Online order management for take out food service with Square for Retail

[Fishman_Tim]

Hello, I am managing a retail fish market that is attached to a seafood restaurant. I use Square for Retail. We are setting up take out through the market and looking to setup Online Ordering.

Through Online Ordering I setup for customers to select their pick up time and I have setup amount of orders I will allow in a 15 min window to make sure kitchen doesn't get overwhelmed. However for larger orders I state to have my customers call in their order. The problem that arises here is that Orders put in through the POS don't communicate with the Online Order restrictions and there is no way that I can see to block off individual time slots to accommodate the large orders and the Online system will allow other customers to put in orders for that time slot I would like to block off.

How can I setup Square to manage all my ordering with inperson through POS and through Online.

Is the Square KDS able to help me in this scenario

[Breffni]

Hi @Fishman_Tim, 👋 thanks for flagging this. 

It sounds like a Square for Retail and KDS integration would work perfectly for your business.

This is something our team has been working on - I'm going to check with our Retail team on the specific details and I will follow up with you here as soon as I hear back from them.  

[CreeksideDiveLL]

FYI we use Square for Restaurants, but this is my single biggest issue with Square too. The (new) Order Manager combines everything from online into a single place, but our Checks don't show up there and there's no way to attach a promise time to a Check. So Checks end up firing on the KDS immediately even if they're not due for days/hours. If Square doesn't have it for Restaurants, I would be surprised if that functionality exists for Retail.

[Breffni]

Thanks for the details @Fishman_Tim. 

It doesn't sound like Retail and KDS would provide a solution here. 

At the moment, there isn't a way to make Online Orders and In-person orders communicate the way you need. 

The 15-min window is very specific to Square Online, and it wouldn't work the other way around. 

You could potentially look at temporarily disabling online orders when a large order does come in. You can add a pop-up banner to your site when your online orders are off, prompting customers to try again in a few more minutes. 

[Fishman_Tim]

That is too bad. Is there any 3rd party systems that work with square but are more geared to managing take out food service. There has got to be a better solution out there, cause the system as is seems totally inadequate. I thought Square was supposed to be the gold standard with this segment 

[Deb19]

There isn't a perfect fix that I am aware of.

If you have the Square App on your phone you can put Online Orders into Busy Mode quite quickly where you can Increase Prep Times & Pause Orders which can help if you are getting slammed instore. Just go to the Orders tab and there is a little clock at the top. 

It's up to our staff on the POS to be aware of how busy the kitchen is with upcoming orders so that they can advise customers at the counter of approx wait times. 

We have multiple printers (1 kitchen, 1 at POS and 1 at servery for front of house)  so eveyone is aware of orders coming in. 

[Fishman_Tim]

I usually limit the size of an online order and have a prompt to call the store to see about putting in large orders. However once i put in a large phone order through the POS there is no way to block off the time that we will be exicuting that order besides turning off all ordering

[Fishman_Tim]

Square needs to give their businesses full control over how the orders come in.

This needs to be setup as 15minute time slots. I should then be able to set limits on each time slot and be able to block or open up each time slot.

Is there any 3rd partys that would give tis kind of control that integrate with square.

We are using Tock for our online take out ordering, but it doesnt integrate with Square. Tock does allow for full control.

This could be a deal breaker for our business

[Lou8]

Hi @Fishman_Tim, 

I'll make sure to pass your feedback to the appropriate Product team. I also suggest filing out a feature request on our Ideate page for extra visibility.

I'm reviewing Square's integrated partners to see if we offer a 3rd party application similar to Tock - I'll get back to you soon with an update!

Thank you for your patience.