Anyone have experience switching from Restaurant Manager POS to Square?

[Cafecielo]

I manage a 60 seat cafe which is currently using a POS system called Restaurant Manager.  I also have experience using Square Stand at our school espresso stand and I love its intuitive nature.  My feeling is that RM is way overkill for our small restaurant, and we are constantly having tech problems which end up gumming up operations for several hours.  I would love to know of anyone with firsthand experience  with RM who migrated over.  This would help me build my case to switch to Square and save our poor employees tons of headaches and stress.  

[Ron]

@Cafecielo We have never used RM but love using Square Register.  We are also a small restaraunt and really have not had any problems at all with Square. It costs nothing to try Square, why not set it up and givit it a try but don't switch from RM until you have your Square Register up and running? I'm sure you will love Square.

[Cafecielo]

@Ron--I am glad you are finding success with Square Register.  Since I have volunteer experience working with Register at our school espresso stand, I have little doubt it would be a stellar change for the restaurant where I work.  The owner of the restaurant, however, is a hard sell.  I've been working up a proposal for her, indicating how Square can help us grow the business while making operations go more smoothly up front and in the back office.  There would be a significant investment in hardware, as none of the current hardware is compatible. What it would save in time and headaches would easily outweigh the cost, in my opinion.  I'd love to know about the type of restaurant you own and do you find that the 50 main screen buttons on 2 pages are sufficient for your main menu items?  Do the modifiers suffice for items with many options?  Thank you!

[Ron · Accepted solution]

Update 2020: As of summer 2020 Square for Restaurants Free is now available on both iPad and Square Register. For more details about Square for Restaurants visit Square Support.

@Cafecielo We have a small lunch counter at a very busy Historic Farmers Market. I do find that there is more than enough room for all the items we carry. What I did was set up "CATEGORIES" on the 2 register pages of our offerings. For example the first CATEGORY is named COMBO LUNCHES and I have all of our combo lunches under this Category button, which is 28 different Combos. The second Category is name DRINKS and under drinks all of our drink items are listed. The third Category is SANDWICHES and all of our sandwich items are there. I have set up 24 different Categories with hundreds and hundreds of items under each one. The modifiers wok great. Hope this helps.

[Cafecielo]

@Ron, yes this does help.  I think next time I'm in Philly I need to pay you a visit!  My goal is to have a solution or answer to every question our owner has about switching to Square, because I would be surprised if she didn't try to shoot it down.  Our restaurant is a very popular organic food cafe in the heart of a small/medium rural town, a destination for antique hunters.  We try to help every customer who has food sensitivities and allergies, so easy to use modifiers are key. Of course the notes section is helpful as well.  

Do you also use the other features such as employee management or payroll?  How about the loyalties program?  I'd be happy to continue this conversation in a private message if/when you have time.  Thank you for your kind help. 

[Ron]

@Cafecielo, if you have a iPad, why not try it before switching over. It costs nothing to start Square, you could play around setting up the Square Register to see how it works. I set my system with Square up before ever going live with it. It made the transition from old preocessor really easy. I would just set it up in your own name not tying the business in to it in case your owner does not like it. I do not use the payroll at this time but know other nearby vendors that love it. The loyalty program we use now is just punch cards, we have two, one for Combos (buy 10 get one free) and for our Fresh Cut Fries (buy 10 get one free). I would love to go from the paper punch cards we use to Square but I am afraid of the time it takes to type their telephone number in with each sale, at this time it is quicker to just punch the card(s). Here is our Facebook Page if you want to look at our business a little closer. www.facebook.com/jrsfries

Ron

[Cafecielo]

@Ron That sounds like a great idea.  I do have an iPad.  For someone who is not familiar with Register, it would be helpful for our owner to see it set up in all its glory to be more positive about the results. Thank you for the suggestion.  I know this will be a bit of unpaid work on my part, but I believe in it enough to give it a shot. I'll check out your Facebook page too, thanks for the link.  Have a great day in Philly! 

[Ron]

I'm glad I was of some help to you. Good luck. 🙂

[lilychiang]

@Ron Square Loyalty has a free 30-day trial. I know you're concerned with slowing down your line speed but I would urge you to give it a try. Many of our sellers do not find typing a phone number adds that much time to the end of the sale. Moreover, we automatically link users credit cards to their phone number. When a customer uses the same credit card, we automatically accrue stars (or what you call punches) for the customer and they don't need to enter their phone number again. Customers love it because they don't have to carry a card in their wallets.

One caveat, we don't support multiple punch card programs at the same time. This is something we are tracking and exploring. 

[KnoxCoffee]

@Ron

Hi Ron, 

How does your "combo" layout work? Is each one of your combos an "Item", with modifiers? I'm trying to figure out the best way to set up coffee and bagel combos that are discounted from the a la carte items.

Thank you!

Michael 

K Brew

[katieand]

👋 there - I'm writing in to this thread because our product manager for Square for Restaurants, Kevin, is answering questions about this newest launch from Square. He'll be in the community this Friday 6/8. If you have a question, please add one to the Q&A thread!