashboard Settings, then roughly forty POS-level permissions from Item Void and Refund through POS Close Cash, Card Not Present Approval and Split Check. Access is revocable wholesale: 'If you want to keep a user in the system but revoke access, simply remove all their permissions. They will no longer appear on the POS or have Admin Portal access.' Named shortfall: no multi-factor authentication is documented anywhere. 'Two-factor', 'multi-factor', 'MFA', '2FA', 'authenticator', 'verification code' and 'SSO' return zero hits across the whole 207-article knowledge base (630,810 chars, grepped in full). The CAKE Secure Login article -- the complete Admin Portal account setup walkthrough -- is welcome email, set a password, link additional locations with that password, sign in at admin.cake.net, with no second-factor step; POS authentication is a 4-digit password set in User Management, or a swipe card ('employees can sign in simply by swiping a card -- no more juggling passwords or PINs'). Not scored `no` on MFA: a login screen we cannot see may offer an optional factor the help centre never documents. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/User-Management · retrieved 2026-09-01

reliability-self-serve-training

Practice mode on the terminal: 'Training Mode allows staff to practice entering orders and familiarize themselves with the CAKE POS system without impacting reports or live data ... Orders entered in Training Mode are practice orders only and will not be cataloged in reports', entered from the Sign-In Screen by tapping the Register Name, with a flashing red Training Mode indicator and a documented exit path; the article recommends running it continuously during training so staff can practise 'full processes like closing out shifts and end-of-day procedures' (stated limitation: 'Not all POS functions are available in Training Mode'). Public free library: CAKE University at university.cake.net is open -- all 207 articles were retrieved anonymously on 2026-09-01, robots.txt is 'Allow: /', and no login is required -- and it includes structured courses and recorded webinars: POS Employee Course, POS Manager Course Overview, POS Menu Admin Course, CAKE Dashboard Reports Course with a stated 45-minute completion time, and pre-recorded webinars for POS Basics, User Management, Timesheets, Menu Admin, Online Ordering and Guest Manager, each with per-topic video timestamps. The Welcome to CAKE article confirms it is included: 'Your purchase includes unlimited access to Mad Mobile University (university.cake.net) ... You can view videos, read the documentation and search for what you need. You can also take part in any of our live webinars.' https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/POS-Training-Mode · retrieved 2026-09-01

reliability-failover-terminal-role differentiator

CAKE-POS-V4-Installation-Guide wires every terminal identically to a Netgear switch behind the CAKE ZyXEL Router, which 'acts as the central hub that links all your CAKE devices together', and POS-Onboarding-Activation confirms the terminals are peers — an 'add-on POS' is activated with the same generated Pin and Token, and 'Once the POS boots up, all users will appear on the screen automatically.' No article in the corpus designates a master, primary or server terminal, names a local server appliance, or states what the remaining terminals do when one fails; failover, redundancy and high availability return no hits. The only documented master role belongs to a peripheral and its recovery is manual (Epson KDS: 'the main U220i will not drive a display. It will act as the controller of the KDS system'; 'you should try power cycling the master U220i'). A topology that names no primary is a different proposition from a documented automatic assumption of a master role, and the V4 troubleshooting FAQ — which covers the router's red globe icon, cabling, printer errors, the cash drawer and 'Payment Cube Not Detected' but not a failed terminal — asserts no completeness.

