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.

[shybear]

Where to begin?!  Starting with a solid foundation of a multi device environment where tickets don't recreate themselves out of thin air would be nice.  After the basics are down, then I would work out the kinks of multi station (prep vs expo) rules.  After that, I would give certain operators the ability to have split view on the expo station where categories that you want to be the main view is at the top of the screen and on the bottom are separate categories.  i.e. if I want my appetizers and entrees to be the main screen but in a small scrolling bottom bar would be items that pop up for desserts or sauces.  Our expo is constantly scrolling the ipad to see if little items come in that we wouldn't be able to catch if we just let the tickets get made in order.  There are a bunch of other items to look at but these above are my immediate needs.

[bevri]

1. app for android

2. inventory

[JustMikes]

I would like to see a way to have different menu items show up on different KDS Tablets. Right now it is cumbersome for the guys that are on the back line making the items that need to be made in the back, but still have to scroll through everything to find what is needed for back there. Same as the front. When the items are tapped off in the back it clears the items in the front or vice versa. This causes items to be missed during the cooking process and then the expo is calling for these items and we do not have them cooked or cooking making wait times way to long.

[Donnie-M]

@rajatdeva 1st off, Square KDS is a phenominal leap forward and essential piece of software/hardware for running a restaurant.

1.  I would like to see any time an item quantity is greater than one (>1) the color would change or the item flash/bold.  Something to key the staff in on multiple of the same items.

2.  The ability to put a ticket on hold and it show up at a later time..like hold a ticket for 30 minutes or re pop up after 1 hour or at a specific time.

3.  Use of a bump bar/keyboard to be able to clear orders without tapping a screen.  KB makes bump bars, but they are just glorified specialty keyboards.  This is one of those things that allows you to preserve your hardware and sanitation as well as cast the screen to a large display and serve off orders without being beside the tablet.

4.  Ability to text customer when order is ready or when the order is served off.  The KDS should sort of function like order manager and when it is marked ready on the KDS that reflects in order manager in a clear and concise way.

Donnie-M

[Theblendedbaker]

We would like to see the KDS system have the seat assigned to the items ordered. It currently doesn't show this option.

[ryanwanner]

 Hey @slainte @Topsy294 @GermanDirk @longtab @926BarAndGrill @TheTapRoom @allwhowander and others who are interested

Square's Online environment does allow for open tabs now! It's based off the QR code self-ordering environment. I've been using it in my store for a while as a tester and now that it's released. It is pretty close to bulletproof.

If you're not using the QR code self-serve, it'll take you about an hour to set up tables and sections, print the QR codes, and tape them to your tables. Then your customers enter their card info and manage their tabs themselves. It's really slick.

For the Restaurants app, I know that the Self Serve orders are limited to the order manager instead of being placed in the floorplan, but that's a relatively minor inconvenience for the ability to have open tabs.

Hopefully next year the dev teams will make in-person open tabs, but this is a great start!

Here's the product announcement post.

[longtab]

We use this for our outdoor seating and it works pretty well - but for indoor service its very impersonal and not for us.  We'd rather not sacrifice customer service because of a technology shortcoming.  

[ryanwanner]

@longtabThat is a very legit reason to not use it. 👍

[allwhowander]

I agree with the impersonal aspect. We sell a lot of hard to find craft beer and the appeal of our environment is the conversation that leads up to these $10-15 pours. This is a great option for some F&B places, but not for us. I would also need to hire another runner to deliver all the drinks from the bar, which I simply can't afford to do right now. I am hoping that the fact that this exists in some form on the Square system is evidence that we will see this much requested feature drop universally soon🤞🏻

[926BarAndGrill]

It's not, for us anyway, an issue about not having open tabs (we do have open tabs in regular square pos now). The issue is that Square does not currently allow or provide any way to "pre-authorize" a debit or credit card when someone opens up a tab. This is like when you swipe your card in a gas pump, it "pre-authorizes" a fixed amount (currently about $75 at most stations) to see if the card is good / if there are sufficient funds.  Once you pump your gas, it then actually bills your card for the true total.  The issue we have now is that people open a bar tab with their credit / debit card - our employee swipes the card in the Square POS and it opens the tab in their name.  The person can then add purchases to that tab throughout the night. We have people who do that and run up $50 - $100 tabs & then leave. When we go to close the tab, Square then tries to process it and the sale is declined.  Having "pre-auth" would eliminate most of these.

[ryanwanner]

@926BarAndGrill that’s exactly what the self serve QR codes do. The customer scans the code and orders from your square online page. When they go to place the order, they enter their card info. The tab stays open throughout their visit, and by rescanning the code (or if they leave the page open on their phone) they can continue to add to the order. It’s the digital version of us swiping their card to hold open the tab. Once they’re done, they get a text reminder to close the tab or it automatically closes two hours after first order. 

[926BarAndGrill]

And there is the problem - at no point in the process does the Square system "test" the card to see if it is any good.  Believe me, we looked at the QR process and it works the same exact way that we do now except the customer puts in their info. We do open tabs now with square but we do not know if the card is any good until the tab is closed (it is the same with the QR process). It is literally costing us hundreds of dollars every month by people presenting cards that either don't have enough funds or that have been cancelled, etc. We have talked extensively with the people at Square and they are well aware of the issue and in agreement that they currently do not have this function.

