Vendors / Adjacent encroachers — ordering, middleware & back-office
QSR Automations
QSR Automations (ConnectSmart)
A first-party KDS and FOH/table-management layer, not a POS — it sits on top of Toast/Aloha/Oracle/Revel and owns the kitchen screen, bump bars and expo.
scored live legacy rubric
- Claims in scope
- 255
- Scored
- 36
- Assessed
- 28
- Unknown
- 227
- Not applicable
- 59
- Cells challenged
- 0
unknown, never as no.Identity
- Owner
- Crunchtime (site brands as "QSR Automations by Crunchtime"; products rebranded Crunchtime Kitchen / Host / Insights)
- Parent
- Xenial / Global Payments
- Who it is for
- Chains and high-volume kitchens needing production routing, capacity management and table management; integrates with 80+ POS rather than replacing them
- Site
- https://www.qsrautomations.com/
Pricing
transparency: unknown · unit: Quote only (unit not disclosed; historically per-KDS-screen/site licence plus hardware) · processor lock-in: no
- Software
- No public pricing; site routes all pricing to "Schedule Demo" for custom solutions and bundles.
Capabilities
Every claim is binary and checkable. Grades: A primary documentation · B product documentation · C pricing or feature page · D marketing claim · E third-party reporting · F inference with no source. A yes on a differentiator claim requires A or B.
Menu, modifiers & pricing engine
menu-pricing-nested-modifiers
No menu/pricing engine; consumes item and modifier data from the POS.
menu-pricing-modifier-price-by-parent-size
Migrated from the 2026-08-01 research pass; no source URL was recorded.
menu-pricing-fractional-placement differentiator
Not scored by this record.
menu-pricing-half-and-half-rule differentiator
Not scored by this record.
menu-pricing-topping-quantity-tiers
Migrated from the 2026-08-01 research pass; no source URL was recorded.
menu-pricing-size-style-matrix differentiator
Not scored by this record.
menu-pricing-included-allowance differentiator
Not scored by this record.
menu-pricing-combos
Not scored by this record.
menu-pricing-upsell-prompts differentiator
Not scored by this record.
menu-pricing-86-propagation
Not scored by this record.
menu-pricing-countdown-auto-86 differentiator
Not scored by this record.
menu-pricing-dayparting
Not scored by this record.
menu-pricing-channel-price-books
Not scored by this record.
menu-pricing-dual-pricing differentiator
Not scored by this record.
menu-pricing-versioning-effective-dates differentiator
Not scored by this record.
menu-pricing-franchise-hierarchy differentiator
Not scored by this record.
menu-pricing-allergen-nutrition
Not scored by this record.
menu-pricing-recipe-linkage differentiator
Not scored by this record.
menu-pricing-3p-menu-push
Not scored by this record.
menu-pricing-dynamic-pricing
Not scored by this record.
Payments & money movement
payments-processor-choice differentiator
Not scored by this record.
payments-published-rates differentiator
Not scored by this record.
payments-dual-pricing differentiator
Not scored by this record.
payments-surcharge-guardrails differentiator
Not scored by this record.
payments-emv-nfc
No payment acceptance in product.
payments-softpos-tap-to-pay differentiator
Not scored by this record.
payments-pay-at-table
Not scored by this record.
payments-qr-guest-pay differentiator
Not scored by this record.
payments-tip-adjust
Not scored by this record.
payments-tip-pooling differentiator
Not scored by this record.
payments-offline-store-and-forward differentiator
Not scored by this record.
payments-offline-decline-liability differentiator
Not scored by this record.
payments-gift-cards
Migrated from the 2026-08-01 research pass; no source URL was recorded.
payments-house-accounts
Not scored by this record.
payments-split-tender
Not scored by this record.
payments-refund-void-controls
Migrated from the 2026-08-01 research pass; no source URL was recorded.
payments-chargeback-tooling differentiator
Not scored by this record.
payments-card-on-file differentiator
Not scored by this record.
payments-payout-timing differentiator
Not scored by this record.
payments-multi-entity-routing differentiator
Not scored by this record.
payments-p2pe-pci4
Not scored by this record.
