Albuquerque, New Mexico, United StatesFact-checked September 6, 2026
Lavu Review
B-Lavu is an Albuquerque restaurant technology company founded in 2010 by Andy Lim, and it has a genuine claim to being the first restaurant point-of-sale system built for the iPad. It raised a $15 million investment from Aldrich Capital Partners in 2015 — reported at the time as the largest Series A in New Mexico's history — and has since assembled a full restaurant stack around the till: a kitchen display system, online and contactless ordering, a dual-pricing (cash discount) programme, payroll, back office and its own payment processing under the name Lavu Pay. Through 2026 the company repositioned hard around Marty AI, an overnight analysis layer that reads point-of-sale, labour and inventory data and delivers a "Morning Deposit" briefing of recoverable cash to managers before service, published a comparative report on AI capabilities across seven major restaurant POS platforms in March 2026, and now markets itself as an intelligent financial operating system rather than a till. Independent reviewers place its plans at roughly $59, $129 and $279 a month with a three-year commitment; Lavu itself no longer publishes a pricing page.
- Rate from
- Not published. Lavu Pay is the built-in processor and Lavu does not disclose its card rates; online ordering runs through the same relationship.
- Monthly
- From about $59 per month.
- Payout
- Set by Lavu Pay at onboarding.
- Contract
- Reported as three years.
- Founded
- 2010
Connect with Lavu
Tell them what you need. This goes to Lavu only.
Best for
Independent restaurants, bars, breweries, pizzerias, cafés and food trucks that want deep, configurable restaurant-specific functionality on affordable iPad hardware, and small multi-unit operators who want one system across sites. It suits operators who intend to use Lavu Pay anyway, since the pricing structure rewards that, and international or multilingual operations benefit from the language coverage. The Marty AI layer is aimed squarely at multi-unit operators trying to find margin in labour and menu data without hiring an analyst.
How it scores
Pricing1.5
Features4.0
Ease of use3.5
Support3.5
Contract2.0
Reputation score3.0
What it costs
Details →- Online
- Not published. Lavu Pay is the built-in processor and Lavu does not disclose its card rates; online ordering runs through the same relationship.
- Monthly
- From about $59 per month.
The takeB-
Lavu is a capable, unusually configurable iPad POS for independent and small multi-unit restaurants, with a long list of niche features — pizza builders, brewery and bar workflows, food trucks, dozens of language packs — that the big platforms handle less gracefully. The reservations are structural rather than functional. Pricing is quote-based and no longer published on Lavu's own site, plans reportedly carry a three-year commitment, and using a payment processor other than Lavu Pay is reported to cost an extra monthly fee per terminal — a design that makes the processing decision less free than it looks. Meanwhile the company's public identity has shifted almost entirely to Marty AI, which is a defensible bet but leaves a buyer unsure how much attention the point-of-sale itself is getting. B- is a good product to shortlist and a contract to read very carefully.
Skip if you
You need to know the price before you talk to sales — Lavu no longer publishes one. Skip it if a three-year commitment is unacceptable, if you already have a processing relationship you intend to keep and object to paying a per-terminal surcharge to keep it, or if uptime during peak service is your single overriding requirement, since outages during busy periods are the most consistent complaint in the independent review record. A very large chain will also find this is not the tier of system it is shopping in.
Chapter 1
Should you choose Lavu?
The headline take, the audiences it's right (and wrong) for, and the genuine differentiators behind the verdict.
About
Lavu is an Albuquerque restaurant technology company founded in 2010 by Andy Lim, and it has a genuine claim to being the first restaurant point-of-sale system built for the iPad. It raised a $15 million investment from Aldrich Capital Partners in 2015 — reported at the time as the largest Series A in New Mexico's history — and has since assembled a full restaurant stack around the till: a kitchen display system, online and contactless ordering, a dual-pricing (cash discount) programme, payroll, back office and its own payment processing under the name Lavu Pay. Through 2026 the company repositioned hard around Marty AI, an overnight analysis layer that reads point-of-sale, labour and inventory data and delivers a "Morning Deposit" briefing of recoverable cash to managers before service, published a comparative report on AI capabilities across seven major restaurant POS platforms in March 2026, and now markets itself as an intelligent financial operating system rather than a till. Independent reviewers place its plans at roughly $59, $129 and $279 a month with a three-year commitment; Lavu itself no longer publishes a pricing page.
Pros, cons, and audience
Pros
- Genuine restaurant depth. Fifteen years of building only for foodservice shows in the handling of modifiers, courses, tabs, split checks and vertical workflows for pizzerias, breweries and food trucks.
