Ingredient Tracking Not Working in Square for Restaurants Plus – Is This Really Normal?

[Slava2026]

Hello everyone,

I’m currently using Square for Restaurants Plus, and I’ve run into what I consider a fundamental issue.

Despite being on a paid Plus plan, the Ingredient Tracking feature is not accessible without additional activation, and in some cases it appears to require purchasing an extra extension (around €150).

Frankly, this is quite surprising to me.

For any restaurant or retail food business, ingredient-level tracking is not an advanced feature — it is a basic operational requirement.

Let me explain my specific case.

In our coffee shop, we sell drinks like a Latte, which can be made with different types of milk:

• Whole milk

• Oat milk

• Soy milk

Operationally, the correct way to build this in Square is:

• Latte = item

• Milk type = modifier

However, from a cost control perspective, each modifier should trigger different ingredient consumption:

• Whole milk stock decreases

• Oat milk stock decreases

• Soy milk stock decreases

Without proper ingredient tracking tied to modifiers, it becomes impossible to accurately track real cost of goods sold and inventory usage.

This means:

• No accurate COGS

• No theoretical vs actual variance

• No proper stock control

• No reliable margin analysis

For a food business, this is not a luxury feature — it’s foundational.

My questions to the community:

1. How are you handling ingredient tracking for modifier-based items like different milk options?

2. Is there a built-in solution I’m missing?

3. Is the only option really to purchase an additional €150 extension?

4. Are there alternative workflows that don’t require third-party integrations?

I’d really appreciate hearing how other operators are solving this.

Thanks in advance.

[Slava2026]

Hi@nika. I saw your message in a similar thread. I still decided to create a new one, as it seemed to me that enough time has passed and it might make sense to discuss this topic again.

Could you please let me know if there is any current solution available? And if there is an option to sign up for beta testing, would it be possible for me to participate?

We have fairly high traffic in our coffee shop, and it is extremely important for us to use this feature for accurate inventory tracking.

Thank you for your attention.

[The_Sun_Inn]

@Slava2026 This is a Beta for Ingredient Cost Tracking, not sure if still accepting new signups or not, it has been running for a while now but seems to have ground to a halt in terms of updating!   https://community.squareup.com/t5/Ingredient-Cost-Tracking/gh-p/IngredientCostTracking

[Slava2026]

@The_Sun_Inn Thank you for your reply. Yes, I submitted a request to join this group on February 16(Your request to join was sent February 16, 2026). I haven’t received any response yet. I hope @nika  will be able to clarify the situation.