Delivery, dispatch & third-party channels
delivery-driver-roster
Delivery dispatch is outside the ConnectSmart product scope.
delivery-dispatch-board
Migrated from the 2026-08-01 research pass; no source URL was recorded.
delivery-route-map differentiator
Not scored by this record.
delivery-driver-tracking differentiator
Not scored by this record.
delivery-zones-polygon differentiator
Not scored by this record.
delivery-zone-pricing
Migrated from the 2026-08-01 research pass; no source URL was recorded.
delivery-address-validation
Not scored by this record.
delivery-driver-comp differentiator
Not scored by this record.
delivery-cash-reconcile
Not scored by this record.
delivery-daas-dispatch
Not scored by this record.
delivery-daas-fallback differentiator
Not scored by this record.
delivery-3p-direct-integration differentiator
Not scored by this record.
delivery-3p-injection
Not scored by this record.
delivery-menu-push
Not scored by this record.
delivery-86-sync
Not scored by this record.
delivery-store-pause
Not scored by this record.
delivery-3p-reconciliation differentiator
Not scored by this record.
delivery-injection-error-visibility differentiator
Not scored by this record.
delivery-tracking-page
Not scored by this record.
delivery-promise-time differentiator
Not scored by this record.
delivery-offline-behavior
Not scored by this record.
Digital ordering & guest-facing channels
digital-first-party-web
No first-party guest ordering channel; ingests digital orders from the POS/aggregators.
digital-menu-single-source
Migrated from the 2026-08-01 research pass; no source URL was recorded.
digital-native-app differentiator
Not scored by this record.
digital-account-saved-payment
Migrated from the 2026-08-01 research pass; no source URL was recorded.
digital-upsell-engine differentiator
Not scored by this record.
digital-scheduled-pacing
Not scored by this record.
digital-fulfillment-modes
Not scored by this record.
digital-qr-table
Not scored by this record.
digital-kiosk differentiator
Not scored by this record.
digital-group-ordering
Not scored by this record.
digital-catering-portal differentiator
Not scored by this record.
digital-voice-ai-phone differentiator
Not scored by this record.
digital-drivethru-ai
Not scored by this record.
digital-sms-ordering
Not scored by this record.
digital-google-order differentiator
Not scored by this record.
digital-apple-business-connect
Not scored by this record.
digital-loyalty-attach
Not scored by this record.
digital-subscriptions
Not scored by this record.
digital-promo-parity
Not scored by this record.
digital-guest-data-ownership differentiator
Not scored by this record.
digital-checkout-pci-sca
Not scored by this record.
digital-surcharge-transparency differentiator
Not scored by this record.
Guest data, loyalty & marketing
guest-loyalty-unified-profile
Migrated from the 2026-08-01 research pass; no source URL was recorded.
guest-loyalty-thirdparty-identity-attach differentiator
Not scored by this record.
guest-loyalty-accrual-models
Migrated from the 2026-08-01 research pass; no source URL was recorded.
guest-loyalty-tiers differentiator
Not scored by this record.
guest-loyalty-offline-behavior differentiator
Not scored by this record.
guest-loyalty-offer-stacking-rules differentiator
Not scored by this record.
guest-loyalty-targeted-offers differentiator
Not scored by this record.
guest-loyalty-rfm-segmentation differentiator
Not scored by this record.
guest-loyalty-lifecycle-automation
Migrated from the 2026-08-01 research pass; no source URL was recorded.
guest-loyalty-native-email-sms differentiator
Not scored by this record.
guest-loyalty-consent-management
Not scored by this record.
guest-loyalty-10dlc-registration
Not scored by this record.
guest-loyalty-campaign-attribution differentiator
Not scored by this record.
guest-loyalty-data-export-portability differentiator
Not scored by this record.
guest-loyalty-cdp-event-api differentiator
Not scored by this record.
guest-loyalty-review-capture-routing differentiator
Not scored by this record.
guest-loyalty-referral-program
Not scored by this record.
guest-loyalty-wallet-pass differentiator
Not scored by this record.
guest-loyalty-privacy-rights-tooling
Not scored by this record.
guest-loyalty-redemption-fraud-controls
Not scored by this record.
guest-loyalty-ai-offer-recommendation differentiator
Not scored by this record.
guest-loyalty-stored-value-gift
Not scored by this record.
Labor & workforce
labor-clock-in-at-pos
Parent Crunchtime sells labor/scheduling separately; not part of ConnectSmart.
labor-photo-punch-verification differentiator
Not scored by this record.
labor-geofenced-mobile-punch
Not scored by this record.
labor-offline-time-punch differentiator
Not scored by this record.
labor-granular-rbac
Checked 2026-08-04 and unresolved. The vendor's only public support library is the nine hardware/troubleshooting articles enumerated in qsrautomations.com/page-sitemap.xml (controller troubleshooting, TCP controller config, KP-9000 bump-bar pairing, Host common errors, Host quoting methods, ELO backpack in ControlPoint, licence expiration, screen not painting) — none covers user administration. The real admin documentation sits behind the DigitalChalk training portal (qsr.digitalchalk.com/dc/guest/login, login wall) and portal.qsr.cloud, which redirects to auth.qsr.cloud; Crunchtime's Zendesk help centre returns HTTP 403 to me at both support.crunchtime.com/hc/en-us and crunchtime.zendesk.com/hc/en-us, and its role/permission articles cover the Inventory/Labor/Teamworx suite rather than the Kitchen and Host products this record scores. The two first-party PDFs that are public (ConnectSmart Kitchen Installation Guide 5.3, ControlPoint Client Installation Guide 3.0, rehosted on cdn.pixelpointpos.com) are Windows install procedures dated 2015 and 2014; the only access control they describe is a single default ControlPoint account, username Administrator, password admin, with no role or per-action permission model. That is far too stale to score a current product against. No public statement on per-action, per-role, per-location permissions was found.
