Square Releases Vol. 2, 2025: New Tools for Restaurants

Innovation at the pace of restaurants

Running a restaurant is equal parts art, science, and sheer grit. You don’t just feed people, you anchor birthdays, late-night catch-ups, and every “let’s grab something quick” between. Your dining room is the heartbeat of the block. That’s why Square builds for more than transactions; we build for the daily reality of keeping doors open, staff humming, and margins intact—even when costs spike and the unexpected walks in at 6:57 p.m.

If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that the restaurant business never stops moving– and neither can the technology that powers it. At Square, we’ve doubled-down on a simple promise: ship faster than the challenges arrive. That means turning feedback from your dining rooms, back of house, and dish pits into real product releases you can use today, not “sometime next year.”

The result? A growing suite of tools designed to tackle the current math of rising costs, thinner margins, and sky-high guest expectations, without piling on hidden fees or complicated software. Below you’ll find the latest features in Releases Vol. 2, 2025 and the value they unlock for every style of restaurant, from food trucks to multi-concept groups.

1. Make ordering easy, everywhere

Your customers may call from the road, tap a kiosk on-site, or order in through delivery apps. However they order, it all needs to feel like one smooth conversation, for them and for your team. AI-powered voice ordering answers every call like your best employee so you don’t miss a sale because your staff is busy attending in-store customers and can’t answer the phone. The enhanced Square Kiosk speeds up lines with up to 30% faster order entry and easier navigation. Add our new Grubhub integration and your menu now reaches 25 million diners—orders flow straight to the POS rather than a sad lonely tablet. One ecosystem, multiple sales channels.

2. Get your money faster

Bills don’t wait, so payouts shouldn’t either. With instant transfers on all delivery apps—DoorDash, Uber Eats, and now Grubhub—today’s lunch rush can bankroll tonight’s produce run. For franchise groups, Royalty collections keeps corporate and locations in perfect financial sync. Cash flow is the oxygen of a restaurant. Faster access to earnings means stocked shelves, paid staff, and fewer sleepless nights.

3. Get every order right, every time

More channels shouldn’t mean more mistakes. Multi-channel menu management lets you tweak a price, 86 a dish, or launch a seasonal item once and see it reflected across every ordering surface—phone, kiosk, online, third-party delivery—in seconds. Advanced modifiers and conversational flows guide customers through order customization without confusion, and item availability empowers your staff to take actions on the spot when you’re down to the last piece of the pie, literally. Accuracy fuels loyalty. Fewer comps and remakes save real money, while consistent experiences keep guests coming back (and tipping higher).

4. Understand and control costs to grow smarter

When eggs suddenly cost as much per pound as chicken, every cent counts. Order Guide uses AI to turn your menu into a complete ingredient list, ingests vendor price sheets and portal exports from every source, and normalizes units so you can compare apples to apples. See side-by-side vendor pricing, spot gaps instantly, and know where you’re overpaying - all in one dashboard. Accounting tools and reports trace each dollar from tap to payout, giving you full transparency into where your money goes. With data this granular, you can negotiate better, make smarter decisions, and protect the bottom line.

5. Make more confident decisions with Square AI

Square AI surfaces insights to reveal which parts of your operation need a tune-up to keep your growth on track. Simply ask questions about your business data or help via the chat assistant in Dashboard and Dashboard App. You’ll receive quick answers that help you optimize menus, schedule your team, forecast sales, run promos and more — all more quickly and confidently. No more finding the right report, setting filters, or downloading data. Conduct your usual reporting or dig into all the “what ifs” that keep you up at night as simply as having a conversation with your business.

6. Bitcoin is now on the menu

Bitcoin isn’t just a buzzword anymore, it’s starting to work like everyday money. With Square Bitcoin, restaurants, cafés, and local shops can now accept bitcoin payments right at the point of sale. For the first year, processing fees are zero, with instant settlement, no chargebacks, and the option to take everything in US dollars. It’s just another payment method for your customers, built seamlessly into the Square experience.

You can also put bitcoin to work for your business with Bitcoin Conversions, automatically setting aside a portion of your card sales in bitcoin. Sellers are already using it as a simple way to save, hedge rising costs, and even fuel expansion. And since it all runs through your Square Dashboard, managing bitcoin is as easy as managing the rest of your business.

One stack, zero guesswork

Imagine this scenario: the dinner rush is in full swing. Kiosk lines move twice as fast, the AI voice ordering converts every call, and a flood of Grubhub orders flows straight to the KDS screen. At close, you trigger an instant payout to cover tomorrow’s produce. Then you look at the Order guide and see your chicken supplier hiked prices overnight. You switch vendors and save $600 this week alone.

That’s the Square ecosystem in action: connected tools solving real problems in real time. All so you can focus on what matters most—turning new faces into regulars and regulars into community. Log in to your Square account and try these new features today.

We’ll keep shipping, you keep cooking. Have questions or stories to share? Drop them in the comments, we read every single one.