Whether you own a taco truck, pizza joint, or high-end boutique, finding new ways to serve customers who are looking to shop and place orders from anywhere is key to adapting to today’s challenges.
If you’re looking to take orders online, on social media, or over the phone, you have a variety of options when it comes to how customers can pick up or receive their items.
From curbside pickup to delivery, here are a few options to easily expand the ways customers can get your pizzas, sweaters, cinnamon rolls, artwork — without missing a beat.
Implement on-demand delivery
On-demand delivery enables you to dispatch delivery drivers from third-party delivery service providers (like Uber) for orders placed on your online store.
Square Online can import your existing Square items to create an ordering page that is fully optimized for mobile devices. Orders placed on your online ordering page are fully synced with your Square Dashboard, appearing instantly after payment in your POS. Order tickets are automatically relayed to your existing kitchen printing systems.
Each on-demand delivery order triggers a dispatch request to a third-party delivery service provider, who fully manages the fulfillment process. Square Online provides live order updates to your customer via text messages. With on-demand delivery, you can:
- Save money: You’ll pay a flat dispatch fee of $1.50 per order, and a fee to the delivery service providers (typically $6–$8 per order on deliveries under three miles). You can pass the delivery cost on to your customers, pay it yourself, or cover it for orders over a certain amount, e.g., free delivery for orders over $50.
- Maintain customer relationships: Strengthen your relationships with customers and incentivize them to return using sales history in conjunction with your regular Marketing and Loyalty practices.
- Stay organized: All your orders will remain in one place, so you can keep track of sales and analytics within your Square Dashboard.
Learn how to set up on-demand delivery.
Add curbside or in-store pickup
If you’re located in a neighborhood where customers can come to you, you can provide them with the option to buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS), or pick up their order curbside.
If you use Square Online and you enable in-store pickup, customers placing orders will see a selection for in-store pickup at checkout, and they can come inside your brick-and-mortar space when their order is ready for pickup.
If you enable the curbside option, customers will see a selection for curbside pickup at checkout. Your customer will receive a text message letting them know to call your pickup location’s phone number upon arrival, and you or your staff can bring their order out to their waiting car.
Learn how to set up in-store pickup and curbside pickup.
Set up local delivery
With Square’s local delivery, you can offer delivery for customers within a geographic range that you determine, and use your own staff (or yourself) to deliver goods. Eligible customers can select delivery at checkout and opt to receive delivery text alerts.
- Local food delivery: When you enable local delivery with Square Online at your restaurant, order tickets sent to your kitchen will print all delivery details in the notes section.
- Local retail delivery: When you enable local delivery with Square Online at your retail store, customers can select delivery at checkout. Order tickets sent to your Point of Sale will print delivery details in the notes section.
For both retail and food, you can also set an estimated delivery time, delivery fee, and a minimum delivery order value.
Learn how to set up local delivery.
Work with delivery partners
You can also adapt to delivery through integrations with Square partners. These integrations can help you offer customers delivery by courier, receive online orders from customers, and manage orders from these platforms within your Square Point of Sale.
Here are a couple of our partners that can help you get set up.
- Chowly helps streamline and integrate orders from multiple third-party delivery services in one place. Square customers receive an extended 60-day free trial with no setup fees. Get started with the Square + Chowly integration.
- The Ordering.app, now part of Google, can help you get your menu online to easily accept food orders from search results and your website. Get started with the Square + The Ordering.app integration.
Learn more about how restaurants are adapting to delivery.
To hear more from Square about additional resources and updates on Square products, please reference our resource hub, which is updated frequently.