labor-manager-override-audit
Checked 2026-08-04 and unresolved. ConnectSmart/Crunchtime Kitchen has no tender, so the override surface that exists is kitchen-side (recall a bumped ticket, force an item, override a prep timer) and Host-side (override a quote or seat out of order) rather than voids and comps. Nothing published describes either. Searched the public support library (qsrautomations.com/support/, nine articles, all hardware or quoting) and read the Host quoting-methods article in full — it documents the six Windows and two iOS quoting methods and never mentions roles, manager access or audit logging. crunchtime.com/kitchen and /host are marketing pages with no administration detail. The admin guides are behind qsr.digitalchalk.com (login) and Crunchtime's Zendesk (HTTP 403 to me). No evidence either way on approver attribution or an immutable, queryable override trail.
labor-native-scheduling differentiator
Not scored by this record.
labor-demand-labor-forecast differentiator
Not scored by this record.
labor-realtime-labor-percent differentiator
Not scored by this record.
labor-overtime-prevention differentiator
Not scored by this record.
labor-break-compliance-by-state differentiator
Not scored by this record.
labor-fair-workweek-support
Not scored by this record.
labor-minor-labor-rules
Not scored by this record.
labor-tip-pooling-rules
Not scored by this record.
labor-tip-distribution-audit-trail
Not scored by this record.
labor-qualified-tips-w2-reporting differentiator
Not scored by this record.
labor-native-payroll differentiator
Not scored by this record.
labor-payroll-export-formats
Not scored by this record.
labor-shift-swap-workflow differentiator
Not scored by this record.
labor-digital-onboarding-i9
Not scored by this record.
labor-server-performance-metrics differentiator
Not scored by this record.
Inventory, purchasing & cost control
inventory-recipe-bom-costing
Parent Crunchtime sells inventory and recipe costing as separate products; not in ConnectSmart Kitchen.
inventory-unit-conversion-yields
Migrated from the 2026-08-01 research pass; no source URL was recorded.
inventory-theoretical-vs-actual differentiator
Not scored by this record.
inventory-realtime-depletion differentiator
Not scored by this record.
inventory-86-auto-sync differentiator
Not scored by this record.
inventory-count-modes
Migrated from the 2026-08-01 research pass; no source URL was recorded.
inventory-mobile-count-offline
Not scored by this record.
inventory-vendor-catalogs-edi differentiator
Not scored by this record.
inventory-invoice-ocr differentiator
Not scored by this record.
inventory-price-change-alerts differentiator
Not scored by this record.
inventory-par-auto-suggest differentiator
Not scored by this record.
inventory-waste-logging
Not scored by this record.
inventory-transfers
Not scored by this record.
inventory-commissary
Not scored by this record.
inventory-lot-traceability
Not scored by this record.
inventory-shelf-life-expiry
Not scored by this record.
inventory-bar-partial-bottle
Not scored by this record.
inventory-cogs-gl-export
Not scored by this record.
inventory-native-not-partner differentiator
Not scored by this record.
inventory-menu-margin-linkage differentiator
Not scored by this record.
Reporting, BI & data access
reporting-realtime-dashboard
Crunchtime Insights is marketed as an analytics/visualization layer; kitchen-performance oriented, not a POS sales dashboard. https://www.qsrautomations.com/ · retrieved 2026-08-01
reporting-eod-closeout
No tender/cash reconciliation; no payments in product.
reporting-pmix-modifier-level
Checked 2026-08-04 and unresolved. Insights is the reporting product here. qsrautomations.com/connectsmart-insights/ promises only 'real-time insights alongside historical analytics' and 'easy-to-read dashboards' and names no report; crunchtime.com/kitchen names the metrics as 'ticket times, station performance, and throughput metrics', which is kitchen speed of service, not sales mix. That is marketing prose, not a report catalogue, so it cannot carry a no. status.qsr.cloud confirms the shape of the platform — the reporting components are 'Insights Portal', 'Portal Dashboards', 'Portal Datasets' and 'Kitchen Speed of Service API' — but publishes no field list. The Crunchtime developer hub does document a Menu Mix resource (GetAllCheckMenuMixRecordsV1, 'Menu Mix sales data stored at the Check/Recipe Item level of granularity'), but developer.crunchtime.com scopes itself to Inventory & Labor, Ops Execution, Learning and Cruise — Kitchen and Host are absent from it — so that endpoint belongs to the sibling back-office product, not to the record scored here. Whether Insights reports modifier-level quantity with gross and net sales, filterable by daypart and revenue centre, is not publicly stated.
