Square for Restaurants Continues Growth Upmarket, Announces New Products to Keep Orders Flowing and Businesses Flourishing

Square’s food and beverage business has seen 47% upmarket GPV growth and a 38% increase in paying subscribers year-over-year
Square also launches KDS for Android, franchise management solution, giving restaurants of all sizes the power to run and grow their businesses easier and more efficiently

Today, technology company Square announced new growth metrics and products for Square for Restaurants, its suite of offerings for restaurants and food and beverage businesses. The company has been serving hundreds of thousands of food and beverage businesses for over a decade and has grown upmarket over the last year as it continues to build products to help restaurateurs streamline and grow their businesses.

Square aims to help restaurants find the calm in the chaos through intuitive tools – and it’s working. Restaurants on Square have used the technology to operate – and expand – their businesses, and larger, upmarket eateries in particular have seen great success: Square’s upmarket food and beverage business grew GPV 47% year-over-year.(1) And with upmarket businesses’ more complex operations, Square sellers are investing in paid tiers of Square’s restaurants platform, with a 38% increase in paying subscribers year-over-year.(2)

With more restaurants expanding and diversifying their revenue streams, Square has been the platform to power this growth. Square’s latest Future of Commerce report found that an average of 20% of restaurants’ revenue is currently coming from products and services outside of their core offerings, and nearly 3 in 5 (57%) of customers have purchased retail items like merchandise or groceries at a restaurant in the past year. Through Square’s ecosystem, restaurants can easily begin selling retail items, offering sign-ups for cooking classes, or invoicing customers for catering services, and restaurants are taking advantage of this. On average, sellers that use Square for Restaurants also use around 4 other Square products – and upmarket sellers on Square for Restaurants use around 6 additional products from the Square ecosystem.

Building on this growth, Square for Restaurants’ new product offerings equip restaurants to easily manage their operations while serving excellent food and peace of mind.

Boost kitchen efficiency with Square KDS, now available on larger Android screens
Today, Square launched Square KDS (kitchen display system) on Android, which integrates directly with Square Restaurant POS, keeping the front- and back-of-house in sync. Kitchen staff get a better view of incoming tickets on large, durable, and configurable screens, allowing them to see more orders, more clearly. Restaurants can tailor Square KDS to their kitchen’s workflow by routing tickets based on dining option – dine-in, takeout, etc. – or kitchen category, allowing for a more streamlined experience that gets meals out quickly and where they need to go.

“Our [Square] KDS setup was so easy in our line kitchen,” said Rosa Thurnher, Co-Owner of El Ponce in Atlanta, GA. “Our tickets come in instantly for prepping orders and marking items as complete. It’s great to have that two-way ticket interaction that paper receipts can’t offer.”

Square KDS on Android is available on the Google Play store and offers a 30-day free trial with Square for Restaurants.

One unified platform with Square for Franchises
Quick-service franchises are one of the fastest growing restaurant segments – and with Square for Franchises, a new, integrated solution, these businesses can operate more efficiently, identify new revenue streams, and prepare for future scale. Franchisors can efficiently manage multiple locations using the Square for Franchises dashboard, which provides a comprehensive view of store performance and precise control over unique menu options, as well as gift card and loyalty program orchestration.

By operating a loyalty and gift card program across multiple locations, restaurants can cultivate better customer relationships and increase customer retention. Square for Franchises marks the latest evolution of GoParrot, which was acquired by Square in May 2022.

New partnerships to enable loyalty programs, drive-through
Square has also launched nearly 50 new partnership integrations over the last year to help restaurants of all sizes succeed, including:

• Square’s new Paytronix integration will soon allow restaurants already using Paytronix Online Ordering and Loyalty to seamlessly integrate with Square for Restaurants, keeping guests engaged across all touchpoints, and using data-driven insights and personalized offers to keep them coming back.
• Square is partnering with two drive-through technology providers – Flash Order and Soundhound – to help sellers easily and efficiently take drive-through orders.

“Square for Restaurants’ growth speaks to restaurant owners’ thirst for new, intuitive technology to help their businesses flourish, whether they’re a fast-growing quick-service spot or a beloved full-service restaurant,” said Matthew O’Connor, Head of Verticals and Platform at Square. “With inflation, labor shortages, and increased customer expectations, it can be tricky to run a restaurant right now – but at Square, we’re the tech partner to make restaurateurs’ lives a little easier.”

This news comes on the heels of Square’s new integration with OpenTable along with a variety of other updates for restaurants, as Square continues to help restaurants find greater efficiencies – and peace of mind.

To learn more, visit Square’s booth at the National Restaurant Association show in Chicago from May 20 to May 23, 2023, or feel free to book an appointment with the Square team at the show here.

About Square
Square makes commerce and financial services easy and accessible with its integrated ecosystem of commerce solutions. Square offers purpose-built software to run complex restaurant, retail, and professional services operations, versatile e-commerce tools, embedded financial services and banking products, buy now, pay later functionality through Afterpay, staff management and payroll capabilities, and much more – all of which work together to save sellers time and effort. Millions of sellers across the globe trust Square to power their business and help them thrive in the economy. For more information, visit www.squareup.com.

1) We determine seller size based on annualized GPV from the last 91 days. An upmarket seller generates more than $500,000 in annualized GPV.
2) We define paying subscribers as sellers who subscribe to either Square for Restaurants Plus or Premium.