- Affordable entry: independent reviewers place the starting plan near $59 a month with one register included, which undercuts most full-service restaurant platforms.
- iPad-based hardware keeps the capital cost of a lane low and replacement easy, and merchants can source some of their own equipment rather than buying only proprietary hardware.
- A complete stack rather than a till: kitchen display, online and contactless ordering, dual pricing, payroll, back office and in-house processing all from one vendor.
- More than two dozen language packs — Merchant Maverick counts 26 — which is genuinely unusual at this price point and matters for multilingual front-of-house teams.
- Marty AI is a real product idea rather than a badge: overnight analysis across POS, labour and scheduling data, delivered as prioritised costed actions before service, and available for insight even on other POS platforms.
- Support is well reviewed by customers in Lavu's own published feedback, and Lavu says it is staffed around the clock, which for a restaurant at 8pm on a Friday is the feature that counts.
- Long-standing independent company with institutional backing since 2015, rather than a brand absorbed into a larger processor and quietly wound down.
Cons
- Lavu no longer publishes a pricing page at all — the pricing URL now serves the marketing homepage — so every figure available to a buyer comes from third-party reviews of unknown vintage.
- A three-year commitment is reported on all plans, which is a long time to be locked to a platform in a category that changes quickly.
- Using a payment processor other than Lavu Pay is reported to cost roughly $20 a month per terminal — a penalty that makes the processing choice less independent than it appears, and one Lavu does not disclose publicly.
- The base plan buys one register. Additional terminals, kitchen display and online ordering are all separate monthly line items, so the real bill is well above the headline for anything but the smallest site.
- Outages during peak service are the most persistent theme in independent complaint records, alongside accounting errors and software glitches — the failure mode that costs a restaurant the most.
- Reported policies are unforgiving: no refunds on software subscriptions, and a reserved right to suspend inactive accounts after 180 days without notice.
- Lavu Pay card rates are not published, and neither is the funding schedule, so the processing side is as opaque as the software side.
- The company's public identity has shifted almost entirely to Marty AI. That may be the right strategy, but a buyer evaluating the point-of-sale itself now has to look past a website that barely discusses it.
- Back-office and inventory workflows are described by reviewers as tedious, which is where a multi-unit operator spends its administrative time.
What makes them different
The genuine differentiator
It went first and it stayed narrow. Lavu built the original iPad restaurant POS in 2010 and has spent fifteen years accumulating restaurant-specific depth rather than expanding into general retail, which is why it handles a pizza modifier tree or a brewery's tab workflow more comfortably than platforms three times its size. The 2026 Marty AI repositioning is an attempt to jump from that base straight to operational intelligence — analysing POS, labour and scheduling data together overnight and telling a manager what to fix before doors open, rather than producing another dashboard.
How we score it
1.5
Pricing Transparency
4
Feature Set
3.5
Ease of Use
3.5
Customer Support
2
Contract Terms
3
Industry Reputation
Chapter 2
What it costs
Real-world cost at three volumes, plus the rates, fees, payouts, and contract terms that drive them.
What Lavu actually costs
Estimated annual cost at three realistic processing volumes, using Lavu’s published online rate plus monthly fees. Real costs vary with average transaction size, chargeback rate, and any negotiated terms.
Small business
$10K/mo volume · ~$75 avg transaction
$4.2K/year
≈ $349/mo · 3.49% effective rate
Growing merchant
$50K/mo volume · ~$100 avg transaction
$18K/year
≈ $1.5K/mo · 3.02% effective rate
High volume
$250K/mo volume · ~$150 avg transaction
$88K/year
≈ $7.3K/mo · 2.92% effective rate
Pricing details
The first iPad POS, sixteen years on
Lavu was founded in Albuquerque in 2010 by Andy Lim, after he and Corey Fiala watched a restaurant owner struggle with his point-of-sale system over dinner. It became the first restaurant POS built for the iPad, took a $15 million investment from Aldrich Capital Partners in 2015 that was reported as the largest Series A in New Mexico's history, and has stayed independent and in Albuquerque since — which in this directory is worth noting, because a great many of its contemporaries have been bought by processors and folded into someone else's brand.
What that longevity bought is depth in one vertical. Lavu has never expanded into general retail, and the product shows it: modifier trees that survive a pizza order, course and seat management, tabs and split checks, brewery and bar workflows, food-truck configurations, and more than two dozen language packs for multilingual front-of-house teams. For an independent operator with an awkward service model, Lavu often fits where a bigger, tidier platform does not.