[ryanwanner]

@926BarAndGrill Actually the new QR open tab system is a preauth setup. If the card fails when the customer enters it the order doesn’t complete. The card is checked upon first “swipe” then held open until payment is complete. The preauth functionality has only been out of beta testing for about two weeks now, so I’m not fully surprised that the customer success teams don’t fully know about it. On the Self Serve fulfillment section of the online dashboard enable Open Tabs. This is not the same as the Open Tickets functionality within Restaurants and POS 

[926BarAndGrill]

That's amazing news! If they have added it to the QR open tab system, it shouldn't be too difficult to add it to the regular open tabs functionality so it will work for bar and nightclub operations as well. The QR system won't work for us where we have literally hundreds of people & open tabs at any given time and most of which don't have any particular "table" or location.

[DSander]

1. Restaurant App - easier way to print guests tabs by seats instead of just splitting to ticket into separate checks. 

2. Rest - the ability to split an items cost between two guests. (ie. bottle of wine between two separate checks) If you follow the boards here this has been begged for for years.

3. KDS - ability to see seat numbers on the screen for the expeditor/runner to take the items to the correct seat. 

4. Rest - ability to change seat numbers on the items. (people move around)

5. KDS - ability for expeditor to make notes on the tickets. (late guests changes ie. no sauce on burger after it's been rang in)

6. Rest - when splitting tickets and then hitting print all, the discounts do not follow the ticket. You have to hit save first, then go and open each check to print to have the discount follow the ticket.

7. Rest - online ordering timing. currently there are a limited amount of pre-selected times 20 min, 30, 45, 1 day, 1 week etc. Being a computer and software there should just be a simple scroll wheel to choose any amount of time. There should also be a choice to pick an exact date. We sell specific pre-ordered items that will be available on a specific date. There is no way to pick that date as the ready date. So if it's available 12/23 the guests get a notification of the wrong date anywhere from immediately or one of the hard coded times.

8. Rest - the ability to start a tab and hold the card info. The info can stay encrypted

9. Rest - The ability to process a split payment at different times. Someone at the table wants to pay $50 on their card. When using the split payment screen it requires you to finalize the rest of the payments and if you do not, it times out and erases the first CC swipe details and if that guests is gone you lose that payment. Huge hassle.

10. Rest - ability to add a custum tip / service charge to a tab. Currently you can only add the set house amount.

11. Dashboard - ability to start/edit cash drawers from the desktop browser instead of having to do it only in that particular ipad.

If there's solutions to any of the above that people know about, please let me know.

Thank you

[honeypiepizza]

KDS: 

- The ability to print a ticket from the KDS screen! Why? As a restaurant that fulfills orders to-go, we want to be able to print a ticket with the name of the customer on it and their order to place with the boxed order at the expo station so when they arrive, it's easy to identify!

POS:

- PLEASE PLEASE enable POS to comprehend both in-house ordering and online ordering! We cannot use online ordering anymore because it overloads our kitchen capacity when we are also accepting orders in house. Online orders don't take into account the load on our kitchen so order throttling doesn't help us here and still stacks tickets to heavy. We need it to help throttle based on how many orders are in progress TOTAL across the location, not by channel to effectively manage the load for our team.

[allwhowander]

@honeypiepizza Great points with both KDS and POS.

Totally second the motion to allow more detailed throttling for online orders, especially by breaking it down to the hour of day, and having blackout times. The way it works now, Friday at 7pm is treated the same as Tuesday at 4pm. Our kitchen is completely inundated on peak hours and peak days and the only option is to just turn off online ordering. Having this option available to change on the fly in the dashboard of Restaurants would be amazing. 

Also, there is no way to restrict the number of items purchased from a category, only the entire order. So if I set a quantity limit of "5" in fulfillment settings, that means someone wouldn't be able to buy 2 pizzas and a mix 4-pack of beer (a totally realistic and easy order for us to handle.) Really we need to be able to say max order of "5" from the pizza category, and unlimited amount from beer category (or any other ready-to-go items for that matter.)

[daybreakdllc]

The ability to add a surcharge! They currently aren't supported in Square for Restaurants, which makes adding any kind of additional charge more complicated. It also is very time consuming for the wait staff, as they need to spend extra time editing the type of transaction, instead of just applying the surcharge as you would a discount, etc.

Thank you for considering our suggestions!

[v-sportsarena]

We are not a restaurant but we would like to see a round up feature. We are very involved with local charities in our area. We would like to see a button that says "Would you like to round up to donate to ABC.. " at checkout. ABC would be able to be a local charity chosen by the business owner. Really all Square would have to do is require the business owner fill out a form and type in the Charites ein plus what ever else is needed for pay out. Square could then send a monthly/ quarterly check on behalf of said business. I have seen the companies make four to six figures with the round up feature suggestion to customers for their choosen charity. 

Also Jack Dorsey left twitter to focus on square and crypto. Can we start accepting crypto sooner then later?

[Rusty_Nickel]

unit based inventory that allows items to have variable sizes (like a keg, pint, growler, crowler, 16oz can, 4-pack, case). without this we need to change point of sale provider. and temporary credit card authorization. need to be able to give the card back it is such a basic tab need and a major customer complaint not to mention a liability issue for our staff of a card is returned to the wrong person (yes many ppl with the same name on busy days) 

[Ginkhao]

1. Combos we can add other items to, with each item having its own modifiers.  such as appetizer with its modifiers, entree with its modifiers, drink choices and dessert choices with a total price or discount based on what is ordered.

2. Being able to track order progress on in person orders rather than only the online orders which currently show in the orders tab

3. Having an output to another screen for in progress and ready order status for fast casual (we are currently doing it on a webpage window on out display software.

4. Love the previous sticker ideas as we are currently manually doing it.

5. As previously mentioned, holding a ticket until a certain time.

We are in the process of adding KDS, so I am sure we will have more requests soon.