What Square product would you use for a food related business?

[Twiggy]

Square offers a variety of products to streamline a food related operation, but with so many options, it can be tricky to pick the perfect one.  I’m quite experienced with Retail and POS, however when it comes to food I hear so many different stories about what works best. Screen sizes, Checks, Orders, operating systems etc etc…..

What Square product would you suggest for a new business starting a cafe that offers local delivery - order ahead - with a bricks and mortar store?

[Lovewell]

@Twiggy I think it depends on what all your cafe is going to serve and the flow of their business. 
For us- Traditional Square POS has worked because we do not have a full kitchen. We have pastries out of a pastry case, some grab and go items, and our drinks. 

We also have no need for table numbers since most of our customers are on the move and do takeaway. When a customer is sitting inside we just walk their items over to them.

If you were serving food and had more of a restaurant style cafe it would make more sense to me to use square for restaurants. 

[vinesandrushes]

We have a full kitchen but with counter-service ordering and a lot of retail sales beyond that, so we actually use Square POS instead of Restaurants because I think it works a little better in our scenario.  

[dimo10]

We are a QSR, no tables. We use Square POS as it's just easier for us. 

KDS is a major factor for us, we use FreshKDS which integrates with Square and has order tracking screens which helps our customers know when their orders are ready.

We use Square registers as it has bothe the customer facing display and bigger screens on the staff side.

I have another 2 iPads set up to take phone orders. 

We use Grubbrr for self serve kiosk on 2 iPad pros with 2 Square terminals to accept payments.

You just piece things together to get it to work for you.

[dimo10]

Oh and i forgot to mention that we use Square Online for all our online orders. Amazing how well this integrates with the order manager on the POS

[Bentsai]

Balancing between efficient service in-store and managing online orders is key.

[maxpete]

What Square product are you using to help with this?

[Sam_400º]

@maxpete - the feedback that so far has fallen on deaf ears has been that online and POS orders don't integrate well on a KDS screen. This is exacerbated if you're also using QR orders. 

When an order ahead order comes on the screen (for me at 30 min out) then all the ASAP/POS/QR orders go behind it, even if I should be making them first. 

If I've got a full screen of QR/POS orders then I can loose an online order behind all of those and miss the time. 

There's no way to have one screen for QR and one for Online as it treats them the same. 

[maxpete]

Thanks for this flag! Tagging @_Violet for visibility too 🙂 

[CreeksideDiveLL]

Agreed 100%, and I think this is a really easy fix to just be able to assign times to POS orders (i.e. ASAP, 30 min, 40 min, etc.) and have everything sort by promise time. We receive a lot of call-ahead orders for hours/days in the future, and those don't play nicely with the KDS at all - they just sit there until the order is due, clogging up the screen.

[phillipsrw]

@Twiggy we do ice creams, hot and cold drinks for takeout only. We have a Square Register which has a lovely big screen for both the customers and staff (all who interact with it love it!). Our takeout model is very simple so for ease we use the Square software all the way. We thought about using the KDS which looks great, but for our size of business it was a step up to what we really needed. We simply produce printouts of the drinks portion of the order automatically on completetion of the transaction. What I love about Sqaure it caters for big and small businesses really well, it gives you flexiblity to scale where and when needed. I'm sure some of the systems that integrate with Square have some great functionality and I guess its driven by the needs of each business, but for most business needs I think Square has your back.

[Sam_400º]

@phillipsrw I'm with you on enjoying how things are scalable! 

With the KDS, it's just me working in my truck for I'm the kitchen and FoH staff but love the KDS. Really means I don't get things wrong and everything stays on target.

[phillipsrw]

@Sam_400º you are spot on, it helps keeps things ordered and organised. When flying solo I can imagine the KDS really helps. I might take another look at it. We have an ipad spare, would you recommend this hardware or something else?

[Sam_400º]

@phillipsrw It's moved to Android only now. The cheapest 'decent' one I could find was a Lenovo P12 was about £270 here in the UK. 

I'd say it's worth another look, but gonna have a cost of entry with the hardware to you now. 

[phillipsrw]

@Sam_400º if it makes our little teams life easier its worth every penny. Thanks for the info will take a look tomorrow.

[Sam_400º]

For me the biggest BEST thing is my KDS. 

Just streamlines everything. Whilst it isn't perfect, it does such a good job and automates letting customers know when their order is ready. 

No paper tickets that I loose or miss order.

Easy view of all the completed tickets. 

I have much preferred the Lenovo 12" tablet that I've moved to over the 22" 'enterprise grade' screen I first got as it moved from iOS to Android. The consumer (and much cheaper) screen has proved to work with no issued and much more reliable. 

[Sam_400º]

My favourite thing (that I can talk about) for taking an order is my phone with Tap To Pay. 

Easy, always on me and keeps my counter totally free for stuff coming out the oven. 

With the extra online management that you can do in the app for making a product OOS or even the modifiers now - it's quick and easy! 

[dimo10]

I have been trying for years to convince a mate that has a cafe near us that he needs a KDS system, but he wont budge... he thinks his printed dockets are the best way. His team run around from one area to another trying to do milk shakes, coffee, smoothies, sandwiches.... he has 4 sections i would split out with one section being the expeditor... it would make things so much more efficient.

It is set up as a heat and go cafe so wait times should be as little as possible but i see so many little bottlenecks that would free up extra staff movement. I feel my Toyota background coming out and trying to minimise waste, movement is one of the most unrecognised wastes in any manufacturing process.

[namastewatford]

Hello,

I have been using Square system for my Restaurant in Watford, UK, www.namastewatford.com.

Systems I am using

1. Square POS for restaurant

2. Square Online (Website and Online Ordering as well)

3. Square KDS

4. Integration of Square Online, JustEat, UberEats to Square KDS via Deliverect

5. Square Gift cards

6. Square Marketing/Loyalty

7. Square Appointments (Yet to Use properly)

8. Square contactless ordering (Yet to use properly)

While it has been useful in many ways including that all orders are flowing in the kitchen seemlessly from all channels (Dine-in, online order, UberEats etc), We get Singel view for all the orders in Kitchen.

There has been few glitches which I still miss hence worth mentioning:

* I can not print Item Stubs from Square KDS, and it was not clear when buying sticky printer from Square. What a waste

* Square still is not able to provide some standard Discount mechanisms. Discounts/Vouchers are very basic. e.g. We can not put a Buy-1-Get-1 offer triggered manually. It has to be automatic.

* There is no way to add referral codes in vouchers. Even Square gives referral codes but doesnt provide a mechanism for you to add

Biggest issue in this case is that you surrender your business totally to Square eco system. In Sep-2023, there was an outage and we lost 100% business for one day as everything in our restaurant was dependant on Square. 

let me know any other feedback needed.

cheers

Manish