reporting-comps-voids-audit
Not scored by this record.
reporting-cash-over-short
Not scored by this record.
reporting-labor-productivity
Not scored by this record.
reporting-server-scorecards differentiator
Not scored by this record.
reporting-channel-profitability differentiator
Not scored by this record.
reporting-multiloc-drilldown differentiator
Not scored by this record.
reporting-custom-report-builder differentiator
Not scored by this record.
reporting-scheduled-delivery
Not scored by this record.
reporting-raw-warehouse-export differentiator
Not scored by this record.
reporting-public-api differentiator
Not scored by this record.
reporting-webhooks differentiator
Not scored by this record.
reporting-api-not-upcharged differentiator
Not scored by this record.
reporting-tier-paywall differentiator
Not scored by this record.
reporting-history-retention differentiator
Not scored by this record.
reporting-anomaly-alerts differentiator
Not scored by this record.
reporting-nl-query
Not scored by this record.
reporting-guest-cohorts differentiator
Not scored by this record.
reporting-sales-forecast differentiator
Not scored by this record.
reporting-tip-tax-compliance
Not scored by this record.
Multi-location, franchise & enterprise governance
multi-location-org-hierarchy
Checked 2026-08-04, unresolved. The claim needs a named hierarchy of at least three levels (enterprise > region/group > location) that reporting and permissions can be scoped to. The vendor's own surface is silent: the qsrautomations.com page sitemap shows no ControlPoint or enterprise product page (the old /connectsmart-controlpoint/ URL now 404s) and a public support library of nine hardware articles with no administration, permissions or reporting docs; the ConnectSmart Insights page claims dashboards 'compiled from one or multiple sites' and a 'birds-eye view of your restaurants' to 'identify underperforming locations', which is flat multi-site reporting language naming no grouping object; crunchtime.com/kitchen (where /connectsmart-kitchen/ now 301s) has no multi-location management content. Real hierarchy documentation does exist on support.crunchtime.com ('Basics: Hierarchy and Teams Overview': VP team > regional team > district team > locations, scoping visibility, task assignment and reporting) and in developer.crunchtime.com's Hierarchy Service, but both belong to sibling Crunchtime products - Ops Execution (ex-Zenput) and the Net-Chef Inventory/Labor platform whose Insights FAQ defines Insights as the BizIQ successor for 'Inventory Management and Labor & Scheduling' - and nothing public ties Kitchen, Host or ConnectSmart Insights to either. Third-party descriptions of 'ControlPoint Enterprise' say centralized multi-site device management for 'a restaurant company's entire enterprise' but name no hierarchy levels. No positive evidence of absence either, so unknown stands.
multi-location-central-menu-publish
Enterprise KDS config push is plausible for a chain product but I found no public documentation.
multi-location-local-override-policy differentiator
Not scored by this record.
multi-location-price-zones
No pricing engine.
multi-location-scheduled-publish differentiator
Not scored by this record.
multi-location-new-store-template differentiator
Not scored by this record.
multi-location-corp-vs-franchisee-roles differentiator
Not scored by this record.
multi-location-royalty-calculation differentiator
Not scored by this record.
multi-location-royalty-collection
Not scored by this record.
multi-location-consolidated-reporting
Not scored by this record.
multi-location-normalized-item-rollup differentiator
Not scored by this record.
multi-location-cross-location-giftcard
Not scored by this record.
multi-location-cross-location-loyalty
Not scored by this record.
multi-location-multi-brand differentiator
Not scored by this record.
multi-location-multi-tax-jurisdiction
Not scored by this record.
multi-location-multi-currency-locale
Not scored by this record.
multi-location-config-audit-log differentiator
Not scored by this record.
multi-location-enterprise-sso differentiator
Not scored by this record.
multi-location-enterprise-api differentiator
Not scored by this record.
multi-location-central-labor-policy
Not scored by this record.
