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Restaurants spend an average of 28% to 35% of revenue on food costs. With net margins often under 10%, even small procurement inefficiencies can erase profits. I saw this firsthand: my father and relatives spent weekends buried in vendor quotes, napkin math, and unit conversions to save just a few percentage points. I knew a tool that could automate that work and unlock even 3% to 5% in savings would be transformational. Enter Square Order Guide: a tool that simplifies procurement and surfaces the right products at the best prices.
Not long ago, I shared Order Guide with a restaurant owner who runs 11 locations. He looked at it and said he felt seen. For the first time, he had a tool that found better ingredient prices automatically. No vendor calls, no haggling.
His reaction moved me. He immediately grasped what it could mean for his bottom line. With Order Guide, our mission is simple: make restaurants easier to run and help owners keep more of what they earn. That goal is deeply personal to me, having grown up in a family of restaurant operators.
Here’s how my experiences, and the feedback of Square restaurateurs, helped us build a game-changing solution for owners everywhere.
[The Order Guide] is very helpful… looking at all the case quantities and sizes, it’s a lot of math to have to do… I’m super excited about this product, I think it has the potential to save us a lot of money.”
Matt Kliegman → CEO of Black Seed Bagels
Built for food service businesses by industry insiders
My family has owned and operated Italian restaurants in Fresno, California, for nearly 70 years. We now have twelve DiCicco’s locations in central California. Since my grandfather and his brothers were running things, we’ve had to operate the business the old-fashioned way.
While I was running around with my siblings and cousins at family picnics, my grandfather, dad, and uncles were working the phones to make sure there were enough tomato cans, peppers, onions, cheese, and more in the restaurants.
As an adult, I got a taste of the chaos myself. My full-time job was at a tech startup you’ve probably heard of (Snapchat), but I also helped expand our restaurant group during this time. I’d already done any job you could think of in the restaurant (washing dishes, cooking pizzas, taking deliveries, you name it), but this was my first time looking at things from the owner’s perspective.
It didn’t take long to see just how much operational friction there was. Stocking everyday goods meant wading through endless price sheets, emailed CSVs, and clunky vendor portals — all of which pulled time and focus away from actually running the kitchen and serving loyal customers. And with my background in tech, I knew there had to be a better way.
So I founded my own company, Zitti, to give independent restaurants easy to use, AI-powered tools to reduce food costs and streamline procurement. When Square acquired the Zitti team in late 2024, it was a natural next step to join as Director of Product to continue our mission. Our goals were so aligned that they fit like all the flavors do in an Italian Wedding soup.
Leveling the playing field for restaurant owners
One of the biggest challenges for restaurant owners is the lack of transparency in vendor pricing. Each vendor operates in its own silo, and prices for identical products can vary widely, with sudden price spikes offering little warning. That leaves restaurants to manually sift through the noise, compare offerings across vendors, and figure out who has the products they need at the best value on any given day. Without the right tools, operators often end up paying whatever price their vendors quote, with little time or data to shop around, ultimately overspending on ingredients and squeezing already thin margins.
Sure, restaurants typically have real-time access to each of their vendors’ catalogs — but sifting through them for the right ingredients and converting units to compare on a like-for-like basis is slow, manual work. Doing a true side-by-side price comparison is nearly impossible when you’re on your feet all day running a kitchen and keeping guests fed.
Most restaurants don’t have a full-time person focused on procurement. It’s a set of daily tasks squeezed between managing staff, serving guests, and everything else it takes to keep the kitchen running.
Now imagine logging into a dashboard where AI instantly generates your full ingredient list from your menu. Then, with a single upload, you can pull in all your vendor catalogs — no matter how scattered they are — and within seconds see side-by-side comparisons of what each vendor charges. If you saw that one vendor was charging 40% less per pound for peppers, you’d switch in a heartbeat.
It is possible, and it couldn’t come at a better time. Inflation, labor shortages, and tariffs are stretching dollars thin in an industry where the profit margin leaves almost no room for error.
We want Order Guide to be your procurement assistant so you can focus on what you love, namely cooking up great meals and serving your guests.
How Order Guide works
Behind the scenes, Order Guide is powered by sophisticated technology that ingests vendor catalogs, normalizes product data, and uses AI to build a complete ingredient list from your menu. But for restaurant owners, the experience is simple — a clean, intuitive dashboard that makes it easy to compare prices and make confident decisions.
Getting set up with Order Guide is designed to be simple and fast:
- Import your menu
Start by selecting one or more of your menus in Square — or upload a .CSV file — and Order Guide’s AI will generate a complete ingredient list based on your menu items. - Add your vendors
Create vendor profiles for each of your suppliers so Order Guide knows where to pull pricing from. - Upload your vendor price sheets or exports from your vendors’ online portals
Import price sheets from your vendors or upload CSV exports from their online portals. The Order Guide automatically converts these files into a standardized format, making it easy to compare prices across vendors. - Generate your Order Guide
Once your vendors and price data are loaded, click “Generate.” In seconds, you’ll see side-by-side comparisons for every ingredient group, including prices, pack sizes, and quantities available. - Explore, compare, and save!
Sort, search, and filter your ingredient groups to spot savings opportunities and preferred vendors. Use these insights to make smarter purchasing decisions and keep your margins healthy.
Having all this information centralized in one place will take stress off owners and operators alike.
The benefits extend beyond the bottom line
With Order Guide, restaurant owners can save both time and money — two of the scarcest resources in the industry.
Even a modest 3–5% reduction in food costs can have a major impact on profit margins. During our early testing, we identified price differences as high as 30–40% across vendors for the same ingredients, potential savings that can be game-changing when acted upon. Most operators would never see these opportunities without a tool that surfaces competitor pricing side-by-side.
And just as important, Order Guide gives back hours of time every week. Square’s AI can generate a complete ingredient list from your menu in seconds, normalize how vendors label products (yes, even the many ways they name a can of tomatoes!), and make shopping faster and easier. This is especially helpful for restaurants that don’t have every menu ingredient listed per dish or where language barriers add friction to ordering.
At Square, our goal is to solve real-world problems for restaurant operators. Order Guide is one of many tools we’re building to help you make smarter, faster decisions — so you can spend less time managing spreadsheets and vendor calls, and more time growing your business. We’re not just a point-of-sale provider; we’re your partner in profitability.
Working with and for you
At Square, we take care of the businesses we serve the same way you take care of your guests — with commitment, empathy, and pride. We work hard to understand the challenges you face every day. That’s why Order Guide isn’t just another product. It’s a partner built to save you time, cut costs, and give you the confidence to grow your business. My own family’s restaurants use it, and the results speak for themselves.
When you succeed, we succeed. The Order Guide is another tool in your toolkit that will enable you to build a stronger, more sustainable business. Check out Square Releases to see all the latest features we launched to help you run your business.