reliability-cellular-backup

The Internet Requirements section is a supported/unsupported enumeration rather than an overview: 'Ethernet Port: 1 always-active and available Ethernet port on an Internet Service Provider modem set to DHCP. Recommended Connection: Business-class DSL or Cable Internet. Unsupported Connections: Wireless connections such as Satellite, Radio Frequency, Microwave, Cellular, or Antenna Internet are not supported.' CAKE's own outage documentation is consistent with that and describes the opposite of automatic failover -- the Offline Payments article's remedy is Offline Mode plus a manually attached hotspot: 'Consider backup internet -- A mobile hotspot can help restore connectivity quickly during outages. For best results, connect the hotspot to your POS using an Ethernet cable; Wi-Fi is not supported', and in the FAQ, 'What if I know I won't regain internet within 72 hours? Use a mobile hotspot or backup internet source to reconnect your system.' A person plugging in a hotspot is not terminal-supported automatic LTE failover. Recorded because it cuts the other way: some sites are shipped a Cradlepoint router (the CAKE Router article pictures Cradlepoint and Zyxel models, and the White List Ports article opens port 8001 to cradlepointecm.com, 'Only necessary if Cradlepoint router is in use'), so cellular-capable hardware exists in the estate -- but no CAKE article documents an LTE modem, SIM, data plan or automatic cutover, and the requirements article rules cellular out as a supported connection. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Pre-Installation-Requirements · retrieved 2026-09-01

commercial-month-to-month-contract differentiator

Operator POS Terms and Conditions (Last Updated: February 26, 2026), section 10.1: 'Unless otherwise specified in an Order, the initial term of an Order shall automatically renew (subject to any applicable Renewal Rate) for successive two (2) year periods (or the length of the initial term of the applicable order if longer)', cancellable only on 60 days' written notice before expiry. Section 6.2's own worked example is 'a 36 month subscription term'. No month-to-month POS tier is offered anywhere on trycake.com (42-URL sitemap; the /pricing page lists Core, Growth and Scale with no term stated, and its FAQ answers 'Do I need to sign a long-term contract?' with 'CAKE plans run on standard processor agreements similar to other industry providers'). The contrast is internal to the same page: the Guest Manager Terms DO grant month-to-month renewal ('shall automatically renew on a month to month basis thereafter'), so the vendor says so where it means it. The POS terms do not. https://trycake.com/legal-agreements · retrieved 2026-09-01

commercial-no-early-termination-fee differentiator

Operator POS Terms section 6.2 (Early Termination Fee): if the Operator terminates without cause before the end of the Term, it 'shall pay to Cake, as an early termination fee for the affected location, an amount equal to either: Pay-As-You-Please Subscriptions: one-hundred and fifty dollars ($150.00) multiplied by the number of months remaining on the Term, or All Other Term Subscriptions: the average aggregate monthly Fees for software services and card processing services ... multiplied by .80 and then multiplied by the number of months remaining on the Term'. The worked example is $8,620.80 for terminating a 36-month term at month 12. The clause is liquidated-damages in form: 'the damages that would be incurred by Cake as a result of any Early Termination are difficult to calculate, and the Early Termination Fee described above is intended as a reasonable approximation of such damages and not as a penalty.' It is charged in addition to fees through termination, outstanding amounts for Purchased Hardware and any equipment replacement fee, and may be ACH-debited or netted out of card settlement. https://trycake.com/legal-agreements · retrieved 2026-09-01

commercial-autorenew-terms-published

Operator POS Terms section 10.1, publicly readable at trycake.com/legal-agreements without login or quote: the initial term of an Order 'shall automatically renew ... for successive two (2) year periods (or the length of the initial term of the applicable order if longer), provided, however, that: (a) either party may provide written notice of its intent not to renew an applicable Order by giving written notice to the other party at least 60 days before the expiration of the initial term or then-current renewal term'. Renewal pricing is stated too - the 'Renewal Rate' is the higher of the rate in the Order and Cake's then-current pricing for similarly situated Operators. The Guest Manager Terms on the same page state month-to-month renewal on 30 days' notice. Only the length of the INITIAL term is left to the signed Order. https://trycake.com/legal-agreements · retrieved 2026-09-01

