Two things changed a Brisbane restaurant in the last year and neither of them was the menu. Card surcharges were outlawed on 1 October 2026, so the 1.5% that used to sit on the bottom of the bill now has to live inside your prices; and the city kept building for 2032, which means the lease went up while the software quote stayed. Every platform on the market still bills monthly, in software, on a two-year term. What a room at Howard Smith Wharves or on Given Terrace actually needs is one page that answers price, hours and open-now, and a QR on each table that reads the same menu the kitchen is cooking — A$71 to A$289, once.
Three things come up in almost every conversation we have with Brisbane owners. None of them is a design problem.
Since 1 October 2026 a business cannot put a surcharge on Visa, Mastercard, eftpos or Amex — the RBA lifted its ban on no-surcharge rules and the card networks moved on the same day. Weekend and public holiday surcharges are untouched, and a business can still build the card cost into its prices, which is exactly what makes a page that shows the real, final price worth more now than it was last spring.
Cross River Rail, the Gabba precinct, the Olympic venues: Brisbane is a construction site with a dining scene attached, and rents on the good corners are being repriced to match. A subscription priced in US dollars is the one line on your P&L that goes up without a lease, a wage or a supplier to renegotiate. A$289 once is a fixed cost in a city that has stopped offering fixed costs.
A bar on Brunswick Street, a room on the river at Howard Smith Wharves and a café in West End have three different customers who search with three different words — and each of them is standing on a footpath deciding in under a minute. The page is written for the corner you trade on, with the menu, the hours and the pin, not for a generic Australian template.
Not a template you fill in. We take your hours, prices and photos, build each piece, and hand back a live link that works for a table of six at eight and a tradie looking for a coffee at 6.20 in the morning.
One form, five minutes. Delivery target is one business day from the moment we have your details, hours, menu and photos.
The fastest way to judge this is to open one. This is a sample built from a public listing, so the phone, address and hours are the shop's own.
Not a customer site. See the standard layout we deliver →
Howard Smith Wharves and Eagle Street river rooms, Fortitude Valley bars, South Bank and West End cafés, New Farm and Teneriffe kitchens, Paddington's Queenslander terraces, Woolloongabba and the bayside tables of Bulimba.
Not on the list? It does not matter — everything is built remotely and delivered as a link and files, so the suburb changes the words, not the price.
Software and hardware only, before card processing and GST. Australian prices are the vendors' own A$ list, read 11 November 2026; US-published lines are converted at A$1 = US$0.69. Run your own volume through the calculator if the per-order fees matter more than the subscription.
| Platform | What it costs | 3 years (A$) |
|---|---|---|
| Square for Restaurants | A$0 / A$129 per location a month (A$50 mobile POS) | A$4,644 |
| Lightspeed Restaurant | A$79 / A$179 / A$359 a month ex GST, A$39 an extra register | A$6,444 |
| Toast POS + Web | US$219/mo at Core + a US$1,153 kit — US-published | A$13,100 |
| BentoBox | Quote only since the Clover fold-in; last list US$149–$249/mo | A$9,228 |
| Owner.com | US$249/mo + 5% of orders, or US$499 flat — US-published | A$26,048 |
| ChowNow | US$229–$409/mo + US$119–$499 setup — US-published | A$12,677 |
| Clover | US$179–$354/mo for 36 months — US-published | A$9,344 |
| SpotOn | US$0 or US$55 a station — US-published | A$10,745 |
| Popmenu | US$179–$499/mo + US$1.00 an order — US-published | A$9,344–A$26,048 |
| Slice | US$39/mo + US$3.00 a card order — US-published | A$69,258–A$95,996 |
| TouchBistro | US$69/mo for the POS, hardware extra — US-published | A$6,212 |
| ShopLaunch Studio | One page, one menu, one payment — no subscription, no commission, no hardware | A$71–A$289 |
Square: squareup.com/au restaurant plans, A$129 a month per location for Plus, A$0 for the Free plan, 1.6% per tap or insert in person. Lightspeed: lightspeedhq.com/au restaurant plans, A$79 Starter / A$179 Essential / A$359 Premium ex GST, A$39 an extra register. Lines marked US-published are the vendor's US list converted for comparison; they are a benchmark of what the same software costs elsewhere, not an Australian offer. GST and card processing are on top of every line here; we take no orders and process nothing.
Nothing here is a subscription, and nothing renews. Pick the link if that is all you need; pick the Local Pack if customers keep asking for the menu.
One page, one business day.
The one most shops order.
Everything, plus 30 days of us on call.
Prices are charged in US dollars by Polar Software, Inc. at checkout. The A$ figures are the same prices converted at about A$1 = US$0.69 and move with the rate; your bank may add its own conversion fee. GST of 10% is added for an Australian billing address and shown on the checkout page before you pay.
Payment is taken by Polar Software, Inc., our merchant of record, on their checkout page — we never see your card. By ordering you agree to our terms and refund policy. One round of edits is included; the files are yours to keep and reprint.
Each of the eleven has its own page, with its own price ladder, contract terms and three-year arithmetic.
It changes what a customer expects to see. From 1 October 2026 nobody may add a card surcharge on Visa, Mastercard, eftpos or Amex, so the price on your menu is the price that leaves the customer's account. A page that prints the same number as the board, with GST stated once, is the version of that promise a customer can check while standing outside.
Yes, and it should. The RBA change covers card surcharges only — weekend and public holiday surcharges are still allowed, and a dated line at the top of the page says when one is running. You switch it on from your phone in a minute and switch it off the next morning.
About a minute with your edit key. A price, a special, a sold-out dish — changed on the same link, with the QR codes already taped to the tables still pointing at it. Nothing is reprinted to make the tables right.
Same price. Everything is built and delivered remotely, so the address and the map pin change and A$71 to A$289 does not.
The Local Pack: a mobile website on its own link, a digital menu with one QR code per table, three print-ready posters, five Instagram posts with captions, and one round of edits. The files are yours and there is no subscription.
No. A$71, A$289 or A$724 — US$49, US$199 or US$499 — is the whole price, charged once. GST is calculated for your billing address at checkout. Domain registration, printing and advertising are yours to pay if you want them, and we do not take a cut of anything you sell.
Yes. You get an edit key for the page, so a price, a closing time or a sold-out dish is a change you make in a minute. The QR codes already on the tables keep working because the address never changes.
Polar Software, Inc., our merchant of record, on their checkout page. Your card details are entered there and never on this site; they issue the receipt and handle any refund.
The packages, what is delivered, and the three-year maths — on one A4 page you can hand over or pin up.
Local pages for the shops that make each city worth walking through. All 42, grouped by country, with a PDF for each →
Send your hours, your menu and a few photos. We build the page, the QR menu, the posters and the posts, and hand it back the next business day. If you already pay a platform for a page like this, this is the line you can take off the bill.