Set up your food & beverage business with Square
About Square for Restaurants
Square for Restaurants is a comprehensive, all-in-one POS solution designed specifically for restaurants. It’s a complete suite of tools made, making it easy to streamline your business by integrating menu creation, payment processing, inventory management, and more in one place.
Before you begin
Make sure you have an active Square for Restaurants subscription. If you don’t have an active Square for Restaurants subscription, sign up for Square for Restaurants.
The steps in this guide are the basic setup instructions for Square for Restaurants. If you already completed one of the steps, you can skip to the next one.
Step 1: Select your point of sale hardware
If you already selected and received Square hardware, you can skip to the next step.
If you haven’t selected any Square hardware yet, you can purchase individual hardware and accessories or select a complete POS kit from Square Shop.
Step 2: Verify your identity & link your bank account
Select a transfer schedule and link your bank account to begin receiving funds from your sales, and complete your identity verification to activate your Square account. You need your bank account and routing numbers for this step. Learn how to link your bank account.
Step 3: Create a menu
With Square for Restaurants, a menu is a specific set of display groups and items that appear on your point of sale for a certain period of the day or a certain shift. Your menus should correspond with the physical menus in your restaurant. If you have multiple menus you use throughout the day, you should have multiple menus in your Square for Restaurants account.
You have three options for item creation with Square for Restaurants:
Manually create a menu: This option is best if you don’t have an existing menu and want to create items while you create a menu.
Upload an existing menu: This option is best if you already have an existing menu file saved to your computer.
Import a menu from an existing system: This option is best if you already have an existing menu on another platform like Clover or Toast and you want to transfer the menu to Square.
The upload and import options are currently only available for quick-service restaurants in the U.S.
Learn how to create a menu.
Step 4: Set up your point of sale
Once you receive your Square hardware, you can set up your point of sale with Square for Restaurants. You need access to your Square Dashboard to select your point of sale and create your device code. Learn how to set up device codes.