the experience of the POS system

It is cheaper to get these kits as a bundle through Square than to buy the equipment individually (see before-and-after prices above), but if you already have some of the items, it could be better to source the rest separately.

 

If you can’t pay upfront, Square provides their own interest-free instalments available as 3-, 6- or 12-month plans. After submitting a few basic details for the credit check, you will get an instant response as to whether they approved the repayment plan.

 

User experience

 

While Square is known for their user-friendly Point of Sale (the free POS app) interface, Square for Restaurants looks too simple to believe it has all the features you need in a restaurant. Don’t be fooled, though – the system is built for efficiency, giving you features for a tailored experience of the POS system.

 

Food items or buttons can be grouped into menus (e.g. Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner), display groups (e.g. Hot Drinks, Sides, Shortcuts) and products with variants and modifiers (Americano, regular size, with milk). You can switch between menus via a button below the menu display. Display groups can contain any categories like Hot Drinks or Shortcuts where functions can be accessed from the main screen rather than the separate Actions section.

 

Basically, you can customise the EPOS software in many ways to fit your needs, e.g. include bestsellers on the main Breakfast menu screen, but by clicking Hot Drinks, you go to a screen that shows all the hot drink options. A lot of processes can be customised, such as whether to add Service Charge by default or manually. You can also choose the colour scheme – either light or dark colours.

 

Image: Mobile Transaction

Square for Restaurants - POS menu

 

Square for Restaurants’s POS menu can be customised, but there are no images of products.

 

You can’t display images of products, and the font and style of buttons and menus are so non-distinct that it can actually slow you down when you carefully read which option to tap next. Some actions, such as adding a variant of a product, require an unnecessary extra button tap, so could’ve been streamlined more. That said, the backend POS settings give you options to choose which screen to land on after certain actions – so the flow is partially decided by you.

 

Square asks you to set up a lot of functions before the first time of using the app. This can be daunting for someone who hasn’t considered all the detailed ways to use a POS system. A more intuitive way is to decide all these things in steps as you are introduced to the functions visually in the software, with detailed explanations of what it all means. I had to look up some settings in the help section before I was able to make a qualified decision on some of them.

 

POS features

 

Compared to the free Square Point of Sale, the Restaurants software feels like an extension of the free software – but with more restaurant features  and more customisation options. The interaction between front-of-house and back-of-house operations, i.e. orders placed at the till and fired to the kitchen, is one of the key things you are paying for. This includes:

 

    Deciding which foods are fired immediately to the kitchen

    Timing of courses

 

Many features are similar to the free Point of Sale features, including all the payment methods (card reader, manual card entry, cash, cheques, vouchers, others), split bills, adding tax, tipping, product variants, customer library and gift cards. A difference with the Restaurants POS is that settings for each iPad till have options to tailor some of these functions further.

 

Let’s have a look at some of the Restaurants features of the Plus (paid) plan.

 

Table tab functions: The visual floor plan, dividable into sections, is handy for keeping track of orders. Attach each bill to a person/chair and check the timer attached to each table for when the group arrived. Decide when the table should turn on the floor plan (e.g. after an hour) to make it easier to spot who’s likely to leave soon. You can also split bills after you started creating one order for a table, so each chair gets a separate receipt for their own items.

 

Image: Mobile Transaction

[Square Restaurants floor plan editor]

 

The web editor for Square for Restaurants floor plans.

 

Takeaways, deliveries and pickups: Group orders according to eat-in, takeaway, delivery and pickup, but also: integrate Square for Restaurants with online takeaway websites (Deliveroo, Uber Eats, Just Eat and many others in the UK) to allow online orders to automatically process in your POS software. This requires a monthly Deliverect subscription fee of £39 + VAT, which is a discounted price for Square users (starts with a free trial). With the integration, your POS system automatically sends orders to the kitchen and generally automates a lot of the orders.

 

Image: Square

Square Restaurants Deliverect

 

Deliverect is an extra integration for accepting online orders via Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Just Eat.

 

Discounts and promotions: Set up various kinds of discounts like Buy One Get One Free, Student Discount (% or £) and timed promotions like a Happy Hour offer on all alcoholic drinks on set days and times.

 

Service charge and tipping: In the Dashboard, you can set a discretionary service charge to be added to bills automatically, whether for larger groups (determined by number of seats) or anyone. It is also possible to apply taxes to the service charge automatically. Alternatively, you can set up detailed tipping options.

 

Image: Mobile Transaction

Square Restaurants - actions menu

 

Actions menu options accessible in the Restaurants app.

 

Employee management: Set up individual staff accounts so you can analyse sales per employee, attach orders to individual colleagues, track work hours, set individual staff permissions and view timecards. Square for Restaurants requires employees to log in with a device code specific to the individual iPad.

 

Stock management: Products can be tracked, i.e. you can add stock levels for each item and automatically hide it when out of stock, but you can’t track ingredients. This means you need a separate system to manage food inventory and new stock orders.

 

Image: Mobile Transaction

[Square for Restaurants – split bill assigned to a table]

 

A bill can be divided between chairs at a specific table.

 

Customer library: Create a customer library with personal details such as address, order history and saved payment methods (useful for invoices). You can’t add loyalty points to customer profiles, though, so you’re dependent on discounts and gift cards as loyalty perks.