.jpeg?disable=upscale&width=1200&height=630&fit=crop&w=1080&resize=1080,675&ssl=1 "Tech debate: Best-of-breed vs. one-stop-shop")
My journey into restaurant tech started over 10 years ago with a simple frustration: long lines at busy bars.
As a computer scientist, I did what I knew — deconstructed the problem and built a mobile ordering app for bars. Given my background with Enterprise Software at EMC and Google and multiple patents in enterprise data systems, that initial idea quickly evolved into an enterprise-class cloud-native POS platform. Coming from outside the industry gave me a distinct advantage: no assumptions, just first-principles thinking, a problem-solving approach that involves breaking down complex problems into their most basic, fundamental truths and building solutions from the ground up.
Today, restaurant operators face a critical decision. Do they commit to a best-of-breed ecosystem, where each technology component is optimized for its job? Or do they buy into the allure of a single vendor promising a seamlessly integrated stack? On the surface, the latter sounds simpler. But under the hood, it rarely delivers.
The Failure of Stitched-Together Conglomerates
Some self-described “unified commerce” vendors take a roll-up approach — acquiring disparate technologies like POS, loyalty, reporting, and online ordering, then attempting to glue them into a cohesive platform.
The result is a patchwork of legacy systems stitched together, burdened by outdated architectures, inconsistent user experiences and competing engineering priorities. The architecture is outdated. Latency creeps in. Integrations break. Operators are left juggling inconsistent user experiences and costly downtime. These platforms weren’t designed to work together — they’ve just been marketed that way.
For restaurant operators, what you end up with is complexity masquerading as simplicity. And the real cost is being locked into a large vendor that makes it increasingly difficult to replace any component or work with external platforms they compete with.
The Misleading Allure of Vertically Integrated All-in-Ones
Other vendors build most of the stack in-house — POS, payments, hardware, online ordering. The pitch is tight integration and centralized control. But that control comes at a cost.
These companies fall into what Clay Christensen called the capitalist’s dilemma: investment flows to the highest-margin lines — usually payments — while everything else stagnates. Innovation slows in areas like POS and enterprise tools that aren’t immediate revenue drivers.
We’ve seen this pattern play out. Legacy platforms captured early market share but fell behind in innovation and are now scrambling to catch up. It’s tough for one system to serve a taco truck and a national chain equally well. Customer care suffers. Deadlines are missed. Features take too long to deliver. Customers are surprised by price hikes. And when compromises get baked into contracts, everyone loses.
Freedom of Choice vs. the Illusion of Choice: Why Best-of-Breed Wins
First-principles thinking leads to best-of-breed systems — platforms unconstrained by legacy assumptions or internal conflicts of interest. These systems foster open competition. Meanwhile, many all-in-one vendors claim to support integration, but in reality, they compete with the very partners they supposedly support, using bundling and sales pressure to lock customers in.
Modern best-of-breed platforms — cloud-native, Android-based, API-first — make integration easier than ever. Operators retain control and flexibility. They can hold vendors accountable, swap out what’s not working, and adopt innovation faster — without re-platforming their entire tech stack.
This model is already standard in other industries. E-commerce brands integrate Shopify with Klaviyo, ShipBob, and Gorgias. Fintech companies combine Stripe, Plaid, and Alloy. CRM stacks include Salesforce alongside Gong, Zendesk, and Outreach. These aren’t duct-taped solutions — they’re modular, high-performance ecosystems. And no vendor pretends to be able to do it all better than everyone else.
Restaurant tech should be no different. Modularity and openness unlock the agility and innovation today’s operators need.
A Future Built on Innovation, Not Promises
The restaurant industry has been burned too many times by promises of unified commerce and one-stop-shop vendors that never fully materialize. Rather than continuing to invest in the illusion of the perfect all-in-one system, it’s time to prioritize first-principles innovation and best-of-breed technology.
What the industry needs is not another patched-together solution, but platforms built from the ground up for today’s needs: cloud-native, Android-based, and API-driven. That means faster updates, better uptime, lower costs, and far greater agility.
We can’t keep piling features onto brittle foundations. It’s time to abandon legacy thinking and rebuild restaurant technology the right way — from first principles.
Because the future belongs to operators who choose flexibility over lock-in, and innovation over inertia.
AUTHOR BIO
Peter Kellis is the founder and CEO of TRAY, the Entirely Better POS™ purpose-built for enterprise restaurants.
A double graduate of MIT with over 35 patents in enterprise data technologies, Peter believes the future of hospitality will be shaped by openness, agility, and customer-driven innovation.