Integrations, API & extensibility
extensibility-public-api-docs
Resolved 2026-09-01 by reading the one surface the previous rationale named as outstanding: Crunchtime's CUSTOMER-FACING help centre for the Kitchen & Host line. It was recorded here as HTTP 403 at both support.crunchtime.com/hc/en-us and crunchtime.zendesk.com/hc/en-us. THAT 403 IS GONE. Both hosts now serve a real, parseable Zendesk robots.txt to our own UA (identical files; /hc/en-us is not disallowed, and the wildcard-free Disallow control armed on /children), and /hc/en-us answers 200 with 27,516 b. The Zendesk Help Center API is permitted (robots refuses only /api/v2/help_center/*/articles/*/stats/view and the community-post equivalent), so the centre was ENUMERATED WHOLE rather than searched: 6 categories, 75 sections, 756 articles across 8 pages of /api/v2/help_center/en-us/articles.json. THE ENUMERATION IS THE EVIDENCE, and it bounds the surface from above. Two of the six categories are this product: 'Kitchen Management - Knowledge base articles for Crunchtime Kitchen' and 'Guest Management - Knowledge base articles for Crunchtime Host'. Between them they hold NINE articles - three Getting Started per category (two of which are the same two documents duplicated across both) plus three Crunchtime Kitchen controller/hardware troubleshooting pieces - and not one is an API reference, an endpoint list or a schema. A case-insensitive title search of all 756 for api, webhook, endpoint, oauth, swagger and openapi returns FIVE articles, and every one belongs to a sibling line: three in the Inventory Management > API section (Net-Chef) and one in Ops Execution, plus a purchasing integration piece. AND THE VENDOR STATES THE DOCUMENTATION ROUTE ITSELF, in the cited article (created 2026-06-08, updated 2026-08-21, current): 'We provide free training for current users of our products through our Digital Chalk Training Portal. With Digital Chalk, you can find information on our Crunchtime Kitchen, Crunchtime Host Enterprise, Crunchtime Host iOS, Crunchtime Insights (reporting), and ControlPoint products.' All three of its 'Training & Documentation' links - Crunchtime Kitchen, Crunchtime Host, Crunchtime ControlPoint - point to https://qsr.digitalchalk.com/auth/login, an LMS login (HTTP 200, 25,297 b, Angular shell, meta robots noindex,nofollow), and the sign-up link is /dc/guest/login. So the documentation for this line is deliberately behind an account, for current customers, and it is TRAINING material rather than a technical reference. The sibling article 'Getting Started with API's' (Inventory Management > API, 91 characters entire) says only 'Looking to get started with API's? Check out our Developer Hub to learn more' - and that hub is developer.crunchtime.com, whose 33,791-byte /llms.txt this record has already read whole and which returns ZERO hits for qsr, ConnectSmart, kitchen or KDS. THE DIRECTION IS NOT DEDUCED FROM THE SHAPE OF THE SEARCH: the APIs demonstrably EXIST (status.qsr.cloud monitors Host History APIs, Kitchen POS API, Kitchen Speed of Service API and three webhooks as named components) and auth.qsr.cloud serves an OIDC discovery document at grade A. What is now measured, rather than merely not found, is that the vendor publishes no reference for them and routes the line's documentation to a login. Every first-party surface this vendor and its acquirer have is now read whole, and the last one says where the docs are and that they are gated. That is positive evidence of absence, so this moves off unknown. https://support.crunchtime.com/hc/en-us/articles/52422567691155-Get-help-with-Crunchtime-Kitchen-and-Crunchtime-Host · retrieved 2026-09-01
extensibility-api-access-cost differentiator
Not scored by this record.
extensibility-partner-revshare
Not scored by this record.
extensibility-free-sandbox differentiator
Not scored by this record.
