Driving Restaurant System Costs to Zero. All-in-One Platform 'Respo' Makes Core Features Completely Free in Japan
Hello Inc. announces that starting May 1, 2026, the core features of its restaurant platform 'Respo'—including POS, mobile ordering, and reservations—will be entirely free in Japan, eliminating initial and monthly costs.
📋 Article Processing Timeline
- 📰 Published: April 14, 2026 at 22:00
- 🔍 Collected: April 14, 2026 at 13:31
- 🤖 AI Analyzed: April 19, 2026 at 16:32 (123h 0m after Collected)
Hello Inc. (Headquarters: Shibuya-ku, Tokyo; CEO: Yuki Hariguchi), provider of the all-in-one platform for restaurants 'Respo', will begin offering its core features (Reservation System, Site Controller, POS, Mobile Order, Payment Terminal) to the Japanese market with zero initial cost, zero monthly fee, and zero referral fees starting May 1, 2026.
Features Offered for Free
Feature / Overview / Monthly Fee
Reservation System / Manage online, phone, and walk-in reservations in one ledger. Referral fees are also free if via AutoReserve, so costs don't rise as reservations increase. / ¥0
Site Controller / Centrally manage reservations across multiple gourmet sites in real-time. Prevents double booking and grasps reservation status by platform at once. / ¥0
POS Register / Tracks when, to whom, what, and for how much items were sold. Automatically accumulates sales and accounting data, linking with reservation info to grasp dining data per customer. / ¥0
Mobile Order / Supports both QR code and tablet ordering, reducing labor costs while contributing to higher spending per customer. Order data is auto-accumulated for menu analysis and demand forecasting. / ¥0
Payment Terminal / POS checkout amounts automatically reflect on the terminal, preventing double entries and mistakes, and streamlining accounting. Terminals are provided free, with a rate starting at 1.88%. / ¥0
Why Make Everything Free?
A structural challenge in restaurant management is the heavy burden of daily fixed costs and operational expenses, yet this burden has rarely been visualized or resolved.
Many restaurants have adopted tools like reservation systems, POS, order systems, and payment terminals piece by piece from different vendors whenever needed. As a result, the following issues have emerged:
Financial Costs: Total monthly fees frequently amount to tens or hundreds of thousands of yen, with additional per-customer referral fees applied to reservations made via gourmet sites.
On-Site Training Costs: Because the tools are fragmented, staff must learn different operations for each. The cost of training and handovers silently but surely accumulates.
Data Fragmentation: Data regarding reservations, sales, customers, and orders remains disconnected. This forces not just management decisions, but also on-site customer service and suggestions to rely on individual experience and intuition.
Respo resolves these structural issues by fundamentally rethinking pricing itself.
Zero initial fee, zero monthly fee, zero referral fee. By providing all essential core features for restaurant management for free in Japan, cost burdens can be drastically reduced for everyone from independent eateries to multi-location operators. Furthermore, by integrating data into a single platform, store challenges become more visible, making it easier to leverage data not only for decisions to increase sales but also to improve daily customer service and operations.
To provide a foundation that not only cuts fixed costs but also drives sales—to all restaurants, for free. That is the intention behind this transition to completely free service.
The Mechanism Behind 'Increasing Sales, Decreasing Costs'
What Respo delivers is not merely free tools.
From pre-visit reservation and attraction management to in-store service, ordering, payment, and post-visit customer follow-up—integrating all necessary restaurant management features into one platform provides end-to-end support for store operations.
With this move to completely free, restaurants are first freed from the burden of large fixed costs. Unifying tools into one dramatically reduces the effort required for staff training, setup, and management.
Furthermore, using Respo automatically links reservation, sales, customer, and order data. The longer you use it, the more this data accumulates as a store asset. With centralized data, the manual Excel reconciliation previously required to match data between systems becomes unnecessary, achieving massive operational efficiency.
Being able to view data centrally enables management decisions such as...
Features Offered for Free
Feature / Overview / Monthly Fee
Reservation System / Manage online, phone, and walk-in reservations in one ledger. Referral fees are also free if via AutoReserve, so costs don't rise as reservations increase. / ¥0
Site Controller / Centrally manage reservations across multiple gourmet sites in real-time. Prevents double booking and grasps reservation status by platform at once. / ¥0
POS Register / Tracks when, to whom, what, and for how much items were sold. Automatically accumulates sales and accounting data, linking with reservation info to grasp dining data per customer. / ¥0
Mobile Order / Supports both QR code and tablet ordering, reducing labor costs while contributing to higher spending per customer. Order data is auto-accumulated for menu analysis and demand forecasting. / ¥0
Payment Terminal / POS checkout amounts automatically reflect on the terminal, preventing double entries and mistakes, and streamlining accounting. Terminals are provided free, with a rate starting at 1.88%. / ¥0
Why Make Everything Free?
A structural challenge in restaurant management is the heavy burden of daily fixed costs and operational expenses, yet this burden has rarely been visualized or resolved.
Many restaurants have adopted tools like reservation systems, POS, order systems, and payment terminals piece by piece from different vendors whenever needed. As a result, the following issues have emerged:
Financial Costs: Total monthly fees frequently amount to tens or hundreds of thousands of yen, with additional per-customer referral fees applied to reservations made via gourmet sites.
On-Site Training Costs: Because the tools are fragmented, staff must learn different operations for each. The cost of training and handovers silently but surely accumulates.
Data Fragmentation: Data regarding reservations, sales, customers, and orders remains disconnected. This forces not just management decisions, but also on-site customer service and suggestions to rely on individual experience and intuition.
Respo resolves these structural issues by fundamentally rethinking pricing itself.
Zero initial fee, zero monthly fee, zero referral fee. By providing all essential core features for restaurant management for free in Japan, cost burdens can be drastically reduced for everyone from independent eateries to multi-location operators. Furthermore, by integrating data into a single platform, store challenges become more visible, making it easier to leverage data not only for decisions to increase sales but also to improve daily customer service and operations.
To provide a foundation that not only cuts fixed costs but also drives sales—to all restaurants, for free. That is the intention behind this transition to completely free service.
The Mechanism Behind 'Increasing Sales, Decreasing Costs'
What Respo delivers is not merely free tools.
From pre-visit reservation and attraction management to in-store service, ordering, payment, and post-visit customer follow-up—integrating all necessary restaurant management features into one platform provides end-to-end support for store operations.
With this move to completely free, restaurants are first freed from the burden of large fixed costs. Unifying tools into one dramatically reduces the effort required for staff training, setup, and management.
Furthermore, using Respo automatically links reservation, sales, customer, and order data. The longer you use it, the more this data accumulates as a store asset. With centralized data, the manual Excel reconciliation previously required to match data between systems becomes unnecessary, achieving massive operational efficiency.
Being able to view data centrally enables management decisions such as...