The 2026 pivot
Through 2026 Lavu repositioned around Marty AI, and the repositioning was not subtle. The website now opens on an AI product rather than a till, and the pitch is an overnight analysis layer that reads POS, labour, scheduling and inventory data together and delivers a "Morning Deposit" to each manager by six o'clock — a short list of prioritised, costed actions rather than another dashboard. Cut two overlapping servers at lunch. This item has been unavailable three days running. This supplier's produce invoice is above market. Lavu published a comparative report in March 2026 on AI capabilities across seven widely deployed restaurant POS platforms, arguing that most restaurant AI runs on a single data source and misses the places where money actually leaks.
It is a genuinely interesting product thesis and it plays to Lavu's strength, which is understanding restaurant operations rather than payments. It also carries a cost for a prospective buyer: the point-of-sale is now the least discussed thing on Lavu's own website, and a company that repositions this hard invites the question of where its engineering attention is going.
What it costs, as far as anyone can tell
Lavu's pricing page no longer exists — the URL serves the marketing homepage. Everything a buyer can learn about price now comes from independent reviewers, who describe three tiers at roughly $59, $129 and $279 a month with one register included, additional terminals at about $50 a month, the kitchen display system at about $30, online ordering through MenuDrive at about $99, and hardware from roughly $55 to $2,500. Those numbers are undated and uncorroborated by Lavu, so this review treats them as the shape of the bill rather than the bill.
One reported charge deserves separate attention: about $20 a month per terminal to use a payment processor other than Lavu Pay. That is not a large number on one terminal and it is a real one across five, and it changes the nature of the choice. Lavu Pay is included in every plan and its card rates are not published anywhere. So the only honest comparison a buyer can run is to get Lavu Pay's quoted rate in writing, then price the alternative with the per-terminal surcharge added across every terminal, and compare annual totals rather than headline percentages.
The contract is the risk
Independent reviewers consistently report a three-year commitment on all Lavu plans, no refunds on software subscriptions, and a reserved right to suspend inactive accounts after 180 days without notice. Accounts of the early-termination position differ between reviews, which is a reason to get it in writing rather than a reason to relax. Three years is a long commitment in a category where the competitive set changes every eighteen months, and it is the single strongest argument for negotiating hard at signature — on term length, on what renewal looks like, and on what is owed if you leave.
Remember also that there are two contracts, not one. The software subscription and the Lavu Pay processing agreement are separate documents with separate terms and separate exits, and a merchant who negotiates only the first has negotiated half the deal.
Where it falls down in service
The most persistent theme in the independent complaint record is outages during peak service, alongside accounting errors and software glitches and back-office workflows reviewers describe as tedious. Downtime at eight o'clock on a Friday is the worst failure a restaurant system can have, and it is the thing to press references on — not whether the software has the features, but whether it stays up during a rush. Support itself reviews well and Lavu says it is staffed around the clock, which is at least the right resource pointed at the right problem.
The verdict
B-. Lavu is a capable, unusually configurable restaurant platform at an affordable entry price, still independent after sixteen years, with a complete stack around the till and a genuinely interesting bet on operational AI. It is held back by the things a buyer cannot see: no published software pricing, no published card rates, a reported three-year commitment, a per-terminal penalty for bringing your own processor, and a reliability record that reviewers keep returning to. Shortlist it, get every line of the quote itemised, read both contracts, and ask restaurants your own size what happens during a rush.
Processing Rates
Online
Not published. Lavu Pay is the built-in processor and Lavu does not disclose its card rates; online ordering runs through the same relationship.
Card-not-present, e-commerce, and online payments
In-person
Not published. Card-present rates through Lavu Pay are quoted per merchant. Lavu also offers a dual-pricing (cash discount) programme, which shifts the card cost to the customer rather than reducing it.
Card-present retail and point-of-sale transactions
Keyed
Not published.
Manually entered card-not-present transactions
Fees
Monthly Fee
From about $59 per month.
Recurring monthly account fee
Statement Fee
Lavu no longer publishes a pricing page — the URL now serves the marketing homepage. Independent reviewers describe three tiers at roughly $59, $129 and $279 a month, each including one register, with add-ons charged separately: about $50 a month for each additional terminal, about $30 a month for the kitchen display system, about $99 a month for online ordering through MenuDrive, and about $20 a month per terminal to use a third-party payment processor instead of Lavu Pay. Equipment is reported to range from roughly $55 to $2,500. None of this is confirmed by Lavu, and the figures date from independent reviews rather than a current rate card, so treat them as the shape of the bill and get your own quote itemised — base plan, per-terminal charges, KDS, online ordering, payroll, the Marty AI layer, hardware, and the processing surcharge if you are not using Lavu Pay.
