Is there a way to text a customer that their order is ready for pick up?

[JandDRockinWW]

We expanded our small business (food trailer) this year which included using the square register with kitchen tickets. Since our business, at this moment, is strictly set up for events (fairs, festivals, etc.) I was thinking it would be neat to take the order and give the customer a number but instead of them waiting (unless they want to), text them a notice their food is ready to pick up. That way they won't have to keep checking back, they can enjoy their selves where they are at. Is that something I can do with square or is there another app that works with square?

Thanks!

Donna

[Sean]

@JandDRockinWW - Congrats on the expansion! As for the feature, it does sound like it would be quite useful, and not just for your business! While we don't currently offer a functionality like this, I'm more than happy to pass this suggestion along to our product liaison team.  We love hearing what features would help make our sellers businesses run better. For more details on the life of a feature request, I'd highly recommend checking out this thread.

PS) If my answer solved your problem, would you mind marking it as "Best Answer"? That'll help the rest of the community find what they're looking for. If not, just write back, and I'll continue to help. Thanks!

[thespoon]

Hi there. Is this feature available, yet? Or is there any other way to notify the customer that their order is ready for pickup? Really wanting to use this in a restaurant environment.

[Sean]

Hi @thespoon and welcome to the Seller Community. While we haven't introduced the ability to text sellers, we did recently launch the ability to send customers direct messages via email. You should check it out and share your thoughts. As for sending messages via text, I'll be sure to share your interest in this feature with our product liaison team. Hope to hear more from you in the future!

[NiNomadic]

dude you guys seriously need to get this going, your system is great we love it, the text abaility would be amazing. the system was 1200+ lol lets start a kickstarter

[Chad]

Hello @NiNomadic! 

We're still tracking this feature request! It hasn't gained much steam on this thread, but we're still monitoring! I'll make sure to flag your comment for our Product Team! 

[Waldo13x]

I would love to see this feature as well to implement in my

restaurant. I would hate to pay $1000 to buy just a pager system to notify my customers when order is ready. 

 All you need to do is ask for a customer number When they are checking out And have like a “order ready notification” tab on the POS screen so that once the customers order is ready you just tap their number through that tab. And Number needs to show up on the kitchen printer receipt or kitchen order screen.

[BillMan2002]

It allows you to do this with online orders only.   I don't understand why it can't be done in the ticket tab or something?

And online orders you can only do credit card, so dumb when you got pick up orders.   Wouldn't be hard to make it so you can choose the dollar amount and if it goes over, just call to get an authorization code that lasts 1 hour.

[Helen]

Thanks for your posts @Waldo13x @BillMan2002. I'll share what you'd like to see with the Online Store team. If we have any updates we'll let you know here! 

[Virgo19]

i agree i do alterations and dont want to take online orders for it every time. id love to be able to take in orders and customers be able to pick up and pay.

[FLD57105]

It was my understanding when you check an order as ready, it should notify the customer that their order is ready to be picked up but my customers are saying they are not receiving anything. Can this feature be implemented to notify them once marked as ready?

[Valentina · Accepted solution]

We introduced this feature back in June, but this thread didn't receive an update!

When customers using Curbside Pickup arrive at your location, they can alert you of their arrival via text. You will see an arrival alert in your Square Point of Sale - with identifying information - so you are able to deliver food to your customers at the curb. 

To enable the text message notification feature, navigate to Settings > Pickup & Delivery from your Square Online Overview page, and set up each location individually. Click the Set up button to start, then below Enable Pickup, you’ll see a toggle you can turn ON that allows your customers to send you a text message notification.

If you haven't already toggled this on, head here to learn more about how it works! 🎉

[humblewoodfire1]

Hey Valentina,

Please go ahead and un-mark your response as a "best answer" as it does not actually address the initial posters question, and it truly seems like you all don't actually read the full context of these feature requests. 

The notifications you are describing are ONLY applicable to online orders.  The original post, and many subsequent posts, have been asking for the ability to text customers that place their orders IN PERSON, not just online.  Square pulls all the same info from credit cards when orders are place online or in person, so why can't we utilize the existing functionality you are describing for in person orders???

Please specifically address this distinction in your response.

[joshlsullivan]

Notify Customers pulls in all orders for messaging. https://notifycustomers.net 

[joshlsullivan]

My app was born out of the PYOP (Paint your own pottery) world, where the pickup of an item is about a week after the transaction. Clients spent too much time looking for customer information, so I set out to fix the problem. Notify pulls orders from customers and provides a searchable, sortable dashboard to message customers. Pricing is based on usage and no monthly fee - $0.05/text in the US. Supports other countries, including Canada, UK, and AUS. 

[PreOrder_Apps]

Hi. Just an fyi because this text notification idea/thing is actually a really good idea and I could've swore there was another Square Partner company that did it already, but this is something we know how to do. 

Disclaimer: We are an official Square Partner. We're a small, tech company based out of Chicago and we try to help small businesses who don't have big budgets. So we often "pool" our Clients' money together to help make them the features they need.

In fact, we've finally formalized this whole "pooling" thing into a new site called SquareWishList.com - which we are currently running on our main website for the time being at: https://getpreorder.com/features 

If enough folks, needs this and chip in, we can knock it out for everyone. 

Basically, as a Square Partner we get our own Square "Application", so businesses would sign up on our site and "connect" their Square Account (which takes like 15 seconds), then our system can automatically read any Customer(s) phone number(s).

So once connected to our Square Application/Website, you wouldn't even need to do anything else - our system would just automatically check for all new orders that are marked as "in-store" (which in Square's API is actually called something else) or whatever order type is possible - then the system would automatically send out a text notification based on the Square Fulfillment Status (which is the blue button that you can "Mark As Ready" on your Square POS).

I hear ideas all day and night that are super difficult and expensive to make, but this one isn't too bad.  

[justinocolon]

I know customers receive an email when their order is ready but is there any way for them to receive a text message? 

I see this was requested last year so I'm just wondering if Square has gotten up to date with the times especially with the pandemic. 

I know the customer puts in their phone number when they are the checkout process so I don't see how it would be so difficult for Square to incorporate this. 

I see the "HERE" option available but that's not exactly what I'm looking for. 

Thank you! 

[Joe]

Hi there, @justinocolon 👋 Thanks for reaching out to us here on the Seller Community!

I've gone ahead and merged your post into an existing thread of Sellers who were also looking for information regarding text-message alerts for orders. Take a look at this Best Answer from Valentina! She will add some clarity and next steps.

Cheers!

[PreOrder_Apps]

The provided solution talked a lot about a Customer being able to email you when they arrive, but if you feel like this still doesn't do what you need - let us know. We have email, push notification and SMS Text Alerts for various Order Statuses - like Order Accepted, Order Ready, etc. If you need this still - we'll do it for free. Easy stuff.

[James_Grubuzzer]

We built a solution for Food trucks Order management with texting for all order types. Shows all Orders entered at the POS and online, Shows To Do, All day list and completed orders views. Ticket timers. Zoom on order details and send preset text messages.  We use it in our truck ( SerialGrillersLLC ) Complete details are at Grubuzzer 

We also made it cheap to run, $10/mo $20/1000 text messages. 🙂

[rkoh]

I feel like this is a terrible solution.  I also want this capability because where orders are taken and where they are picked up are in two different places and I don't want my customers to wait in line twice.  Please add this function to the regular restaurant features for fast casual dining without requiring my staff to log into a customer facing curbside pickup to place an order on behalf of a customer.  I need customers to be able to walk down the snack bar and grab what they want, then place an order for food that must be prepared back in the kitchen, then go pick it up when they receive a message that their order is ready.