extensibility-oauth-partner-apps
The platform's own OpenID Connect discovery document (issuer https://auth.qsr.cloud, reached from the 'Crunchtime Kitchen + Host' login link on crunchtime.com) settles the mechanism: this is a real OAuth 2.0 / OIDC authorization server, not static API keys. grant_types_supported includes authorization_code, client_credentials, refresh_token and device_code; code_challenge_methods_supported includes S256; both a revocation_endpoint (/connect/revocation) and an introspection_endpoint are published. Access is scope-partitioned per service rather than all-or-nothing — scopes_supported lists Api, Reporting, CloudPOS, CloudKitchen, ControlPoint, DineTimeApi, KitchenCapacityService, KitchenNotifications, WebhookV2Api, SettingsApi, LicenseApi, Metrics, SmsService.Customer vs SmsService.All, and a ThirdPartyApiTester scope that implies third-party callers do get tokens. Shortfall — the third-party half of the claim is unproven: registration_endpoint is null, so there is no dynamic client registration; there is no developer portal, published scope catalogue or app directory for Kitchen/Host (developer.crunchtime.com covers only Inventory & Labor, Ops Execution, Learning and Cruise); and nothing documents an operator-facing consent or grant-management screen where a restaurant grants and individually revokes a partner's access. crunchtime.com/kitchen-host-integrations frames integration as bilateral certification instead — 'The POS systems below are certified integrations with QSR Automations. This list does not include proprietary, inactive, untested, or conditionally certified integrations.' Scoped OAuth: established. Operator-granted, individually revocable partner grants: not established. https://auth.qsr.cloud/.well-known/openid-configuration · retrieved 2026-08-04
extensibility-webhooks-push
Push webhooks exist and are first-party named production services, not a marketing assertion: the vendor's own status page lists 'Webhook – Kitchen Status', 'Webhook – Order Ready' and 'Webhook – Visit Events' as separately monitored components, alongside 'Kitchen Events API', 'Kitchen POS API' and 'Kitchen Speed of Service API'. Corroborated at grade A by the auth.qsr.cloud OIDC discovery document, which publishes WebhookV2Api and KitchenNotifications as issuable scopes — so a versioned webhook API is token-gated and live. Shortfall — the events are kitchen-lifecycle, not order-lifecycle. The three published webhooks cover kitchen status, order-ready and visit events; nothing pushes created, modified, paid, voided or refunded, which is consistent with a KDS/host layer that never holds the tender. No event catalogue, payload schema, subscription or retry documentation is publicly readable — the Kitchen/Host products are absent from developer.crunchtime.com, and no api/webhook host under qsr.cloud resolves publicly — so coverage beyond the three named services cannot be confirmed. https://status.qsr.cloud/ · retrieved 2026-08-04
extensibility-webhook-reliability differentiator
Not scored by this record.
extensibility-order-injection-api
Not scored by this record.
extensibility-menu-write-api differentiator
Not scored by this record.
extensibility-data-symmetry differentiator
Not scored by this record.
extensibility-published-rate-limits
Not scored by this record.
extensibility-doordash-preferred differentiator
Not scored by this record.
extensibility-first-party-delivery-integrations differentiator
Not scored by this record.
extensibility-middleware-compatibility
Not scored by this record.
extensibility-accounting-connectors
Not scored by this record.
extensibility-payroll-export
Not scored by this record.
extensibility-bi-data-warehouse differentiator
Not scored by this record.
extensibility-app-marketplace
Not scored by this record.
extensibility-custom-fields-scripting
Not scored by this record.
extensibility-headless-embedded
Not scored by this record.
extensibility-api-versioning-deprecation
Not scored by this record.
extensibility-data-portability-exit differentiator
Not scored by this record.
Reliability, offline & operations
reliability-offline-order-entry
No order entry in product.
reliability-offline-card-auth differentiator
Not scored by this record.
reliability-offline-decline-liability differentiator
Not scored by this record.
reliability-lan-degraded-multi-terminal differentiator
Not scored by this record.
reliability-local-transaction-engine differentiator
Not scored by this record.
reliability-offline-kds-printing
KDS controllers are on-premise LAN devices, which implies local resilience, but no vendor statement found.
reliability-printer-fallback
Checked 2026-08-04 and unresolved. Printers are in scope for this product — the ControlPoint Client guide lists 'Set up pagers, printers, and bump bars' among what the client does — but no vendor source describes what happens when a configured printer is unreachable. Redundancy is documented one level up, not at the printer: the ConnectSmart Kitchen Installation Guide 5.3 covers running the Kitchen Server on multiple PCs 'such as for redundant servers' and notes that the demo licence has 'no redundancy'. Both PDFs are first-party but dated 2015 and 2014 and rehosted on cdn.pixelpointpos.com. The public support library (qsrautomations.com/support/) contains nothing on printing; crunchtime.com/kitchen markets the opposite direction — a paperless kitchen that removes printers — and does not mention failover or alerting. Configuration guides that would settle backup-printer routing are behind qsr.digitalchalk.com (login) and Crunchtime's Zendesk (HTTP 403). No basis for yes or no.
reliability-sync-conflict-handling
Not scored by this record.
reliability-offline-feature-matrix
Not scored by this record.
reliability-public-status-page
Not scored by this record.
reliability-contractual-uptime-sla differentiator
Not scored by this record.
reliability-incident-postmortems
Not scored by this record.
reliability-247-live-support
Not scored by this record.
reliability-onsite-install differentiator
Not scored by this record.
reliability-menu-build-service differentiator
Not scored by this record.
reliability-hardware-replacement-sla
Not scored by this record.
reliability-backup-restore
Not scored by this record.
reliability-pci-dss-4-attestation
Not scored by this record.
reliability-mfa-role-based-access
Not scored by this record.
reliability-self-serve-training
Not scored by this record.
reliability-failover-terminal-role differentiator
Not scored by this record.
reliability-cellular-backup
Not scored by this record.
