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Best tablet for restaurant online orders (UK)

Updated 19 October 2026 · Arslan Munir

“Best” here means the tablet that gets heard on a Friday, stays awake, and runs an app that will not stop ringing until a person accepts or rejects the order. A cheap Android tablet that does those things beats an expensive one in a drawer.

The Chefzi Orders app is Android. It needs Android 8 or newer, which is the minimum the app is built for. It is not an iPad app. If the only tablet in the building is an iPad, it will not run this app, and a phone in someone’s pocket is a bad substitute during service because the pocket leaves the building.

Buy for the room, not for the spec sheet

Kitchens are loud. The extractor, the radio and someone calling a name at the counter will hide a polite notification. Stand where the pass actually is, with the extractor on, and play a sound at the volume the tablet can reach. If you cannot hear it from the fryer, it is the wrong tablet or the wrong place, regardless of the screen size.

Look for a speaker that is not a whisper, a screen you can read from a step away, and a charger you can leave plugged in. Battery life on a spec sheet assumes the screen is off. Yours will be on, bright, and ringing. Treat mains power as part of the setup. A tablet that dies at 8pm is not a backup plan. A spare cable in the drawer is.

Screen size is secondary. Something around 8 to 11 inches is easy to tap with a damp finger and easy to mount. A huge screen is harder to put somewhere the oil will not reach it. Brightness matters more than resolution. You are reading a ticket, not watching a film.

Mount it where the person who accepts orders is standing, not in the office and not on a windowsill in the sun. Heat and steam kill cheap tablets. A wall bracket or a stand that does not get wiped into the bin is enough. Turn auto-lock off, or set it long enough that the screen is up for the whole service. An order that arrives on a black screen is an order you find late.

What the app has to do

One buzz is not enough. The Chefzi Orders app keeps ringing until a person accepts or rejects. Accepting asks for a prep time, which is the time the customer sees. Rejecting asks for a reason, such as sold out, too busy or closed, and the customer is told. The ticket should show the dishes, the extras, the address or the collection slot, and the fee. A note that says “as discussed” is not a ticket.

Volume stays up. Do not let a system prompt turn notification volume down, and do not connect the tablet to a Bluetooth speaker that someone then carries into the stock room. The speaker you tested is the speaker you need during service. Test the ring on a quiet afternoon, with the extractor on, before you trust it on a Friday. The kitchen app page is the product description. This guide is about the hardware around it.

Offline is a warning, not a closed shop

A flat battery or a lost Wi-Fi connection should not sit there quietly, and it should not stop customers ordering. Chefzi watches the tablet heartbeat. If it stops, the dashboard shows a warning. Text and phone alerts send only when the messaging account is connected. Until then the warning is on the dashboard, which means someone still has to look, so do not treat SMS as guaranteed on day one.

Ordering stays open until you pause it yourself. A silent tablet is not the same as a paused shop. If you need to stop orders, pause them in the dashboard. Resume is one action when you are ready. Do not unplug the tablet and assume the website has closed. It has not.

Wi-Fi in a kitchen is often worse than the office upstairs. If the tablet drops every night at the same time, the fix is the router or a cable, not a more expensive tablet. Put the tablet on a network you do not also use for guest Wi-Fi if guests are saturating it. A mobile hotspot is a reasonable spare, tested before you need it, not a theory.

Printing, payments, and what not to buy

The app can talk to a Bluetooth printer the restaurant chooses. You do not have to print. If you do, test one ticket with extras and one delivery address, and check the paper is readable from the pass. Card numbers are not stored on the tablet. The customer pays on their phone. The tablet is not a card machine, and buying a payment terminal does not make the orders arrive.

You do not need a rugged “enterprise” tablet to start. You need Android 8 or newer, a speaker you have heard over the extractor, a charger that stays in, and a place that does not get hosed down. A spare tablet is useful once orders are real, because a cracked screen on a Saturday is a bad day to go shopping. It is not a requirement for the first week.

Skip anything that cannot stay awake, anything you cannot hear, and any iOS device for this app. Skip a tablet whose only job is to show the marketplace’s own device if you are not allowed to install other apps on it. Your Chefzi tablet can sit beside that device. It does not replace it.

The rest of the setup

A tablet does not fix a page that hides the fee or a menu that is missing the sides. Read what the website needs and how to set delivery fees and minimum orders before you announce the link. The direct channel only reduces commission if the order is actually accepted. That part is in how to reduce delivery app commission.

The software price is separate from the tablet. Chefzi is three months free, then £19 a month for cash or no-card payments, or £29 a month with online card payments through Stripe per location, excluding VAT, with no commission on the order. The tablet is yours to buy. We do not bundle a device and we do not mark up one. Pricing is the monthly fee. Book a call and we will ring a test order to whatever Android tablet you have plugged in.