Notify customers when their order is ready for in-house orders

[akreidly]

Can you please add a feature to notify/text customers when their order is ready for in-house orders? Same as the feature you have for online orders?

You already have text messaging for online orders so I'd assume it's the same consent process for in person orders no? 

By having this feature, we're able to fulfill more orders by: spending less time chasing down customers who ordered, reheating customer orders who didn't pick up their orders on time because they didn't know their order was ready, and this will drive more traffic because of more satisfied customers. 

The way we expect to use it is: we would take the customers cell phone number when taking their order, get their consent to send them a text message when order is ready, and once order is ready to be picked up, we'd mark that on their order (similar to online orders) and a text message would be send telling them their order is ready to be picked up.

[Kassi_]

Thank you so much for leaving this Feature Request, @akreidly. You provided excellent feedback and business insight for our Product Team to look through. 

I moved your post over to the Square for Restaurants board instead, so other sellers with a similar need can add their vote. Our Product Team is going to evaluate this for the current roadmap for Square for Restaurants. 

After their evaluation the status can be updated to keep everyone interested in the loop. 

[akreidly]

Thank you so much for the update @Kassi_. Look forward to this feature hopefully get implemented. 

[macdaddy]

We would like this feature for more than just the Square for Restaurants. We have a food trailer, which doesn't require the bells and whistles of that service. We would love to be able to text when an order is ready as well. Other POS systems provide this, and it's really just about the the main thing that has people in the food truck industry looking at other options. 

[akreidly]

@macdaddy I started looking into Toast. Same fees as Square and they're offering 40% discount on equipment for the month of June. And they offer sms notifications for in house orders right of the bat. 

[BreakfastDreams]

I’m ready to move to toast as well! Can we please have SMS texting message capabilities to alert in house order customers when their order is ready. I’m not paying a 3rd patty service for this some feature other companies like Toast already include.

[Honeycombbread]

I don't want to take away from this thread, but here is how our counter-service cafe solved this problem without SMS messaging:

We use a pager bought off amazon for about 120$. It consists of 20 pagers and a small charger/ringer console that sits on the counter.

Our cashier assigns a pager to each guest and puts that number and their name on the ticket. The barista at the end of the bar uses the Square KDS to see which pager to call when orders are ready to pick up at the counter.

We looked into a lot of different SMS systems, but this was a simple, inexpensive, and effective solution using the existing Square capabilities.

[BattleAxesFeast]

I found a thread from 2016 with someone asking for this kind of feature. How is this already not implemented in the system by now? This is desperately needed in the food truck/trailer community. Please, Square, make this happen!! 

[jsestby]

Would be amazing if it linked to the existing kds so that when an order gets bumped the txt is automatically sent. We are also debating on switching to toast for this as well as a few other features. It seems that square has been slow to roll out some of these features that have been asked for for years. 

[jsestby]

Any updates on this? 

[humblewoodfire1]

Here to express frustration that after many years and hundreds of requests this basic functionality is still lacking.  I have to use a third party app and separate device to alert customers via SMS that their food is ready.  Requires an annual subscription and adds a clunky additional step that requires my staff ask every person their phone number which they hopefully enter correctly every time, hundreds in a day.  If I wasn't so entrenched with Square (hardware at multiple locations, familiarity, online store, etc) I would definitely be considering a move to Toast or another platform that offers these basic features.  If anyone in this thread has made the jump and can share their experience migrating over I would very much appreciate hearing about it.