commercial-processing-not-bundled differentiator

Third-party in-store processing is documented and contemplated. Operator POS Terms section 3.13.1: 'at Operator's request, Cake may refer Operator to point of sale payment processing services provided directly (and not in connection with PayFac Services) by third party vendor(s) (each a "Payment Processor") ... Operator will enter into any payment processing agreement(s) directly with those vendor(s)'; section 3.11 lists 'a merchant account for payment processing services' as an Operator-supplied deliverable; and the PCI Compliance article says 'If you have an external processor, we recommend you locate the tools they provide or reach out to their support'. Shortfall: online ordering is locked to CAKE Payments. The Activate Online Ordering article states 'CAKE Payments must be activated for Online Ordering - even if you use a third-party processor for in-store transactions', instructing such operators to apply and 'choose CC processing only for Online Ordering ... if you do not want to use it for in-store CC processing'. Second shortfall: the published packages are payments-funded ('Your POS cost is built into your processing rate, so you never receive a POS bill'), so no software-only price exists for an operator bringing its own processor. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Activate-Online-Ordering · retrieved 2026-09-01

commercial-interchange-plus-published differentiator

CAKE publishes no processing rate at all, interchange-plus or otherwise. The Payment Processing page's pricing section reads 'Straightforward Pricing. Custom rates that fit your flow. Our team builds a pricing plan around your volume, not a one-size-fits-all model.' The /pricing page prices three packages at '$0 down. No bill. Ever.' with no bps figure, no per-transaction figure and no interchange language, answering 'How much does CAKE cost?' with 'Your processing rate covers everything, so you never receive a POS bill'. The trycake.com sitemap enumerates 42 URLs and holds no rate card. The Operator POS Terms locate all Fees in the non-public Order / Account Application, and the CAKE Payments help article publishes only ancillary fees ($20 per chargeback, $3 for payout failure or notice of change) alongside 'Competitive standard transaction fees'. The published model is a bundled platform fee funded by card processing - the opposite of a stated cost-plus markup. https://trycake.com/products/payment-processing · retrieved 2026-09-01

commercial-rate-increase-clause differentiator

Operator POS Terms section 6.9 (Fees Changes): 'Cake reserves the right to change recurring Fees for the Cake Services at any time in Cake's sole discretion upon 30 days' notice (which may be by email) ... If Operator does not accept such Fee and/or rate change under this sub-Section 6.9, then Operator may terminate this Agreement by providing Cake written notice prior to the effective date of such Fee and/or rate change, and Operator shall only be liable to Cake for the payment of Fees and/or rates for Cake Services provided through the date of Operator's notice of termination.' That liability cap is what makes the exit penalty-free - it displaces the section 6.2 Early Termination Fee, which otherwise bites when an Operator 'opts to terminate the Agreement without cause'. The claim is a disjunction and this satisfies its second limb. The first limb is NOT met: nothing caps the size or frequency of increases and nothing confines them to pass-through interchange or network changes. https://trycake.com/legal-agreements · retrieved 2026-09-01

commercial-pricing-published

Three plans are named but the only figure on the site is '$0 down. No bill. Ever.'; all real pricing is behind a quote request. https://trycake.com/ · retrieved 2026-08-01