Monthly account statement and reporting fee
Payouts
Standard Payout Time
Set by Lavu Pay at onboarding.
Regular deposit schedule to your bank account
Minimum Payout Amount
Lavu markets "faster payouts" through Lavu Pay but publishes no funding schedule, no cut-off time and no reserve policy. Merchants using an outside processor are funded by that processor on its own terms and Lavu is not involved. Because deposit timing is one of the few POS decisions that touches daily cash flow directly, ask for the funding schedule, the daily batch cut-off and the holiday and weekend behaviour in writing during onboarding rather than accepting the marketing phrase.
Minimum balance required before payout
Contract Terms
Contract Length
Reported as three years.
Required commitment period
Cancellation Process
Lavu does not publish contract terms. Independent reviewers consistently report that all plans require a three-year commitment, that Lavu offers no refunds on software subscriptions, and that the company reserves the right to suspend inactive accounts after 180 days without notice; accounts of the early-termination position vary, with some describing significant fees for leaving early and at least one review finding no stated ETF. That inconsistency is itself the warning. Before signing, get four things in the document: the exact term and what happens at renewal, the early-termination position in dollars, whether the hardware is bought or financed and what is owed on it if you leave, and — separately from the software contract — the terms of the Lavu Pay processing agreement, which is a different contract with its own term and its own exit.
How to terminate your account
Lavu Pricing Calculator
Estimate your monthly costs
Pick a published plan, enter your volume and transaction profile, and we’ll compute the math the same way an underwriter would. Real costs vary with card mix, chargeback rate, and any negotiated terms.
$
$
Estimated Monthly Cost
$59.00
Effective Rate
0.59%
Monthly fee$59.00
Number of transactions200
Flat all-in rate (interchange built in)
Chapter 3
What you actually get
Products, integrations, payment-type coverage, security posture, and how their support holds up in practice.
Products & Services
pos
Lavu iPad POS
The core iPad point-of-sale for restaurants, bars and cafés, with deep restaurant-specific configuration — modifier trees, course and seat management, tabs, split checks, table service and quick service — and more than two dozen language packs.
payment processing
Lavu Pay
Lavu's in-house payment processing, built into every plan. Rates are not published, and using an outside processor instead is reported to carry a per-terminal monthly surcharge.
other
Marty AI
The 2026 repositioning: an overnight analysis layer that reads POS, labour, scheduling and inventory data and delivers a "Morning Deposit" briefing of prioritised, costed actions to each manager before service. Lavu markets it as working with other POS platforms for insight, with automation reserved for Lavu POS.
pos
Kitchen Display System
Kitchen-side order routing and display, charged as a monthly add-on rather than included in the base plan.
ecommerce
Online and contactless ordering
Direct online ordering (via MenuDrive) plus contactless ordering and payment at the table, priced as a separate monthly module.
payment processing
Dual Pricing
A cash-discount programme that presents different cash and card prices, shifting card acceptance cost onto the customer. Legal treatment varies by state and by card-network rule, so confirm compliance for your own jurisdiction.
other
Payroll and back office
Integrated payroll and compliance plus back-office inventory, menu and reporting tools, sold as part of the wider platform.
Support & Contact
Chapter 6
Common questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Pricing
Lavu no longer publishes pricing. Independent reviewers describe three tiers at roughly $59, $129 and $279 a month, each including one register, with additional terminals around $50 a month, the kitchen display system around $30 a month, online ordering via MenuDrive around $99 a month, and equipment from roughly $55 to $2,500. Those figures are second-hand and undated. Ask for an itemised quote covering the base plan, every per-terminal charge, each module you need, hardware, and the processing arrangement, and ask what the total looks like in year two.
Contracts & Terms
Features
Support
General
How we evaluated Lavu
We evaluate every payment processor independently — Payment Review does not accept paid placement. Our analysis combines hands-on product testing where possible, public pricing and policy documents, third-party reviews from BBB, Trustpilot, Google, and G2, and employee feedback from sites like Glassdoor and Indeed. We update reviews on a rolling cadence and flag the next review date so readers know how fresh the analysis is.
Last fact-checked September 6, 2026Reviewed by Payment Review Editorial Team
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