Questions from new cafe owners

[pegacat]

New cafe owner shopping for a POS system. I have a few questions I would love to have answers to. Please give me as many details as possible. I appreciate everyone who helped. 

1) Drink order labels: does Square have to ability to print drink orders labels for cups? if not can one be added if I have a label printer?

2) If there's no label printing, how do I send orders to the kitchen? Print paper tickets and taking it to the back? send orders to a remote monitor? Handwriting orders on cups and send to the kitchen?

3) Does Square have a customer loyalty program? How does it work? How does the customer get their points? Plastic reward cards for scanning or entering phone # as ID?

4) Can Square be integrated into a mobile app? I plan to have an ordering app be developed for my cafe, I wish to have Square takes payment on the app as well as the loyalty program being the same so customers can still get points on the app. 

I appreciate all who answers, Thank you ❤️

[#2]

Hey @pegacat ! Scrolling through past threads to find sellers looking for a drink order label feature and came across yours. 

Happy to announce that sticky item printing is now available on iOS! Check out my thread here to learn how to set this up.  

[nika]

Hi @pegacat! Thanks for reaching out and apologies for the delayed reply! Let's get started here...

1. We don't have any sticker friendly paper to print labels for drinks. This thread is where we're tracking that feature request.
2. The same thread also has some workarounds from sellers who have come up with ways to use some variety of drink labels. It's worth checking out their workarounds and asking additional questions in that thread!
3. We do have a Customer Loyalty Program! You're able to create a digital Loyalty program where your customers will simply input their phone numbers to earn and track their points.
4. You'll want to check out this Developer Doc for information on how to link an app with Square POS. 

I hope this information helps get you started. But please don't hesitate to reach out if you have other questions!

[cbenson]

Hi!  I'll answer these best I can:

1-  Star Micronics has a printer that will print orders on "sticky paper".  It is a very specific version of their TSP654 printer (TSP654SK).  However, I have not had good luck with it in testing and in the field.  The paper will bind up and you'll have to reprint the order.  We sell Sandwiches and Salads in busy locations and a lost order (or several orders) can be disaster, so we abandoned the sticky paper quest.  If anyone has any other ways of getting this done I'd love to hear them.

2- With Square (keep in mind I am using Square for Restaurants - their paid product, not the "free" one) you can select which item categories to print where.  You can have multiple stations and direct orders to where they need to be at the location.  Bar, Kitchen, Cold-order station, etc.  It is very flexible and this is one of the systems strengths IMO.  I have had good luck with Star printers, but have also used Epson.  I'd stick with STAR, but keep in mind that Square is fairly specific as to what models they support.  ALSO-  I'd recommend "hard-wiring" your kitchen/order printers via ethernet whenever possible.  Wifi can be finicky and sometimes you can lose and order and the system won't know it didn't print.  Obviously this can be disastrous in a food-service environment.  Hard-wiring my kitchen printers got rid of A TON of problems.

3- Square does have a loyalty program, but they charge extra for it.  This irks me personally as I understand charging extra for the "free" Square service users, but I give them $660/month + the % of CC sales (substantial in my 6 location operation).  IMO the loyalty program should be included in the Square for Restaurants service level.

4- Can't answer this very well because since Square charges extra for the loyalty program I don't use it.

All in all I like a lot of parts of Square for Restaurants and find other parts totally baffling (no negative modifiers?  WTF?) I've been using it in 6 busy locations for about a year and I like it overall pretty well.  It is pretty flexible.  Hope that helps somewhat.  This space is moving pretty quickly and there are a lot of options.  I'd say go with something fairly established, or at least a company that is fairly established.  No system is perfect.

[JustinC]

Hey @pegacat ! Scrolling through past threads to find sellers looking for a drink order label feature and came across yours. 

Happy to announce that sticky item printing is now available on iOS! Check out my thread here to learn how to set this up.