commercial-module-unbundling differentiator

CAKE University documents each major module as its own separately purchased subscription bought from the CAKE Shop inside the Admin Portal, not as a tier of the POS. Online-Ordering-FAQ-Troubleshooting: 'Online Ordering with CAKE costs $50 per month. You can purchase a subscription through the CAKE Shop in the Admin Portal.' How-to-Activate-CAKE-Loyalty gives the checkout path - 'Log in to the Admin Portal and select the SHOP icon... On the hardware list, scroll down to the Additional Services section and add the Loyalty Subscription to your cart by changing the quantity to 1, then select Next' - and warns 'If the Loyalty tab isn't visible, ensure that you have purchased the CAKE Loyalty subscription from the CAKE Shop.' CAKE-KDS-Overview-Requirements: 'An active KDS Monthly Subscription is required, which can be purchased through the CAKE Shop.' CAKE-Kiosk-Onboarding-and-Configuration-Guide: 'Active Kiosk Subscription for each unit (purchased via the CAKE Shop).' OrderPad: an activation fee purchased in the Shop plus 'a subscription for each OrderPad you plan to use.' So modules are individually procurable and separately metered. Shortfalls, all named in the same documentation: the modules are not independent of one another - Enabling-CAKE-Marketing states 'CAKE Marketing requires the CAKE Loyalty feature to be enabled in order to work', so Marketing cannot be taken a la carte on its own; both carry POS version floors (Marketing 'requires POS version 7 (v7) or above', Loyalty 'version 6.36.12.0 or above'), which can force a POS upgrade request to CAKE Support; enabling Marketing is not self-service ('Send an email to support@trycake.com... request that the CAKE Marketing feature be enabled'); and the cancellation half of the claim is entirely undocumented - grepping the whole 290-article corpus for cancel returns only Accelerated Funding cancellation, and no article or public contract states that a module can be dropped independently or that the base POS subscription is unaffected when it is. Only Online Ordering carries a published price; the rest sit behind the Shop's Additional Hardware/Services Request Form. The Operator POS Terms at trycake.com/legal-agreements point the same way without settling it: section 10.1 treats services severally ('each Cake Service ... procured by Operator shall continue for the subscription term applicable to such Cake Services specified in the Applicable Order') while section 6.2 assesses the Early Termination Fee 'on a per location basis' rather than per module. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Online-Ordering-FAQ-Troubleshooting · retrieved 2026-09-02

commercial-hardware-purchase-outright

Outright purchase is a documented non-lease route: Operator POS Terms section 4.6.1 (Purchased Hardware) - 'Upon full payment for and acceptance of delivery of the Purchased Hardware, Operator will acquire ownership of and title to the hardware components of the Purchased Hardware', with section 4.6.2 covering installment Payments Plans. Leasing is one alternative among several (separate POS Hardware Lease Terms and EZ Pay Terms are published beside it), so no mandatory lease. Shortfalls, both material as the claim is worded: (1) NO published price for any terminal, KDS screen or printer - /pricing sells three packages at '$0 down. No bill. Ever.' and asserts 'There are no monthly software or hardware fees', and the 42-URL trycake.com sitemap holds no hardware price list; (2) where the lease route is taken it is a non-cancelable term lease - the Lease Terms keep 'Title to the Leased Hardware ... with Cake throughout the Lease Period', authorise precautionary UCC-1 filings, charge rent 'at the monthly rate specified in the applicable Order', and offer only an end-of-lease purchase 'at the then-current fair market value ... mutually agreed upon by both parties'. https://trycake.com/legal-agreements · retrieved 2026-09-01

commercial-hardware-not-locked differentiator

Three documented non-proprietary options. (1) CAKE OrderPad: 'iPad: The central device for the OrderPad system' and, verbatim, 'You can purchase these components bundled in the CAKE Shop or source your iPad from other vendors while buying the Bluetooth Reader and Vault Connect2 Case separately' - a standard operator-supplied iPad is supported. (2) Epson KDS: the hardware requirements name the 'TM-U220i: Intelligent Epson impact printer' as the core component, with backup tickets 'printed through Omnilink printers in the KDS group' - stock Epson hardware. (3) ChefTab by Select Electronics: 'ChefTab connects in place of your kitchen printer and works directly with your CAKE POS', over Wi-Fi or Ethernet, with touchscreen or bump-bar input. The POS terminal itself and its paired payment reader are CAKE-supplied, so the lock is at the terminal rather than across the peripheral estate - but the claim asks only for at least one documented third-party option and there are three. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/OrderPad · retrieved 2026-09-01

