On Western Avenue in LA’s Melrose Hill, a horseshoe zinc bar anchors a wine-forward French neo-bistro where classic cocktails, minimal-intervention wine, and steak frites arrive with equal care. Bar Etoile opened in October 2024 and landed in the Michelin Guide California within months, with the guide singling out its wine program.
Co-owners Jill Bernheimer and Julian Kurland built the place on a shared idea of what a night out should feel like. Bernheimer founded Domaine LA, one of the city’s pioneering natural-wine shops, in 2009, and Bar Etoile is her first restaurant. Kurland, a longtime Domaine LA colleague and front-of-house veteran, partnered with her to bring it to life.
“Bar Etoile came together because both Jill and I have the same vision of hospitality, love wine, love really good food, and have a really deep appreciation for French cooking and French neo bistros,” Kurland says.
Running a full-service restaurant, though, is a very complex operation with a lot of moving parts. That complexity is why the owners wanted technology that stays out of the way, and why they now run Square POS for restaurants across nearly every part of the business.
The challenge: Escaping mounting fees on a legacy POS
When Bar Etoile opened, it started with a legacy POS from another provider, and the system quickly began to feel like a drag on a young business with thin margins. Every device carried its own recurring software fee, and core tools like inventory tracking arrived as separate paid add-ons stacked on top of climbing credit-card costs.
“We were originally with a different service provider and became slightly concerned about the mounting costs of both our credit card fees, as well as the recurring software payment fees that we were paying for every single device that we had from them,” Bernheimer says.
For a new restaurant, those numbers matter. Full-service restaurants run on pre-tax margins of roughly 3–5%, according to the National Restaurant Association, so every stacked fee and siloed tool pulls against profitability and against time on the floor. Support for a smaller account was scarce, too. By March 2025, the pair had decided to switch their POS system.
The solution: Running the whole restaurant on one platform
The path to Square started with a conversation. Julian and Jill were already feeling the pressure of their previous POS costs when a former LA restaurant-industry contact, who had since joined Square, reached out to Bernheimer. They learned Square would not charge the same recurring software fees for every device. Switching POS systems was still a leap, the kind any restaurant owner takes when choosing a platform. For Bar Etiole, it paid off.
Today, Bar Etoile runs service, scheduling, payroll, inventory, invoices, and payments on one platform. During service, orders go in at Square Terminal and Square Handheld stations, then travel to the kitchen, paced by the built-in “fire” system on Square Kitchen Display System. The point of sale runs on iPads with Square for Restaurants POS, and at the end of a meal a server brings a sleek handheld tableside for a tap, a phone payment, and an on-screen signature, keeping the restaurant POS system almost invisible in a design-forward room.
We love using Square as owner operators because it sort of fades into the background and allows you to really focus on what’s in front of you.”
Julian Kurland → Co-owner, Bar Etoile
“Taking a sleeker, smaller handheld to a table at the end of their experience is much less obtrusive and feels like a more seamless part of the process,” Kurland adds.
Behind the scenes, the owners handle staffing and scheduling with Square Team Management, run Square Payroll, and keep inventory and margins in one place, tracking item costs and sending Square Invoices for retail wine pickups under their license. When a compliance or operations question comes up, they turn to the built-in Square AI assistant, which they affectionately call their “Manager bot,” for the kind of filing and admin tasks restaurant owners aren’t trained for, the same Square AI edge other operators use to decode their sales trends.
Impact: One platform, more time for hospitality
With Square POS for restaurants handling the busywork, the payoff shows up first in time. “Payroll is super succinct and can be run in as little as ten minutes from entering tips from tracking hours,” Kurland says. Features a legacy provider billed as extras, inventory and reporting among them, now come standard, which protects those thin margins.
The data sharpens decisions, too. “Often we will use the product mix reports to confirm what we think we already know… sometimes you find things that are quite surprising,” Bernheimer says. Those same numbers motivate the team: when a bartender guessed he had poured 40 martinis on a busy Friday, the report told a better story, “no, actually you did 65,” and the pride that followed lifted the whole floor.
With the back office running quietly, the owners can step away to recharge and come back present for their guests, the kind of balance more restaurant and bar operators now lean on technology to protect. Bar Etoile has kept its momentum since opening, earning that Michelin Guide nod and a place among LA’s best new wine bars, with plans to keep evolving the menu and host guest chefs.
Restaurants are nothing without people being in them. So we are in the business of people, but we are also a numbers business. … And Square helps us be able to see what those numbers look like very clearly. And we can take that and transfer it back to our guests to give them the best experience that we can.”
Julian Kurland → Co-owner, Bar Etoile
