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Every restaurant has its unique style, meal preparation techniques, staff management, and approach to customer relationships. Yet all restaurants face a common challenge: staying profitable while delivering exceptional service in an increasingly competitive market. Margins for restaurants in Washington have dropped 60% below the national average, falling from 4% to 1.5%, despite menu prices in the city being 12% higher than the national average. Restaurants nationwide are under similar constraints. As industry-wide margins grow tighter and customer expectations rise, keeping operations lean and efficient becomes essential for success.
“You have to be organized, and you have to approach things with structure,” says Keegan Fong, founder of Woon Kitchen, in the Square video series, “Running A Restaurant Is No Joke.” The series, hosted by Eric Wareheim, examines the realities of restaurant ownership. “In the very beginning we got by without that [structure]. But nowadays, if we want to be efficient and we want to make a margin, we have to have the structure in place,” Fong shares.
Savvy restaurant owners like Fong understand the need for efficiency. They are turning to technology to help them simplify processes, reduce errors, and provide the insights they need to run profitable operations. However, all tools are not created equal. To unlock real benefits, you need technology tools that are adaptable to your business. For example, a modern point-of-sale system like Square for Restaurants supports any service model, whether full-service, quick-service, or hybrid. It keeps your front and back of house completely in sync and provides actionable data via an integrated analytics tool. This allows you to track every dollar spent on ingredients and labor so you can identify areas where costs are ballooning and where you can cut back.
If that sounds like the solution you need, read on to discover how the right tools can help you build a more efficient business. Plus, get valuable insights from successful owners who use Square to power their business.
Centralizing admin for easier operations
You don’t open a restaurant because you love handling payroll, but chances are you spend a fair amount of time on administrative tasks. That’s because so many systems are clunky and disparate, forcing business owners to log in to several different programs to take care of payroll, timecards, and sales reporting.
For Alisa Reynolds, founder of My 2 Cents, switching to Square simplified their operations: “When you’re all over the place, like myself, you need one thing that is a set system. And if I can say anything, Square has become clarity for me. It has created clarity and longevity. And that’s big.” By consolidating administrative tasks into one intuitive platform, Square allows you to refocus your energy on the parts of the business that truly matter.
Streamlined administration is just the first step in building efficiency. Once your back-office operations are in order, it’s time to turn your attention to the customer experience.
Improving accuracy for happier customers
When it comes to customer service, mistakes can be costly — financially and in terms of customer loyalty. A misheard order, a forgotten modification, or a kitchen mix-up can create a ripple effect that throws off an entire service. Using modern restaurant tools like Square can make a crucial difference in preventing these costly errors.
Square point-of-sale (POS) systems deliver far more than simple payment processing. Servers can instantly send detailed orders to the kitchen, complete with specific cooking instructions and dietary restrictions, eliminating the traditional handwritten ticket that could be misread or lost in the chaos of a busy service.
Square Kitchen Display System (KDS) takes accuracy even further by serving as a digital command center for your team. Instead of paper tickets cluttering the pass, orders appear on a single, clear, organized screen where you can filter items and sort tickets to ensure everything for a table comes out together. Square KDS also tracks critical order information, including placement time, source, and pickup times for delivery orders. This comprehensive tracking helps alert staff when orders are running behind, maintaining consistent service times and keeping customers satisfied and impressed.
Evaluating costs and cutting waste
When customers are reporting a great experience and operations are running smoothly, it can be hard to step back and see the bigger picture. Yet, that’s often the best time to evaluate your processes and identify areas for improvement. That’s where data comes in.
At a minimum, things like sales reports should help you figure out your current state of affairs. But they’re also a tool that can help you make important decisions on everything from your business hours to restaurant costs, inventory, and even your expansion strategy. “I’ve been able to use Square for so long,” says Alvin Cailan, chef and author of Amboy. “And I can see what I’m doing well with, what I’m not doing well with, what we need to push, what we need to chill out on. It’s just super analytical — it makes my life a lot easier.”
When it comes to inventory, Square provides all the tools you need to eliminate waste. Square Inventory Management automatically monitors stock levels and sends low stock alerts when it’s time to reorder. By analyzing historical data, you can predict busy periods and stock appropriately without over-ordering perishable ingredients that may go to waste.
Enhancing staff productivity
When you first opened a restaurant, you might have had a good handle on how many people you needed to schedule during certain slots. But as your business grew, keeping track of staff performance and scheduling across locations became increasingly complex. That’s where Square data-driven insights become invaluable.
Square Staff Management helps streamline your team’s activities from payroll to shifts to team communication. Staff can easily view their schedules, request time off, or swap shifts through mobile apps, eliminating the confusion of paper schedules and reducing stress around work-life balance. With features like built-in time tracking, inventory management, and integrated POS systems, Square creates a comprehensive ecosystem that helps your team work more efficiently while feeling more engaged and valued. When your staff sees you investing in tools that make their jobs easier, it sends a clear message: their time and well-being matter to your business.
Switch to a modern, flexible system
The difference between a good restaurant and a great one often comes down to how smoothly it runs behind the scenes. Outdated systems that are slow to evolve can hold your business back.
Square is different. You can adapt the Square suite of tools to fit your restaurant’s unique needs instead of shoehorning your business processes to fit inflexible systems. For those new to the restaurant industry, like Keegan, Square feels intuitive: “I don’t come from the restaurant world, so I chose Square because I felt like it’s a very user-friendly experience … I felt like I could understand it really well.”
Beyond core restaurant management features, Square integrates seamlessly with over 100 business apps — from QuickBooks to Fresh KDS — through the Square App Marketplace. By leveraging these modern, adaptable tools, you can boost efficiency across every aspect of your operation, from order accuracy to staff productivity to cost management. The result? A smoother-running restaurant that’s better equipped to delight customers and drive profitability in today’s competitive market.
Running a business is no easy feat, but Square is here to help. We have all the tools you need to start, run, and grow your business, whether selling in person, online, or both. And we’ve made all our tools work together as one system, saving you time and money — and making decisions easier so you can get back to doing the work you love and focusing on whatever’s next.
