Chowbus

Chowbus is a Chicago-headquartered restaurant technology company founded in 2016 by Linxin Wen and Suyu Zhang. It began as an online food ordering, payment and delivery marketplace for Asian restaurants and has since pivoted to a cloud-based, AI-assisted restaurant operating platform: point of sale, self-ordering kiosks, handheld and tablet ordering, kitchen display systems, waitlist and reservations, online ordering, branded restaurant websites and mobile apps, loyalty, gift cards, SMS marketing, a promotions engine, multi-location management, and an AI suite covering digital ads, social media, creative assets and review insights. Chowbus states it serves 9,000+ restaurants across all 50 U.S. states and Canada with 24/7 bilingual (EN/ZH/ES) support, and raised an $81M growth round in March 2026 led by Prysm Capital and Left Lane Capital. Its POS advertises two-way third-party delivery integration with 45+ marketplaces (DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub and others), and partner-side aggregators such as Deliverect publish Chowbus POS connectors — but as of August 2026 Chowbus publishes no public developer portal, API reference, OpenAPI/AsyncAPI contract, SDK, or sandbox. Its only machine-readable public agent surface is a hand-authored bilingual llms.txt at chowbus.com/llms.txt; a JSON API host (pos-api.chowbus.com) is live and returns a structured error envelope but is undocumented and gated.

Chowbus is profiled on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Company, Restaurant, Point-of-Sale, Restaurant Technology, and Food and Beverage.

Chowbus’ developer surface includes pricing, signup flow, engineering blog, product news, and 17 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

15.9/100 emerging ▬ flat Agent 0/100 human only Front door AI 3/6 light Heartbeat 43/100 alive saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-13 · rubric v0.28.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessPaidApproval

0 APIs

Company Restaurant Point-of-Sale Restaurant Technology Food and Beverage Online Ordering Payments Loyalty Hospitality Software-as-a-Service Artificial Intelligence United States

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-11-13 · rubric v0.28.0

Composite quality — 15.9/100 · emerging

Contract Quality 0.0 / 21

Developer Ergonomics 0.4 / 17

Access Clarity 9.8 / 17

Operational Transparency 0.5 / 11

Contract Governance 0.0 / 10

Discoverability 4.9 / 9

Regulatory Posture 0.5 / 15

Agent readiness — 0/100 · human only

Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 0 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Pagination 5 / 5

Distinct Operations 3 / 3

MCP Tool Quality 6 / 6

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Payments regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero: never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and several others — scorable at all.

The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

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Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):

Machine-Readable Contract +18 pts — api_specs includes an OpenAPI document Ask about this →
MCP Server +12 pts — deployment.mode + probe verdict on the mcp/ manifest, not the pointer; an unprobed slug falls back to authorship Ask about this →
Agentic Access Contract +10 pts — agentic_access artifact present (x-agentic-access), graded by author Ask about this →
Machine-Readable Auth +10 pts — a served openid-configuration/oauth-authorization-server carrying `issuer` (served), else the securitySchemes class in the provider OpenAPIs — bound (mutualTLS, DPoP, Signature) > negotiable (oauth2 authorizationCode/clientCredentials, openIdConnect) > bearer (http bearer, apiKey) Ask about this →
Idempotency +9 pts — OpenAPI mutating operations declare an idempotency key — a header, a request-body property, or a named de-duplication token whose own description says so (verified); else common[].type matches /idempoten/i (documented) Ask about this →
Stable Error Semantics +8 pts — OpenAPI $refs a shared error schema across 4xx/5xx responses (verified), else common[].type includes ErrorCatalog / ErrorCodes / DeclineCodes Ask about this →

13 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):

Contract Quality scores 0.0 — up to +25.0 composite points Ask about this →
Developer Ergonomics scores 2.4 — up to +19.5 composite points Ask about this →
Operational Transparency scores 4.8 — up to +12.4 composite points Ask about this →

Each check links to what satisfies it. Publish the artifact, or tell us where it already lives, and the score moves on the next scoring run.

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Chowbus API pricing

Prices published by Chowbus, read 2026-10-07 from www.chowbus.com/pos-plans/pricing.

Plan	Price
Starter	Get a Quote Includes: All-in-one POS system, kitchen ticketing, menu management, smart ordering (Kiosks, Table Tablets, QR
Efficiency	Request Demo Includes: Everything from Starter PLUS delivery integration, Promotions Engine, Waitlist Reservation, and much
Growth	Get a Tailored Recommendation Includes: Everything from Efficiency PLUS Kitchen Display Screen, Custom Branded App, Customer Pickup Screen,

Plan details, limits and sources →

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Chowbus Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Privacy & Data 1

Its role, the data it processes, retention and transfers, quoted from its own privacy page.

Chowbus

21 quoted statements, read from Chowbus's own page on 2026-11-09.

