Square for Restaurants & KDS: What features or improvements would you like to see in 2022?

[rajatdeva]

Hello Seller Community 👋🏼 My name is Rajat and I work on the Square for Restaurants team here at Square.

As we look into next year, we’re hoping to hear from you all on what you would like to see in development for our Square for Restaurants product, which include the Restaurants Point of Sale app and Square KDS!  

                                                    

 

 

These can be suggestions that have already been mentioned on the Square for Restaurants feature request board, but that you’ve identified as your top feature request that you’d like to see developed in 2022! Think of it as a Square for Restaurants and/or a KDS ‘wish list’. 

Please reply below with some feature suggestions or product improvements that you’d like to see. Your comments will be recorded and reviewed by our Square for Restaurants Product Team. 

 

[lgmbts · Accepted solution]

A more robust way to manage inventory, on the fly.  We "retire" inventory and produce new inventory all day, every day.  Being able to click on a tracked item in the POS and adjust inventory on the fly would be HUGE!  Having to stop using the register as a register, log into the dashboard, and adjust inventory is clunky, inefficient, and not possible in the middle of a rush.

[JayBirdsChicken]

Posting on here is probably better than sending feature requests to phone support. 

[ktaniguchi-sq]

It is - people from Square's product development teams read these boards from time to time.  I use seller posts here to highlight what kinds of products we should be building.

[schonzeit]

Hi folks! James from Square for Restaurants here. For what it's worth, I and many others on our team do read these posts every day (I 'subscribe' so I get an email summary each morning) so please keep the requests and feedback coming.

I don't always have the chance to respond, but know that I do funnel these to our PM's, Designers, Engineers, and leadership team regularly. We also do review the reports that come in through our Support team as well which help give us a sense of scale so either here or there works.

As for the two requests on this thread re: requiring a dining option (for here/to go) when entering an order and on-the-fly prep time/order pacing, I've flagged this to a number of folks on our team who are actively looking into this. I unfortunately can't commit to a specific launch date yet, but you should see some long-requested changes coming into the product soon.

[Stanley]

Please, please please.... restaurant reservations and card pre-authorization for bar tabs.

Also, tip % should be based on FULL AMOUNT after using a gift card or applying a discount.

[crystalimages]

It may not be ideal, but Addmi is a Square App Marketplace app that does allow you to start tabs on a card.

Unfortunately, you have to build your menu on their app instead. I don't think there's a way to import your menu.

It still goes through square for payment processing.

Addmi charges 30¢ per transaction.

I don't need open tabs so I haven't tried it, but it looks promising. 

This might not be so bad if the bar is stand alone. I know most restaurants don't authorize a card if you're ordering food. You could use this just for those sitting at the bar, especially late after dinner. However, I could see this creating the need for the bar to run both apps, but I think you could have them on the same iPad, just switch between apps.

Here's their website:   https://addmi.com/features

[kwiz117]

Create Packages/Combos. This is a must have function for any restaurant, cafe.

Group items, create a combo/package price. Display individual items in KDS.

[kwiz117]

I have been using square for restaurants for 6 months now. I have a techy background as well. I have not seen a single new feature added to the platform during this period. I am not sure about other suqare products but square for restaurants looks like it is in a back burner. Most of the features users have requested are not major updates that can take years to develop. There are many quick wins. We will look for alternative options like Fresh KDS and other POS like lightspeed for our new restaurant. I always felt square with its devices is a stable and solid product. But, the lack of functions are impacting our business. 

[makedonas]

I would love to have a phone app that gives me quick access to my items to adjust inventory availability, online item availability and 86’ing items on the fly. 
Right now it takes even longer than before (new captcha) and what seems like a million button presses to get anything done on my phone. 

[DSander]

the Captcha is so annoying. Why, with modern phones, is it necessary. Use face id. touch id. anything please

[GTS308]

Hi @rajatdeva 

Wondering when the loyalty program will connect with Square for Restaurant, at the moment only the online ordering and the square pos are connected.

[Nativepeople]

Hi there,

I have just started using square we decided to go with this company over our pre existing company of clover, so we are slowly getting all the bugs flushed out. Also on your KDS screens do they make them any larger than the 21" currently?  Would be kid of hard if there are only 2 Cooks in the kitchen, or at least in my Kitchen layout.  was quite the change to navigate the many things we Need, like the payroll, scheduling, time tracking they all seem to require much information to be able to use just what we need. We have our HR and ADP doing payroll and all scheduling is done by different department Heads. As my Roll in Food & Beverage Manager it actually Hinders some of what I need from the system because of all the information needed on my Staff.

Thanks for your time,

Martin Laiwa

F&B Manager

Garcia River Casino

Mendocino County California 

[BBQ_Spike]

Thanks for asking for feedback.

Fairly new to Square for restaurants & KDS here, but experienced engineer & geek.  When setting up our system to demo we noted that  whilst take outs are catered for we couldn’t set the system to work ONLY on that model.

Our scenario is that we are festival event caterers with a large booth that take payment upon order.  We want to utilise a KDS to fulfil orders leaving one staff member as the FOH cashier and the remaining 12 staff at their stations,  be it chef or fulfilment.  The idea is to add some fast food chain automation to our process in order to reduce queuing time in the rush periods.  We’ve seen queues an hour long in some festivals and that’s not a good customer.

The frustration for me was that “send”button which whilst it works for a vendor that is based upon a traditional restaurant / cafe where a customer lingers and adds more to their total bill for payment at the end, but for our scenario I just want a payment button there.  I did find the send handy though to create a “staff food account” to track what they were eating & drinking, especially when we are providing meals for the event organisers staff and giving them the bill afterwards.

So in short, I’d like to be able to set the system up as a takeaway, which would then remove the highlight from the “Send” button to the “payment”

button, with the KDS taking the order to the kitchen and fulfilment stations upon payment.

perhaps I missed a trick??

[Lou8]

Hi @BBQ_Spike, thanks for posting !

I understand the importance to streamline the checkout process when you're catering at a busy event. 

If you'd like to process orders quicker, you can disable the Open Checks and Floor Plans features in your device settings. While the Send button will disappear from your screen, you will still have to access the Bill tab to check out the customer. The order tickets will then print automatically after checkout and sent to prep stations. In your Dashboard :

1. Access the Device Management tab then Point of Sale
2. Click on your Restaurant POS device
3. Toggle off Open Checks and Floor Plans
4. Save

It's not exactly what you're looking for, but I'm hoping you can make use of it in the meantime. 

Note that this option might not let you track your staff food account the way you normally do. Do you create a special bill for your staff, and every team member add to it ?

Let me know if you have any questions !

[DeutschEssen]

I have found the basic POS better than restaurant version for a short order situation. I run a food truck and the basic version is so much better for our needs. I have also worked at a bar/restaurant and they also liked the basic pos so much better and did not use the restaurant  version. Maybe this will work better for your situation also.

[BBQ_Spike]

Yes I found the same and initially started using the basic pos.  Seems more intuitive for the direct sale game.  Thanks for making realise I’m not the only one thinking that 🙂