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New to Square for Restaurants? Start here!๐Ÿ“โ€Œ

 

Are you new to or interested in Square for Restaurants ?

 

The Square for Restaurants POS (Point Of Sale) system lets you keep cash flowing, reach more customers, and operate smarter.

 

 

๐Ÿ—ฃ Features worth shouting about:

 

โ–ช๏ธ Table-side payments

โ–ช๏ธ Direct from website online ordering

โ–ช๏ธ Marketing and loyalty programs

โ–ช๏ธ Menu creation

โ–ช๏ธ Payroll and more employee management tools

 

 

Let us know and ask any questions you may have by replying to this thread! The Square team and fellow restaurant owners in the Community will answer your questions and help you get the most out of Square for Restaurants. 



If you haven't signed up for Square for Restaurants and would like to, you can start your 30-day free trial here



Reply Below to Ask the Community 

๏œ๏ธ Hailey
Seller Community Marketing Manager
Square Seller Community
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Super Seller

Love: Menus, table management, course management, seat management, KDS.


Heads up: You canโ€™t manage your item library from Restaurants, you will need the Point of Sale or Inventory app, or to use Dashboard for that.

 

Wish: Advanced reporting wasnโ€™t forced on for everyone. There is no variability with what reports are available to what team member type.

 

Niggle: Table timers initially led me to think they would reset with each sale applied to the table as part of the same open tab. This is not how they operate (instead itโ€™s far more restrictive with only two timers, based on first sale tied to that table, and canโ€™t be manually fired/reset) and given table timers are pitched as letting you see when tables have been sitting for too long, you would think subsequent sales would reset timers. They donโ€™t.

 

Side note: Restaurants unfortunately seems to be Point of Saleโ€™s poor cousin who gets the hand-me-downs after Point of Sale got a feature first. Understandably I imagine this is because Point of Sale has the scale to validate new features before widespread deployment, however be mindful when seeing new feature announcements that they might not apply to Restaurants straight away!

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Super Seller

Square for restaurants is a system for any new or existing restaurant to effectively manage counter service or table service at a much more affordable price.  While there may be somethings you don't see, the square ecosystem has a few ways that the seller community can help you work around those things.  

 

I know personally, I don't want counter staff managing the item library or doing invoices.  I can use square for restaurants and still do this with my online dashboard or using the POS app and it will work together.

 

I have looked at what companies like Toast tout on their website about square for restaurants and they are way behind on what the Restaurant app can do.

 

Once you have it set up, you can deploy and scale your business in a multitude of ways....and maximize your staffing by minimizing the time and number of people you need to get food orders.

 

Analytics, square for restaurants has the numbers you really need to figure out your numbers.  

 

The important thing, just ask questions and people like me who have figured it out and run a restaurant every day will help you.  Not an account rep trying to sell you an addon you don't need (no offense!!)....

 

Donnie
Multi-Unit Manager
Order Up Cafe/Tombras Cafe/Riverview Cafe/City County Cafe
Roddy Vending Company, Inc.
www.OrderUpCafe.com

Using Square since July, 2017
Square Super Seller
Square Beta Team

"Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment."

"You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want." Z.Z.
Do you want to have great restaurant menus that are easy to edit and don't cost a fortune? I use MustHaveMenus and you can too!
MustHaveMenus
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Super Seller

Please Please make the "Plus" Version avalible on Square Register!! We NEED IT!! 

Jacob - He/ Him
JJs Meat Shak - Co-Owner& Operations Manager
Supper Seller- Here to help! Just Ask!
http://www.jjsmeatshak.com
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Super Seller

I use Square for Restaurants at my Bar & Grill. It gives operational advantages over the regular POS. I use end of shift reports to manage tipouts and I update the menu regularly from the square dashboard which is nice since I don't have to be at the location in order to update the POS button layouts.

 

Online ordering is great and I'm going to really push self-serve ordering this year. I also utilize the Kitchen Display System (Square KDS) in my Kitchen to track orders and ticket times. 

 

I try and use as much of Square as possible. I use all their hardware as well. I have the Square Register, Square Stand as well as 2 Square Terminals. 

 

If you have any specific questions I will do my best to answer them.

 

Cheers!

If anyone has any 

Luke Nieuwland
Owner/Operator
https://www.whiskyrun.com/
Co-Founder
https://birrdi.com/
Co-Founder
https://www.lakeeffect.ca/
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Beta Member

Hi LukeNieuw,

 

    I saw you use the KDS, by chance have you tried using the Sticky Label Printer?    I'm just wondering if you have and your thoughts about using it for Square Restaurants as compared to just Square POS?    I am about to purchase a coffee shop that runs on Square POS and was wondering if it was worth switching to restaurants????

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Super Seller

@mdf92380 I don't use a sticky label printer so I can't speak to that sorry. 

Luke Nieuwland
Owner/Operator
https://www.whiskyrun.com/
Co-Founder
https://birrdi.com/
Co-Founder
https://www.lakeeffect.ca/
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I would like to ask regarding Inventory system, does it accurately track each ingredients of a product like tomato, lettuce, onion inside a burger? 

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How to I unsubscribe from being enrolled as square for restaurants? I am not a restaurant and somehow my account got converted to a restaurant account. Please help.

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Hello Everyone - Can I start a tab with a credit card in SQ for restaurants? I have been using regular square since 2017 and I cannot do that with my current system. Thanks

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Beta Member

What do you mean by  "Start a tab"?  I use cards to start a tab at my place.  You cannot pre-authorize, but you can harvest the customer's name by swiping their card. ---- To clarify, I am using the regular Square Stand, NOT S4R

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Beta Member

Being able to start a tab with a credit card and then give the card back to the customer has been a long requested feature that has never materialized for some reason and it defies all logic. I'd love for someone at square to explain why this feature has not been added after years and years of requests.

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