We're a full-service restaurant that sees high volumes of customers both ordering online, over phone, and table-side. After using Square For Restaurants for several months now, and allowing our staff to get accustomed to the new system coming from Micros POS, we have some major suggestions for Square to add that we find to be vital in our operations and making sure the system is as efficient as possible.
1. Split Items / Share Items — When it comes to tables who are looking to split the bill, you give options for even splits across multiple different checks (ie. equal amount splits) and itemized splits (ie. the customer is only paying for what they ordered across the table). However, there is one feature we miss greatly from the Micros POS which is the ability to share items. For example, suppose a table of 4 sits down at our restaurant. They order 2 appetizers and an entree for each of themselves individually. When it comes to paying, suppose they want to have an itemized split. There is no option for each of the 4 guests to ’share’ the cost of the two appetizers they ordered, and one of them has to put the full cost of the appetizers on their bill. This is something that should be an easy addition to the split function on Square for Restaurants.
2. Loyalty Signup on Physical Receipts — We switched to Square for many reasons, but in particular, the Loyalty program that the POS offers. Square For Restaurants typically will request a phone number for customers to sign up for the loyalty program, however, we do not have customers sign the physical iPads at table-side or pick-up; we print receipts that they sign. There is no efficient and fluid way of getting people to sign up for our loyalty program, and therefore we may not even purchase the month-to-month cost of the loyalty program unless there is an easier way for customers to sign up. For example, when it comes to paying the bill, there should be something like a QR code where customers can scan the code using their phone to claim the points of their purchase amount. This could also be used in conjunction with a Scan To Pay function, where servers and hosts do not have to physically charge cards. This is one of the features we missed out on with the Toast POS system, and should be an absolute necessity. Without this, we will most likely not move forward with a loyalty program as we want to continue using physical receipts.
3. Modifiers and Conversational Modifiers - Having modifiers is great, however, we have experienced some inefficiency with them. Granted each item has a Notes option, it can be time-consuming to type out special requests while taking a table’s order. On the Conversational Modifiers, where there is options for “Add”, “Extra”, “No”, etc., there are a couple essential options missing:
• “Only” — Suppose an entree is listed with multiple different ingredients (ie. carrots, broccoli, egg, onions), but the customer only wants egg and no other ingredients. Instead of having to input “No Carrots”, “No Broccoli”, “No Onions”, why not have this “Only” option?
• “Light” — Once again, suppose an entree is listed with multiple different ingredients. Imagine this entree is a stir-fry, a dish that is typically a sauce-based dish. There is no option for something such as “Light Sauce”, “Light Onion”, so on and so forth.
- 3a. Hiding Modifiers For Square Online - Another suggestion I have is the ability to toggle whether modifiers are viewable to the public. In our restaurant, we have a lot of modifiers set because customers can be super picky. However, we also like to have the ability to allow customers to order for pickup/delivery via Square Online. If I link the original items that show on our POS menu, customers are able to see the entire extensive list of modifiers. To fix this, I had to duplicate every item and manually toggle off the modifier button, which was not only time consuming, but also messes up our analytics a bit.
