Using Square Restaurant System for Non-Food Related Services?

[cscstore]

Hey Square Community!
We're a Retail Clothing store that offers Custom Printing for Garments (Direct To Garment, Direct To Film, Vinyl, and anything Heat Transfer Related)

We just placed an order from a Coffee spot that runs on Square for Restaurants, and we liked how simple it was to place the order, and how it provides an email reference for the purchase and the link to provides a Status for the Order (Order Received, In Progress, Ready, Place and Time for Pickup).

We've been looking into creating a custom developed website for our Printing Department.

We want a system that pulls from our garment inventory (currently on Square for Retail) and provides an easy / intuitive way to place an order with us.

After experiencing the Square for Restaurant system as a customer, we'd be interested in building this online site using this platform.

Our question:

• Has anyone used the Square for Restaurants system for businesses not related to food?

  • Using the Restaurant system for other service businesses.

A typical Print order consist of the following

• Selecting a Garment
  • Brand
  • Style (ex. Short Sleeve, Long Sleeve, Pullover, etc)
  • Color
  • Size
  • Quantity
• Print Type
  • Single Color Vinyl Print
  • Single Color Ink Print
  • Multi Color Ink Print
• Print Location
  • Pocket Print
  • Full Front Print
  • Full Back Print
  • Sleeve Print
  • Different combinations of each
• Confirming date for pickup
  • Our typical turnaround time for an order is 2 days for 1-4 garments

The order status that Square for Restaurants provides customers seems like it would be very helpful in providing our customers with general information about their orders before they reach out to us through the phone or email.

The Ticket Labels printed for our order also gave us the idea that we can add these labels to the orders we receive.

This is just an idea, so we wanted to see if anyone has any suggestions or experience using the Square for Restaurants systems in businesses not related to food. 

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for taking the time to read!

[_Violet]

Hello @cscstore - Community Moderator, Violet here 👋

Square for Restaurants is actually a software for your Point of Sale vs your Square Online Store. I don't think this would be the best fit for your retail-esque business.

It sounds like you're interested in the following features for your Square Online Store: Online Order updates for your customers, inventory tracking/stock counts, and modifiers or variations for your online items. Take a look at our Online Store Pricing & Plans page to determine which plan sounds most suitable for your business, based on the features you're interested in.

If you have any questions, please let me know! 🙂

[cscstore]

Appreciate the information, @_Violet !

Looking over the options, is it possible to provide an Order Status Page similar to the Square for Restaurant experience, but for Retail sites?
Our business currently runs on Square for Retail, and we wanted see if something like the Order Status Page available on the Restaurant Version of Square is available for the Retail Version.

Order Status Page

• Order Placed/Received
• Order In Progress
• Order Completed
• Showing Pickup Time and Location

Our initial questions focuses more on our Printing Service Department, and not our Retail Business.

We would like for our Printing Service Department website to offer garments (similar to Entrees), and add modifiers (printing type and locations). Once the order is placed, an Order Status Page would pop up for the customer to check for updates.

We would like this because it allows for a convenient way to communicate with customers about their order, instead of them checking in during off hours, or busy production days.

If it's possible to have something like this using Square for Retail, let us know!

Or if you recommend something else for our Printing Service Department.

We could split our Retail business from our Printing business, and have them operating under different versions of Square. We would only do that if it's more convenient to process Print Orders through a Service driven version of Square.

Let us know if you have any questions or suggestions. Thanks! 😄