Commercial, compliance & data ownership
commercial-month-to-month-contract differentiator
Not scored by this record.
commercial-no-early-termination-fee differentiator
Not scored by this record.
commercial-autorenew-terms-published
Both halves of the claim are met in a publicly accessible contract. The 'Kitchen & Host Subscription Services Agreement' (QSR Automations, LLC as Supplier; last revised 2026-05-22) is linked in the open from qsrautomations.com/legal/ and states at section 7(b) 'Term of Orders' that 'orders and all subscriptions under them will automatically renew for additional one-year periods unless a party notifies the other of non-renewal 30 or more days before the renewal date' — a stated one-year auto-renew and a stated 30-day notice window, diligenceable before signing. The same section also caps renewal repricing, 'an automatically renewing order will remain unchanged from the prior term except for any pricing increase of which Supplier has notified Customer 30 or more days before the renewal date', at US CPI-U plus 1.0%. Noted for completeness: the separately published Master Software Subscription Agreement (PDF, 11-1-2024) has no term or renewal clause at all — its 26 sections run from definitions to export control with nothing on renewal — so the SSA is the document that carries this, not the MSSA. https://www.crunchtime.com/qsr-ssa · retrieved 2026-08-04
commercial-processing-not-bundled differentiator
Not scored by this record.
commercial-interchange-plus-published differentiator
Not scored by this record.
commercial-rate-increase-clause differentiator
Not scored by this record.
commercial-pricing-published
Pricing page absent; all paths lead to a demo request. https://www.qsrautomations.com/ · retrieved 2026-08-01
commercial-module-unbundling differentiator
Not scored by this record.
commercial-hardware-purchase-outright
Hardware is clearly sold, but no published price list was found.
commercial-hardware-not-locked differentiator
Not scored by this record.
commercial-implementation-fee-published
Not scored by this record.
commercial-data-export-self-serve
Not scored by this record.
commercial-export-customer-and-loyalty differentiator
Not scored by this record.
commercial-post-termination-export-window differentiator
Not scored by this record.
commercial-data-ownership-clause differentiator
Not scored by this record.
commercial-source-available-selfhost
Not scored by this record.
commercial-pci-p2pe-tokenization
Not scored by this record.
commercial-pci-dss-4-controls
Not scored by this record.
commercial-soc2-attestation
Not scored by this record.
commercial-privacy-dsar-tooling
Not scored by this record.
commercial-wcag-kiosk-accessibility differentiator
Not scored by this record.
commercial-dual-pricing-compliant differentiator
Not scored by this record.
Adversarial verification
An independent pass was instructed to refute this record, defaulting to downgrade when uncertain. It challenged 4 values — 0 upheld, 0 downgraded, 0 upgraded. This is published in full because a reader who can see which values were contested, on what evidence, and which way they moved has something no affiliate-funded comparison offers.
Capability claims
| Claim | As first scored | Verdict | What the verifier found |
|---|---|---|---|
| extensibility-oauth-partner-apps | unknown, grade F, rationale 'No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass.' | resolve-to-partial | The placeholder marked a cell nobody had examined. The vendor does publish enough to settle the mechanism: the 'Crunchtime Kitchen + Host' login on crunchtime.com points at auth.qsr.cloud, whose OpenID Connect discovery document is public and shows a full OAuth 2.0 / OIDC authorization server - authorization_code, client_credentials, refresh_token and device_code grants, PKCE with S256, revocation and introspection endpoints, and 25 service-partitioned scopes including ThirdPartyApiTester, WebhookV2Api, CloudKitchen, ControlPoint and Reporting. So this is scoped OAuth, not shared static API keys, which disposes of the negative half of the claim at grade A. Held to partial rather than yes because the third-party dimension is unevidenced: registration_endpoint is null (no dynamic client registration), developer.crunchtime.com covers only Inventory & Labor, Ops Execution, Learning and Cruise with Kitchen and Host absent, and no operator-facing consent or grant-revocation surface is documented anywhere public. crunchtime.com/kitchen-host-integrations describes integration as bilateral certification, which is the opposite posture from operator-granted app installs. source |
