6 must haves for your restaurant in 2022

[Donnie-M]

Ok, I was reading a lot of articles the other day and came across different ideas of things that people were wanting to do in 2022 and decided to discuss 6 things every restaurant probably needs in 2022 and get your feedback and what ideas I might have missed, and these are in no particular order:

1.  Online Ordering (Really who shouldn't have online ordering now?)

2.  QR Code ordering/Kiosk/Table Side Ordering:  This one is my big to do next month.  I realize I should have a QR code to my website or ordering page where customers can come up to a table and order food and we know where it goes automatically.  This could also be great in a parking lot for people who don't know what they want, but want to order to-go.

3.  TikTok Presence -  Ok, this one bugs me, but it falls under the heading of facebook, instagram, etc.  I want to be posting about my food visually, because people do eat with their eyes.  I am also thinking about setting up a spot/space where it says, post from here and get a discount.  People love to have that spot to say "Hey I was here".  TikTok is the social media app and has shown it's staying power.  I know many of you have fell down the tik tok hole or had your legs go numb while sitting watching them.

4. Labor & Food Cost Controls:  With the rising prices we are seeing in the restaurant industry you have to have some sort of recipe costing cards available to really see what they burrito costs you to make today.  I plan to keep updating my prices in small increments every 60 days rather than making big jumps like I did last year.  Labor is killer, so I make sure to look at my labor cost on the day & week using squares free time cards.

5.  Customer reviews:  I was on vacation last week and looking for places to eat.  I was constantly looking at the Google reviews.  I just didn't realize how much weight I gave those when I was going around looking for a place to eat.  Often I had it down to 2 spots, and I would choose the 4.5 versus the 4.2 almost every time.  I am debating on using a survey management/review type company to try to streamline this for myself, but at least I am gonna be soliciting some reviews from my regular customers.  It hit home for me, my last night in Florida I was asked by a manager if I was happy to give a good Google review and I would get a free drink/dessert.  I was happy so I did, and bam...free dessert.  I had chosen this restaurant based on the good reviews....was I just socially influenced????

6.  Last but not least:  Simplicity  I want to streamline and make things less complex.  Anything that is labor intensive, I am especially gonna be looking at those in the next 60 days.  I think here of "Lean" training.  What can I change to make my life easier?  I have started this process by writing down my "pain points" and tracking what I do every day.

So, I know Square has several things here from online ordering, qr code tableside ordering, square terminal, and reports to help me with a lot of these.  I am also exploring ways to use the square ecosystem in each one of these areas to simplify the number of interfaces in which I have to go into each day.

So how are you using square in 2022 and what do you think is more important than any of these 6 for a restaurant in 2022?

[Tom_Herman]

I have posted a offer on UPworks to see what I can accomplish via Excel and VBA. I will share the results (if any) here.

[Arick]

Thank you!

[RedRocksBeer]

I own a beer garden/restaurant and I would love to see Square have the ability to hold CC information like Toast does.  I really like Square, from the user interface, to the simplicity of design and usability, and the reporting.  But the fact that I can't hold customers CC information without keeping their cards is a major issue for me and my customers. 

We get to the point where we have 30-40 cards behind the bar and it takes a long time to sift through them on check out.  And more and more cards are having customers names on the back of the cards.  It is very inefficient for my bartenders and customers don't like it either. 

[Donnie-M]

@RedRocksBeer I know this is something that has been talked about and is something that is needed.  I will see if I can get an update on the status of this and get back to you this week.

[RedRocksBeer]

Thank you Donnie!

[kmacmmurchy]

Running 6 quick services coffee houses and more to come there are a few things I'd like to see improved upon

1. Inventory for Modifiers - When customers order bagel sandwiches they have a choice of 4 different bagels, 14 Grain, plain etc... I need to track so I don't run out for online orders.
2. Scheduling Item visibility online - Maybe I'm missing something here, but we only sell cinnamon buns Thursday - Sunday. I don't need online Mon-Wed. Is there a way to do this?
3. Order KDS too slow - Would be nice if this would go to the KDS once you click the payment instead having to wait until it's paid. It can be a real drag in the quick service business and slow down. Need a best practice for this as I'm opening a Drive-Thru on a very busy corner.
4. Maybe a Square Stand for iPad Pro 12.9"?
5. Report and Labour Hours - Running for 6 stores is painful. As we all know, people don't always login and out when they are supposed to so we run the labour report manually. Being able to choose your cutoff day and have the system generate the report and email would be great. My 10 year POS does this and saves a lot of time before we switched to Square. It would also be nice to set clock-in rounding as we pay for a lot of staff error. It would be nice that when I do run the employee labour report it is better organized giving the store and a total hours worked summary as attached pic.
6. Nickels and Dimes - I feel some of the "Plus" features like "Team Permissions" that were once free are a little to much nickel and dimeing. I pay a lot just through fees alone.
   