commercial-data-export-self-serve

Self-serve export is documented and unmetered. The Reporting FAQ: 'CAKE Reports can go back any amount of time, there is no restriction on data ... Transaction reports can be exported for any length of time, but on screen, you will only see up to 120 days of data. To get more data for a longer range, simply export to excel. All other reports can view and export at any length of time.' Every Dashboard report carries a toolbar with 'Download - PDF or Excel download of the current report' plus email delivery; the In-Store Channels report offers 'Export the report as a CSV or PDF'; the Payments report has an 'orange download option ... to export an Excel (.XLS) file'; the Payroll report exports labour detail ('The downloaded Excel report will include detailed timesheet information in the Timesheet Details tab') and per-employee PDFs as a zip. Orders, payments and labour are all self-exportable without contacting support or paying a fee. Shortfalls: the exports are per-report aggregates by dimension (Overview, Payment Type, Order Type, Employee, Register, Zone, Revenue Center, Discounts), so ORDER-LEVEL LINE ITEMS are in no export -- individual line items are reachable only by clicking a transaction to open its receipt as a PDF; and the claim's API alternative cannot be evidenced, since no API is documented on any readable CAKE host and the string 'API' occurs nowhere in the 291-article knowledge base or on trycake.com/pricing or /products/integrations. The developer.cake.net leg is withdrawn as refuted: probed on 2026-09-02 with redirects NOT followed, the host returns HTTP 301 Moved Permanently (Server: awselb/2.0) to https://trycake.com:443/ for every path tried including /robots.txt, so it serves no document of any kind -- the 224,679-byte 'catch-all body' was trycake.com's, attributed to the wrong origin. Nothing is gated there and no policy question remains, but that closes only that host: CAKE could still document an API in a partner-gated portal, a PDF or the SSO-walled Admin Portal, none of which we can read. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/FAQ-Reporting · retrieved 2026-09-02

commercial-export-customer-and-loyalty differentiator

Gift-card liability is exportable: the Gift Cards: Balances report 'shows a list of all activated gift cards and their outstanding balances, with the total number of cards and the overall outstanding balance summarized at the top', with columns Card # (first four and last four digits), Activation Date and Outstanding Balance, alongside a Transactions report split by Activation, Reload, Redemption and Cash Redemption - and every Dashboard report carries the PDF/Excel download toolbar. Shortfalls: (1) no guest/customer export exists - the Dashboard Reports Course enumerates the suite as Payroll, Transactions, Gift Card, Order Transfer, Payments and Sales, the guest record is a Guest Manager profile edited in-app ('Their profile can also be edited by your hosts in the white space at right'), and Guest Manager's own Control Center reporting is limited to covers seated, walk-away percentage, phone numbers collected and quoted-versus-actual wait times; (2) no loyalty export - Rewards are stamp-count rewards configured under Settings > Rewards with no points ledger and no report anywhere in the 207-article knowledge base. One of the three data classes the claim names is exportable and two are not. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/Cake-Dashboard-Giftcard-Reports · retrieved 2026-09-01

commercial-post-termination-export-window differentiator

Operator POS Terms section 10.6 (Effect of Termination) specifies the opposite of a retrieval window: on termination '(a) Operator's access to the Cake account is also terminated and Operator must cease using any Cake Service, (b) any licenses provided to Operator under the Agreement will end, (c) Cake has the right (but has no obligation) to delete all Operator information and any data, including transactional data, stored on servers controlled by Cake (except as prohibited by law), (d) Cake will not be liable for any damage, losses (including any loss of data or profits) or any other consequences to Operator or any third party for termination or suspension of access to the Cake Services or for deletion of any information associated with Operator's account'. The section is the contract's own complete statement of what happens on termination and it names no number of days, no export obligation and no transition assistance; its surviving-terms list at 10.6(e) is intellectual property ownership, arbitration obligations, indemnification obligations, Gift Card obligations, limitations of liability and the obligation to pay fees, none of which preserves access to data. The only remedy contemplated is a pro-rated refund of fees for services not yet delivered where Cake terminates for reasons not within the Operator's reasonable control. https://trycake.com/legal-agreements · retrieved 2026-09-02