PRIVACY

Security Posture 1

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Chowbus Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DNSSEC · DMARC

SECURITY

Resources

Get Started 2

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

SignUp

SignUp

Login

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

LLMsTxt

LLMsTxt

Design & Contract 1

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

Conventions

Conventions

Build 1

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

Access & Security 1

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Commercial 3

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Plans

Plans

Pricing

Pricing

PrivacyPolicy

PrivacyPolicy

Company 8

The organization behind the API

Website

About

Blog

News

Partners

Careers

LinkedIn

Twitter

Twitter

Scroll for all 8

Other 4

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

Products

CaseStudies

Events

DataProcessing

Source (apis.yml)

aid: chowbus
name: Chowbus
description: 'Chowbus is a Chicago-headquartered restaurant technology company founded in 2016 by Linxin Wen and Suyu Zhang.
  It began as an online food ordering, payment and delivery marketplace for Asian restaurants and has since pivoted to a cloud-based,
  AI-assisted restaurant operating platform: point of sale, self-ordering kiosks, handheld and tablet ordering, kitchen display
  systems, waitlist and reservations, online ordering, branded restaurant websites and mobile apps, loyalty, gift cards, SMS
  marketing, a promotions engine, multi-location management, and an AI suite covering digital ads, social media, creative
  assets and review insights. Chowbus states it serves 9,000+ restaurants across all 50 U.S. states and Canada with 24/7 bilingual
  (EN/ZH/ES) support, and raised an $81M growth round in March 2026 led by Prysm Capital and Left Lane Capital. Its POS advertises
  two-way third-party delivery integration with 45+ marketplaces (DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub and others), and partner-side
  aggregators such as Deliverect publish Chowbus POS connectors — but as of August 2026 Chowbus publishes no public developer
  portal, API reference, OpenAPI/AsyncAPI contract, SDK, or sandbox. Its only machine-readable public agent surface is a hand-authored
  bilingual llms.txt at chowbus.com/llms.txt; a JSON API host (pos-api.chowbus.com) is live and returns a structured error
  envelope but is undocumented and gated.'
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  open_source: false
  commercial: true
  callable_host: false
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - pricing
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: paid
  onboarding: approval
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Paid · Requires approval
  confidence: low
  source:
  - plans
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-13'
  method: derived
image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6779a2f99727a85f07c60031/6820433f65a36dfb5f461788_ChowbusLogo.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/chowbus/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
x-type: company
x-source: harvest:secondary-market
x-tier: profile
x-tier-reason: enrichment-pass
specificationVersion: '0.23'
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-08-02'
  status: enriched
  artifacts_added: 4
  pass: local-v1
created: '2026-08-02'
modified: '2026-08-02'
tags:
- Company
- Restaurant
- Point-of-Sale
- Restaurant Technology
- Food and Beverage
- Online Ordering
- Payments
- Loyalty
- Hospitality
- Software-as-a-Service
- Artificial Intelligence
- United States
tags_raw:
- Company
- Restaurants
- Point of Sale
- Restaurant Technology
- Food and Beverage
- Online Ordering
- Payments
- Loyalty
- Hospitality
- SaaS
- Artificial Intelligence
- United States
apis: []
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
x-backed-by:
- starting-line-vc
common:
- type: Plans
  url: plans/chowbus-plans-pricing.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://www.chowbus.com/
- type: About
  url: https://www.chowbus.com/about-us
- type: Products
  url: https://www.chowbus.com/products/point-of-sale
- type: Pricing
  url: https://www.chowbus.com/pos-plans/pricing
- type: SignUp
  url: https://www.chowbus.com/free-pos-demo
- type: Login
  url: https://pos.chowbus.com/dashboard
- type: PrivacyPolicy
  url: https://www.chowbus.com/privacy-policy
- type: Blog
  url: https://www.chowbus.com/blog
- type: News
  url: https://www.chowbus.com/news
- type: CaseStudies
  url: https://www.chowbus.com/success-story
- type: Events
  url: https://www.chowbus.com/events
- type: Partners
  url: https://www.chowbus.com/resources/become-a-referral-partner
- type: Integrations
  url: https://www.chowbus.com/products/third-party-delivery-integration
- type: Careers
  url: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/chowbus
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/chowbus
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/chowbus
- type: Twitter
  url: https://twitter.com/chowbus
- type: LLMsTxt
  url: llms/chowbus-llms.txt
- type: Conventions
  url: conventions/chowbus-conventions.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/chowbus-domain-security.yml
- type: DataProcessing
  url: privacy/chowbus-privacy-policy.yml

Chowbus API — frequently asked questions

How much does the Chowbus API cost?

Chowbus publishes its prices; its Starter plan is Get a Quote as of 2026-10-07. APIs.io lists 3 pricing plans for Chowbus, with each plan's price, limits and inclusions under Pricing on this page.

Is the Chowbus API ready for AI agents?

Chowbus has a Kin Score of 15.9 out of 100 (emerging) and an Agent Readiness score of 0.0 (human-only), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-13.

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