   Thanks for listening.

[Donnie-M]

@kmacmmurchy I think I might have a few answers to some of your items.

1.  Yes, it is a feature request, not sure when or if this will happen, but maybe they will find a different way to fix what we are looking for.

2.  This is an upgrade feature online (Nickle & dime yes I know), but it allows you to schedule when an item is available online.  You do have the ability to build time limited categories, so you could make a LTO bagels category and schedule it for only available on tuesdays 10-2, etc.  You have to be using the simple ordering page for these to work, which is not a bad thing.

3.  This one you can fix with a little re-training.  I use open tickets.  When you save an open ticket, the order is immediately sent to the kitchen, so it will hit the kds.  The flow is: Take the order, Hit save ticket, Get name for order, Hit Saved Tickets, Tap Name of ticket just saved, proceed to cash out.  So instead of hitting charge and then taking a name, or letting the chip reader grab a name, the cashier does it when they hit "save" and the ticket goes back.  The extra 3-5 seconds to recall the order for checkout is not a bad thing.  With a drive thru, I can't imagine you would do it any other way.

4.  You can still use a usb hub with lighting charge to use the contactless reader.  Another thing you might look at is getting a square terminal and use it as a forward facing display for the customer to take payments and then you can just use the ipad in a regular stand.

5.  I agree the labor reporting does need an improvement to truly manage labor on the fly.  I need to look at the restaurants part and see if it has different reporting.

6.  I get this, I look at what I spend for my processing and then the addons.  I personally think team management is a must have.  It gets expensive with the separate locations.  Restaurants is great, unless you have a bunch of tablets, but you can mix and match the pos and restaurants together they both function so there are some workarounds there.  KDS does cost extra, but that is with every single POS system unless you have a closed loop hard wired system which is significantly more expensive.  Online store though is a good deal, the upgrade is affordable and the extra processing is worth the extra sales and the integration.  When you grow to multiple locations, square does cost more and is not the same as for a single food truck or 1 shop.  But, I see it costing with every system I have explored.  But still, this is good feedback.

[kmacmmurchy]

Hey @Donnie-M, thanks for the feedback.

1. Here's hoping for item 1
   
   
2. So this would be $30/month for the site? I don't need this 5 times for each location? Most of the things I get for $30/month I don't care about, like Paypal, Item Reviews, Abandoned Cart emails and the gift options. "Advanced reporting" may be of some interest, but I'm not sure what that gets me. Do you know?
   
   
3. I realize Open Tickets will be my only hope for the Drive-thru, but in-house it seems a little cumbersome, but nevertheless I agree it could be a work around. We use it with phone-in orders and it does work well.
   
   
4. I do currently use iPad Pros with Terminal for CFD and payment, but the only work-around I've found for "Split-Payment" is having a Mag reader (which isn't USB-C so I need an adapter) and then the bluetooth square reader. So as I said before, that's a lot of hardware to do one thing.
   
   
5. Labour reporting and any reporting needs help. We have a commissary kitchen and our old system would generate (pdf) "Item Sold" categories (ie, Food, Baking), so they knew what to make for the next day based on sales. Now I have to do manually (step backward) As well my labour reports and month-end reports would go automatically send out via email to several email addresses such as my bookkeeper and managers.
   
   
6. Yes $45x5=$225/month. That's a lot of $3 coffees to make that up. I do have the Register at one store and I love the CFD and payment pa, but I find it way slower and I can't do emails or anything on it which kind of sticks. If I could do that Payment pad with an iPad Pro that would be cool.

Thanks Donnie
-- Ken

[SunnySideKitche]

Right? Someone calls in for a brownie that they won't be paying for for several hours. Or several people do. Now the inventory is wrong. And we are selling online brownies that we don't have.

[ChefShell]

Thanks for sharing love this