commercial-data-ownership-clause differentiator

Operator POS Terms section 13.1.2 states no merchant ownership and grants the opposite of a use constraint: 'Operator hereby grants Cake a non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free, fully paid up, and worldwide license to use, copy, modify (including the right to create derivative works of), display and share Operator Data in connection with the Cake Services, Third Party Services, for internal business purposes ... The foregoing grant includes the right for Cake to share Operator Data with third parties in connection with the marketing and provision of the Cake Services as well as Third Party Services used by or that may be of interest to Operator.' Operator Data is defined to include 'any and all credit card transaction and fees and related sales processing and payout data' and may include Personal Information. The only express ownership statement nearby runs the other way - section 13.1.1: Cake 'and its business partners own all information that is provided to Operator as part of the Cake Services that is not Buyer Data or sourced from Operator Data'. Section 13.1.3 additionally lets anonymised/aggregated Operator Data 'be used, compiled, disclosed, distributed and published by Cake for any purpose in any manner in its discretion'. Neither limb of the claim survives the text. https://trycake.com/legal-agreements · retrieved 2026-09-01

commercial-pci-p2pe-tokenization

Documented: 'With your CAKE POS, credit card data is encrypted the moment you swipe a credit card. This is true whether you are online or using our offline payments mode system option ... Credit card data is never stored unencrypted. The data remains encrypted as it is transmitted from your CAKE POS, to the server, and to the credit card processor', plus 'additional layers of security, such as SSL protocols and data tokenization'. Shortfalls, all from the vendor's own PCI documents: (1) 'P2PE' and 'point-to-point' appear nowhere in the 207-article knowledge base and no PCI SSC validated P2PE solution listing is cited; (2) no SAQ is named - the PCI DSS Service Provider and Customer Responsibility Matrix (published as 29 page images, fetched and read here) says in Exhibit A only that 'The SAQ type merchant is eligible to complete is based on how it accept payment cards', leaving the determination to the merchant; (3) no scope reduction is claimed - the matrix runs the full twelve requirement families and repeatedly makes the customer 'ultimately responsible' for firewall and router configuration, network and cardholder-data-flow diagrams, and quarterly ASV scans for every merchant level, which is not SAQ A or SAQ P2PE-HW scope. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/PCI-Compliance · retrieved 2026-09-01

commercial-pci-dss-4-controls

The PCI DSS Service Provider and Customer Responsibility Matrix (published as page images in CAKE University; footer 'CAKE PCI Responsibility Matrix v1.0.0') states on its first page: 'This matrix summarizes the allocation of responsibilities as between Cake and its customers as pertains to security controls and processes for PCI DSS Requirements and the point of sale and payments solutions provided by Cake... The PCI Reference numbers below, in the left hand column, are based on PCI DSS v3.2.1 control standards.' It is a control-by-control document, exhaustive of the standard it maps, and that standard is not v4.0.1; its Exhibit A is dated as of early 2019. Nothing in it or elsewhere documents a requirement 6.4.3 or 11.6.1 payment-page script-integrity control for CAKE Online Ordering. On MFA, the Sign In Settings article enumerates the entire configurable sign-in surface -- Quick PIN Sign In ('assigns a unique 4-digit number to each user'), Card Swipe Sign In, Alphanumeric Passwords, and Minimum Password Length 'requiring more characters between 4-7' -- with no second factor at all, and the CAKE Secure Login article documents Admin Portal access as a welcome-email link plus a password. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/PCI-DSS-Service-Provider-and-Customer-Responsibility-Matrix · retrieved 2026-09-02