| extensibility-webhooks-push | unknown, grade F, rationale 'No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass.' | resolve-to-partial | The vendor's own status page monitors three named webhook services in production - 'Webhook - Kitchen Status', 'Webhook - Order Ready', 'Webhook - Visit Events' - plus a 'Kitchen Events API'. The auth.qsr.cloud discovery document independently lists WebhookV2Api and KitchenNotifications as issuable OAuth scopes, so a versioned, token-gated webhook API demonstrably exists. That is first-party operational evidence, not a marketing assertion. Not a yes: the claim asks for order-lifecycle events (created, modified, paid, voided, refunded) and the three published webhooks are kitchen-lifecycle, which is what a KDS layer that never holds the tender would be expected to emit. No payload schema, event catalogue, subscription mechanism or retry policy is publicly readable, and no api or webhook host under qsr.cloud resolves publicly, so nothing beyond the three named services can be confirmed. source |
| commercial-autorenew-terms-published | unknown, grade F, rationale 'No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass.' | resolve-to-yes | The terms are public and specific. qsrautomations.com/legal/ links, without a login or a signed quote, to the Kitchen & Host Subscription Services Agreement (QSR Automations, LLC as Supplier, last revised 2026-05-22). Section 7 is TERM AND TERMINATION; 7(b) Term of Orders states that 'orders and all subscriptions under them will automatically renew for additional one-year periods unless a party notifies the other of non-renewal 30 or more days before the renewal date', and adds that a renewing order is unchanged except for a price increase notified 30 or more days ahead, capped at US CPI-U plus 1.0%. Renewal term and notice window are both stated, which is exactly what the claim tests. Worth recording that the more prominently linked Master Software Subscription Agreement PDF is a decoy here - I extracted and read all 26 of its sections and it contains no term or renewal clause whatsoever, so a pass that stopped at the MSSA would wrongly have scored this no. source |
| extensibility-public-api-docs | unknown, grade F, rationale re-grounded 2026-09-01 on qsrautomations.com's dead redirect, developer.crunchtime.com's manifest covering only Inventory/Labor/Cruise, and the auth./status.qsr.cloud hosts already cited - closing 'what would settle it is a route into Crunchtime's CUSTOMER-FACING documentation for the Kitchen & Host line'. | resolve-to-no | That route was found and read, and it settles the claim against the vendor. The 403 this record recorded at support.crunchtime.com/hc/en-us and crunchtime.zendesk.com/hc/en-us is gone; both hosts serve a real parseable Zendesk robots.txt to our UA (control armed on /children and passed) and /hc/en-us answers 200. The permitted Help Center API let the centre be ENUMERATED rather than searched - 756 articles, 75 sections, 6 categories - and the two categories that are this product hold nine articles, none of them a reference. The vendor then states the route itself: the current 'Get help with Crunchtime Kitchen and Crunchtime Host' article sends all three of its Kitchen/Host/ControlPoint 'Training & Documentation' links to an LMS login at qsr.digitalchalk.com, and the help centre's own 'Getting Started with API's' points to a developer hub already measured to contain zero qsr/ConnectSmart/kitchen/KDS. Graded B rather than A because a help centre is vendor product documentation, not a technical reference - and there is no technical reference to grade. NOT scored higher on the APIs' existence: status.qsr.cloud proves they exist, which is a different proposition from whether their reference is published, and this claim asks the second. source |
Sources
Every URL this record cites. 25 in total.
- https://www.qsrautomations.com/
- https://auth.qsr.cloud/.well-known/openid-configuration
- https://status.qsr.cloud/
- https://www.crunchtime.com/qsr-ssa
- https://qsrautomations.com/legal/
- https://qsrautomations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/QSR-Automations-Master-Software-Subscription-Agreement-11-1-2024-1.pdf
- https://developer.crunchtime.com/llms.txt
- https://qsrautomations.com/page-sitemap.xml
- https://cdn.pixelpointpos.com/ThirdPartyInterfaces/KDS/QSRAutomation/ConnectSmartKitchenInstallationGuide.pdf
- https://cdn.pixelpointpos.com/ThirdPartyInterfaces/KDS/QSRAutomation/ControlPointSiteClientInstallationGuidev3_0.pdf
- https://www.crunchtime.com/kitchen-host-integrations
- https://qsrautomations.com/support/connectsmart-host-quoting-methods/
- https://qsrautomations.com/connectsmart-insights/
- https://support.crunchtime.com/hc/en-us/articles/15643624028435-Basics-Hierarchy-and-Teams-Overview
- https://support.crunchtime.com/hc/en-us/articles/32195990732947-Insights-FAQ-s
- https://developer.crunchtime.com/docs/employee-location
- https://www.crunchtime.com/kitchen
- https://support.crunchtime.com/robots.txt
- https://support.crunchtime.com/api/v2/help_center/en-us/articles.json
- https://support.crunchtime.com/hc/en-us/articles/52422567691155-Get-help-with-Crunchtime-Kitchen-and-Crunchtime-Host
- https://support.crunchtime.com/hc/en-us/articles/21766651387155-Getting-Started-with-API-s
- https://qsr.digitalchalk.com/auth/login
- https://links.crunchtime.com/CKReleaseReadMe
- https://crunchtime.sharefile.com/sf/v3/Shares(sedcdf64b77c045818c28da97a7bb5ad9)
- https://support.crunchtime.com/hc/en-us/articles/52287488354579-What-s-New-in-Crunchtime-Kitchen