We want to hear from you about the strengths and weaknesses of Square for Restaurants

[lucasisaza]

Hello!

At Square we are constantly looking for ways to improve our products and services. Over the last couple of months we’ve interviewed some of you to better understand why you chose to run your business with Square for Restaurants.

We’d like to continue learning from you by sharing the following survey. Our objective is to develop a better understanding about the things that Square for Restaurants does well today and those that we can improve on. The results will help us prioritize, and continue to improve the product for all of you. 

We’d appreciate hearing from some of you! The survey should take no more than 5 minutes and is available for US sellers only until September 15, 2022. To thank you for your time and feedback, we can provide you with a $5 Amazon gift card.

Thanks!

Lucas

[rusty6644]

Is there anyway to do a batch charge to more than one customers? I have a winery and would like to charge each customer in our wine club all at once instead of one by one. Any ideas?

[dosmesasllc]

Being able to split individual items across multiple checks would be a huge fix for us. If a table orders an appetizer, and being able to split the amount of that appetizer between their final checks, etc. 

Very very happy to have the new function of servers claiming their cash tips when running their report!

[lucasisaza]

Great to hear that the new feature to declare cash tips has been helpful! We are working on improving its functionality and realize that splitting an item across multiple checks is also a highly requested feature. Thank you!

[momomoahcorp]

Oh one more thing.

On Square online, can you please add an button that functions to hide item price? I bet there are many stores, they just publish their web site so the customers to see what they carry and what to expect. However, there are items that we proper not to show d/t many different reasons. 
Please Please add this button!!!

[hellochonky]

Need ability to do a phone order for pickup.... where the customer will pay cash upon pickup.

[valhallasandwic]

you can save the ticket and then when they arrive, pull it up and charge them this way.

[hellochonky]

How do you do this in the restaurant app?  I can do it in the regular, but not restaurant.  I need the kitchen ticket to print.

[lucasisaza]

Thank you for the request. To clarify, you would like to input an order, have it print from the kitchen printer, and when the customer arrives pull up the ticket to have the customer pay? You might be able to do this using open tickets. Is there a reason why that doesn't work? 👍

[Jewelsm]

#1. The split item function is so needed!

2. Ability to edit items after the 'send' function. Currently we must Void if there is a change to an order after the send function. Then it resends a ticket to the kitchen (sometimes we don't remember to tell them not to make). It could be a toggle that turns off/on the 'ability to edit items" so owners/managers can control if needed.

3. Pizza friendly options such as, 1/2 charges when pizzas are 1/2 pepperoni, 1/2 cheese. So charges can be automatically entered.

4. When the Bluetooth kitchen printer and square are not connected, currently there is not a notification upon "send" to let the server know the order was not received!!! 

5.  Save different table layout configurations. But only have the current ones visible. I have about 4 layouts a month. I notice we can choose which menus are visible, maybe same type of toggle for layouts.

Sorry, I have many but I will stop here. 🙂

I do love my square system and rarely have issues that I can't work around.

[makedonas]

Having the option for different colors for modifiers would be a great addition. 
To distinguish add ons or normal sides etc

[lucasisaza]

Splitting an item across multiple checks is something we've been hearing a lot lately. In Square Dashboard you can create multiple floor maps for the same location. If you do so you'll be able to toggle between layouts when you are in the point of sale. This should resolve your last request but if not just let me know. Thank you!

[Rayzdogz]

I have a hot dog cart business.  Would Square for Restaurants be the way to go?

[makedonas]

Regular Square POS is the way to go, for your needs. 

[TheLBC]

• Kitchen printers that work when the internet goes down. Bluetooth does not work with the models we have been told to purchase, then purchased and Star told us they won't work offline with Square
• Kitchen printers disconnect from the ipads so we need a notification when an item does not send to the kitchen- it might show up on the KDS, but the ticket doesn't print so it gets missed by the line cooks
• Readers disconnect often from the ipads, creating problems tendering checks
• When you void an item it get sent to the kitchen - can this be removed?

Thank you!

[eastvillagecafe]

• Ability to have color coded items on the KDS text would be great, different color on certain modifier or variations text would make kitchen's life easier
• If the KDS worked offline via bluetooth to the ipdas that would be awesome!

[Donnie-M]

@TheLBC I just switched my square KDS to print all my kitchen tickets and disabled the ticket printing at each register for order tickets, but I do have a star sp742 networked to my wi-fi router.  This helps a bunch imo.

[isabelle]

I'm going to tag some Super Sellers! 

@JamesSandbar @Belanger_Bagels @saydad @makedonas @LLCafe @JeramyTP @Donnie-M @vinesandrushes @jjsmeatshak1 

[DSander]

Did the survey. Thanks for listening but I’m not sure it’ll help with finding pain points or needed features. Here’s a few I have.

