POS integration

How do phone orders get into Revel POS?

A phone order taken by Skai Solutions arrives in Revel as a ticket the same way a counter order does, priced against your live menu, with no re-keying and no second screen. Setup is 5 days and you keep your existing number and your existing iPads exactly as they are.

What is Revel, and which venues here run it?

Revel is an iPad based point of sale system, founded in San Francisco in 2010 by Lisa Falzone and Chris Ciabarra, headquartered in Atlanta with engineering in Vilnius. It was controlled by the investment firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson and Stowe from 2017 until Shift4 completed its acquisition of Revel Systems in June 2024, which put it inside a payments group rather than a standalone POS company. That ownership history matters to an operator for one reason: Revel's roadmap now follows a payments business, so the integration surface that third parties build against is the API rather than the till.

Revel was the first iPad POS to ship EMV chip and PIN processing in the United States, in January 2013, and it built out sideways from restaurants into drive through, food truck, stadium, events and grocery configurations. Its named customers and franchisees skew heavily quick service: Little Caesars, Popeyes, Dairy Queen, Smoothie King, Illy Coffee, Tully's Coffee. In Australia and New Zealand you find Revel mostly in franchised quick service and fast casual, and in multi site coffee groups, rather than in a single owner operator bistro.

That matters for phone handling more than it sounds. A quick service phone line carries the same twenty orders over and over, at exactly the moments nobody can pick up. Repetition is the easiest thing to automate accurately, which is why the QSR shape of Revel's customer base is a good fit rather than a hard one.

How does a call become a ticket on a Revel iPad?

Revel's hardware layout is unusual and it changes where a phone order should land. The iPad is the register. The iPad Mini is used for customer facing kiosks and tableside. An iPod Touch runs as a line buster or a customer display. Since 2015 the Revel Ethernet Connect cable lets an iPad take a hardwired connection instead of relying on the venue wireless, which is the single most common cause of dropped tickets in a busy kitchen.

Skai Solutions sits before all of that, on the phone line, and hands the finished order across. In order:

  1. The call is answered on the first ring, including several at once, so nobody gets an engaged tone during service.
  2. The order is taken against your live Revel menu, with modifiers and sold out items respected as they stand at that moment.
  3. The ticket is written into Revel and prints or displays wherever your counter orders already do, including a kitchen display if you run one.
  4. Bookings, opening hours, allergen and parking questions are answered without anything touching the POS at all, because they are not orders.
  5. Anything the agent should not decide is transferred to your team.

Revel publishes a REST Open API and a developer portal covering accounts, items, orders, payments and employees, and access is approval gated rather than open to anyone with a key. Practically that means the connection is set up once during your build and does not need touching again, and it also means a partner cannot silently change what it reads from your data.

What about drive through and multiple sites?

Two Revel specific cases come up constantly and they have different answers.

Drive through venues usually have the worst phone problem in hospitality, because the headset already owns the staff member who would otherwise answer. Diverting the phone line is the only fix that does not add a person. The order still lands in the same Revel queue as the lane, so the kitchen sequence does not change.

Franchise groups running Revel across sites need calls to reach the right store, and the common failure is a single advertised number that lands everything at head office. Skai Solutions routes by the number dialled, so each site keeps its own line and its own menu, and each site's orders go into that site's Revel instance. There is no shared inbox to sort afterwards.

What Skai Solutions does not do with Revel

It does not replace Revel, or sit in front of your counter, or take a payment at the till. It does not change your menu, your pricing, your item structure or your reporting. It does not touch your card processing, which after the Shift4 acquisition is a Revel and Shift4 matter and none of our business. And it will not invent an answer to a question your menu does not contain: if a caller asks something the agent cannot resolve, it transfers the call rather than guessing.

If your venue takes almost no phone orders, do not buy this. A quick service site whose volume is all counter and delivery app is not a phone problem, and no amount of call handling fixes a channel you do not use.

What does Skai Solutions cost with Revel?

A$299 a month for 500 minutes, or A$599 for 1,500, plus a one off A$499 setup that covers the Revel connection and your menu build. In New Zealand that is NZ$325, NZ$649 and NZ$545. Month to month, no lock in, 30 days' notice. Full pricing.

Before you buy anything, work out what your unanswered calls are actually worth. Count a week of calls, note how many rang out, and multiply by your average order value. If the monthly loss is smaller than the fee, do not buy it. We would rather you found that out now. Our page on hospitality award rates has the other half of that sum, which is what the staff time you are currently spending on the handset costs at 2026 rates.

Getting it live

Setup is 5 days from sign up to live calls. Day one is the menu build, taken from your Revel item list rather than retyped. Day two and three are voice tuning, which for Australian and New Zealand venues means suburb names, street names and the pronunciation of your own menu items, because a model trained on North American English mishears both. Day four is the ticket test, where orders are pushed into a Revel test till and checked against what the kitchen expects to see. Day five you divert the line.

You keep your number. The divert can be switched on and off, so you can run it during service only, after hours only, or all the time. See every POS Skai Solutions connects to, or Skai Solutions for New Zealand venues.

See it running against your own Revel menu

Fifteen minutes, your Revel menu, your hardest order. Bring the one your staff get wrong.

Book a Free Demo

Questions Revel operators ask

Does Skai Solutions work with Revel POS?

Yes. Orders taken on the phone are written into Revel as tickets and appear where your counter orders already appear, including on a kitchen display. Revel publishes a REST Open API with approval gated access, so the connection is configured once during your 5 day build.

Does Skai suit a quick service venue rather than a restaurant?

Often better. Quick service calls are short, repetitive and cluster at peak, which is the pattern automated call handling manages most reliably. Revel's own customer base skews quick service and drive through, so this is the common case rather than the edge case.

Can Skai Solutions route calls across multiple Revel sites?

Yes. Calls are routed by the number dialled, so each site keeps its own line, its own menu and its own Revel instance. Orders go into the store that took the call rather than into a shared inbox that somebody has to sort afterwards.

Do I need new iPads or new hardware for Revel?

No. Skai Solutions sits on the phone line, before the point of sale, so your existing iPads, iPad Minis, printers and cash drawers are untouched. If your tills run on venue wireless, a hardwired connection is worth having regardless, because dropped tickets in a busy kitchen are usually a network problem.

How long does setup take with Revel?

Five days. Day one is the menu build from your Revel item list, days two and three are voice tuning for Australian and New Zealand names and menu items, day four is a ticket test into a Revel test till, and on day five you divert the line.