commercial-privacy-dsar-tooling

The DPA limb is satisfied and the in-app tooling limb is not. Executable processor terms are published under POS Terms 9.3 Data Privacy rather than under a document titled DPA: 9.3.2 'Cake acts as a processor on behalf of Operator where Cake Processes the Personal Information of (i) Operator employees ... and (ii) Buyers where Operator uses the Services to communicate with or provide offerings (e.g., loyalty programs and rewards) directly to such Buyers', with instruction-following, a no-sell/no-share covenant, purpose limitation, general sub-processor authorisation under substantially similar written obligations, and rights-request assistance; 9.3.1 supplies the operator's execution. The exact shortfall on the tooling limb: the published route for locating, exporting and deleting an individual's records is human and off-platform - 'You may exercise any of the rights in this section or otherwise available to you under law by emailing us at support@trycake.com, or by contacting the Mad Mobile Privacy Office', with identity verification performed by Mad Mobile ('we may require you to sign a declaration under penalty of perjury') and appeals by email - and the vendor's commitment to the operator is assistance, not a control surface. The published CCPA Form is narrower still, covering only sale opt-out. No in-app locate/export/delete tooling is described anywhere; 'GDPR', 'CCPA', 'data subject', 'privacy request', 'delete customer' and 'export customer' return zero hits across all 207 KB articles, and the one customer-admin article documents an Edit pop-up with no delete or export control. https://trycake.com/legal-agreements · retrieved 2026-09-04 adversarially verified

commercial-wcag-kiosk-accessibility differentiator

No accessibility conformance report is published. This claim is about publication, and the vendor's published surfaces are testable: 'WCAG' and 'VPAT' occur zero times in the 606 KB of published legal text at /legal-agreements, whose own index of fourteen contracts contains no accessibility document; /accessibility returns 404 on both trycake.com and madmobile.com, and trycake's 404 body is byte-identical to a fabricated-slug control, so these are honest 404s rather than a soft-404 or an interstitial. The Self-Ordering Kiosk product page sells the kiosk on upselling, menu customisation, shorter lines, operational efficiency, secure payments and 'Flexible Deployment ... countertop or floor-standing configurations' and makes no accessibility, ADA, screen-reader, audio-jack or tactile-navigation claim; consumer web ordering is likewise unaddressed. The only accessibility-adjacent line published anywhere is the Privacy Policy's offer to supply that policy 'in an alternative format' on request. The trycake.com sitemap's 42 URLs likewise hold no accessibility page, which corroborates but cannot establish this -- a sitemap bounds a surface from above, never from below. https://trycake.com/products/self-ordering-kiosk · retrieved 2026-09-02

commercial-dual-pricing-compliant differentiator

CAKE's only documented fee mechanism is the POS Extra Fee, and it is the opposite of compliant surcharging: 'Automatically Applied to POS Orders: The Extra Fee is not linked to specific payment types. It automatically applies to all eligible POS orders, regardless of whether guests pay with credit, debit, or cash. (Note: It does not apply to Online Orders or Kiosk orders.)' The article's Visa Compliance FAQ states the limitation directly -- 'Does the Extra Fee apply to debit and cash too? Yes. The fee must apply to all tender types (credit, debit, and cash) to remain compliant', and 'Can I charge different fees for different payment types? No. The same fee amount must be applied across all payment types' -- and only four fee names are permitted (Operational Fee, Admin Fee, Restaurant Fee, Universal Service Fee) with an explicit prohibition on names 'like "credit card fee," "processing fee," or anything that targets a specific payment method'. It is configured at Admin Portal > Settings > Payments > Extra Fee, which the article presents as the whole configurable fee surface. Automatic debit and prepaid exclusion is therefore impossible by design, and CAKE says the capability does not yet exist: 'Will CAKE offer a more flexible surcharge option? Yes. A more advanced feature is in development, but this current method is required in the meantime.' Disclosure is receipt-only -- 'Fee details are included on receipts for clear communication with guests' -- with no menu-board disclosure workflow documented. https://university.cake.net/point_of_sale/s/article/POS-Extra-Fee · retrieved 2026-09-02