• yes, split an item across tabs for charging guests. So needed.
• A better split check feature. Currently a guest item is only tagged by a seat modifier. Some pos systems have a feature for when you are ready to print checks you can print by total check, by seat number or a grouping of seat numbers, or by dividing by 2,3,4 etc.. If a guests changes seats, you cannot change that in the system. We have work around but it should be easier with programming.
• Scheduling. I would love the ability as a manager to make changes from the mobile app. Also, on the desktop version you can color code departments but they don’t show up on the app. The staff should be able to communicate through the scheduling app. Swapping shifts would be nice. It would also be nice for salaried managers or non-scheduled team members to be off the app. Every time I sign in as the owner it tells me to set my availability to get the schedule i want.
• I would like the ability to add a service charge of any amount to the tab.
• A good way to take and return deposits for groups.
• It would be nice when you add a new item all the modifiers and sales categories followed it to the online setup.
• Better power out or offline mode. Lost power yesterday. Connected my hot spot to the iPad. Couldn’t do much. Couldn’t edit tips or access transactions to close out. It also wouldnt move on once switched to offline mode because it got stuck trying to connect to the reader. Which is Bluetooth. 
• Bluetooth printers continuously disconnect without a notification. You have no idea the ticket didn’t make it to the bar or kitchen.

There’s many more. I know we all have our different needs and uses. I tried to list the basics. There’s so much to love about it currently and the direction it’s going. Please give the restaurant version a little more attention and care. It’s a large market to grab.

I wish you would allow unlimited device access to the system. We all get kinda limited budget wise which keeps many of us at a lower terminal amount. Let’s say once you pay for four then you can use more. You’re really making the real money off of CC transactions anyways.

[Jason1111]

I would like the ability to swipe and capture a card for an open tab. Currently we hold on to the card for an open tab, but swiping and giving back the card is a better option for a counter service restaurant like ours.

[LLCafe]

Just filled out the survey, We've been running into several limitations recently as we try to refine our business:

• KDS: We've been evaluating other options because of how limited timing is on Square KDS.
• We really need the ability to add automatic timing to items so that items are automatically fired to the prep stations at certain times after the course is fired. Ideally those times would be able to adjust when a lot of a specific category has been fired in a short period of time. Right now our team has to figure out when to fire items and when you have 20 tickets it's almost impossible to do it well especially when you can't see all of the tickets on one screen. We need to limit what is shown just to what they need to be cooking right now. As an example if we're cooking a Salmon, Salad and Bread, each of those need to be started at a different time to finish around the same time and our staff has to try to do that math on their own.
• Similar to the item above we need to ability to auto fire the next course once the previous course has been finished and be able to specify a delay between auto fired courses. This is also to help limit the number of tickets shown on the screen so they staff can focus on what needs to be done right now.
• We also need the ability for the expo station to be able to see all courses but by able fire items to prep stations from the expo station. This would allow the expo to fire something that needs to be prioritized.
• We need to be able to track completion times for individual items, not just the course so that we can truly see how long it takes for the staff to cook each item. This can help us tell the performance of each staff as we're working with the kitchen. Ideally the staff could put in their pin code to record that they're working on that station for the night.
• We need to be able to print individual items to a receipt printer from the KDS when it's complete, right now we can print courses but that doesn't work in some of our work flows.
• Customer Engagement / Receipts: 
• We'd like the ability to customize receipts. For example we're trying to get our customers to leave more reviews and communicate feedback if there are any issues. We're really like to add a couple of QR codes to our receipts that allow the customer to scan to leave a review on different platforms and another to leave if they didn't have the best experience where they can send their feedback that allows us to address it off of review platforms.
• Another area that would be nice is customers being able to pay from their receipt, such as a QR code that they can scan and pay. That's allows our staff to save some time and focus on other things.
• Tipping:
• We need to allow our staff to document cash tips on each transaction rather than just in total at the end of the night, the same way they do with credit card tips. That allows us to see how a sever is preforming consistently with their tables against other servers.
• Open API for Restaurants:
• We are fortunate that we can do some of our own development and not being able to access the Restaurant data is really limiting to us. Part of the reason we went with Square is how open their API's are but not having that openness for Restaurants really limits Square against the competition for how many systems integrate with Square.
• Reporting
• We really need to be able to see live sales from Square Dashboard so we can monitor our Restaurants remotely
• Overall just having more ability to create custom reports and have reports designed for Full Service Restaurants
• Pre-Authorized Tickets
• For bars especially we need the ability to scan cards and preauthorize tickets so that customers don't walk off without paying or even forget their card if they leave it behind the bar.

That's a lot of information but overall we love how simple Square is to use (and it's come a long way in the last year) which is a big reason why we went with Square but there are still quite a few limitations for more complex FSR operations that make it challenging not to go to the competition.