Square POS system for restaurant use: what works in Kuwait

Square is one of the first names an owner meets when shopping for restaurant software. The photographs are good, the pricing page is clear, and plenty of cafes abroad run on it. This article covers what Square for Restaurants actually does, why signing up from Kuwait is harder than it looks, and what a small kitchen here can put in its place.

What Square for Restaurants is

Square sells a counter system. There is software for taking an order, a card reader or terminal for taking the money, a printer for the kitchen, and reporting behind all of it. Square's own restaurant page groups the product around taking payments, handling orders in one place, bringing customers back, paying staff and reading the numbers. It also sells versions shaped for coffee shops, quick service, bars, food trucks and pizzerias.

The design idea behind it is worth stating plainly, because it explains everything else. Square's software is built around Square taking the card payment. The card processing is the business. The counter software is what makes the card processing convenient.

Square is sold in eight countries

This is the part that decides the question for a reader in Kuwait, so it goes near the top rather than at the end.

Square's own help centre says that "card payment acceptance with the Square app is currently available in the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, France and Spain". The same page adds two rules that matter. You have to be located in the country where you opened the account, and Square hardware is only approved for use in the country it was sold for. A reader sold in the United States is not approved for use in the United Kingdom, and the reverse is equally true.

Square's developer documentation says the same thing from the other side. It lists the supported countries as Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States, and notes that for sellers outside those, "the only payment methods available are external payments and cash payments".

Kuwait is not on either list.

What that means for a restaurant in Kuwait

You can read the marketing, book a demo and even download the app. What you cannot do is open a Kuwaiti Square account, take a card at your counter through it, or buy hardware that is approved for use here. Everything that makes Square worth its price sits on the payment side, and the payment side is the part that stops at the border.

Some owners get around this with a company registered abroad. That is a real route and it is a heavy one. It means a foreign entity, a foreign bank account, money landing in the wrong country, and hardware that has to be carried in. For a restaurant with one branch in Salmiya it is a lot of structure to carry for a cash drawer.

There is a second reason it fits Kuwait badly, and it has nothing to do with Square. Kuwait has no VAT. PwC's tax summary notes that the GCC framework agreement is still under discussion in parliament while the draft law is being prepared. Much of what makes a foreign restaurant POS expensive is tax handling for a system you are not in yet.

The order that never reaches the counter

Set the availability problem aside for a moment, because there is a bigger question underneath it. A counter system answers the person standing in front of it. In Kuwait, a growing share of the day's food is chosen by somebody who is not standing anywhere near your counter. They are on a phone, in a chat, asking whether you deliver to their block.

Nothing at the counter sees that order. Somebody on shift reads it, types it into the register, reads the address back twice, and hopes the kitchen got the right one. That work is invisible in every report a counter system produces, which is why owners are so often surprised when a faster register does not make the evening calmer. We wrote about how to separate those two purchases in our restaurant pos system comparison.

"I spent four years selling counter software before I built anything. The demo always went well, because a demo is one order at a time. Nobody ever demonstrated the eleven messages sitting unanswered on the manager's phone, and that pile was what actually cost the restaurant money."

— Anzul Aqeel, founder of Get Menu

What Get Menu does instead

Get Menu is not a cash register and does not try to be. It is the ordering half. If you already have a working counter, keep it. What follows is what the ordering half does.

Your own ordering page. Every restaurant gets an address on getmenu.ae, included from the first day, with 12 page layouts so a short drinks list and a long grill menu do not have to look the same. It is a normal web page. Nobody installs anything.

A code for every table. Codes are generated for you, a designer makes them look like your brand, and a print pack arrives by email ready for the printer. The table is the address, so a guest types nothing. A whole table can order onto one bill from their own phones.

The order lands in WhatsApp. When someone finishes ordering, 3 messages go out in about 2 seconds. A confirmation to the customer, a ticket into the managers' group, and a dispatch to the riders' group carrying the GPS pin the customer dropped at checkout. There is a log of every message and whether it arrived.

The address stops being a phone call. The pin is dropped at checkout, the building and unit number are picked from a list rather than typed as a paragraph, and the delivery fee can be set per building. Free delivery over a threshold you choose is a switch, not a spreadsheet.

The price shown is the price charged. Options and add-ons carry their own prices, required choices are enforced, and every line is re-priced from your live menu at checkout. Counts per item fall as orders come in, counts per option too, so you can run out of one sauce without losing the dish.

Regulars you can name. Stamps can be given per order or per dirham, tiers your regulars grow into can carry an automatic discount, and rewards expire so they get used. The card sits in Google Wallet, live and updating itself, with no app to install. The Apple version is built and waiting on a certificate from Apple. Kuwait is unusually good ground for this, which we covered in the piece on restaurant loyalty in Kuwait.

Offers with brakes on them. Coupons carry caps, exclusions and expiry dates. Bundles price any three items together. Discounts do not stack by accident, because the best one wins. Nothing has to be switched on before you are ready.

Numbers your accountant will take. Invoices carry your registration number, the customer downloads the PDF without logging in, and you can export to a spreadsheet whenever you want it.

The trial runs 15 days with no card details asked for, and the price is a flat monthly figure with 0% taken from your sales. Whatever you sell in a good month, the bill does not move.

Comparing the two honestly

The row that matters most is the first one. Everything below it is a comparison you can only act on somewhere Square is sold.

Three checks before you buy any foreign system

The Square question is really one instance of a wider one, so it is worth writing the general version down.

First, check the supplier's own country list before you read a single feature page. It takes a minute and it is the only fact that can rule a product out completely. Suppliers rarely put it in the marketing.

Second, ask where the money lands. If the software is paid for by taking a cut of card payments, then it needs a local banking arrangement, and that is the piece least likely to exist in a smaller market.

Third, ask who can help you at nine on a Friday evening. Time zones are a real cost. A support desk that answers eight hours after your rush is a support desk you will stop writing to.

What Get Menu does not do

It does not take payment online. There are no card details anywhere in it, because none are collected. Payment is cash or your own card machine at the door, which is how most Kuwaiti delivery already works.

It is not a register for walk-in customers, it does not run payroll, and it does not manage supplier purchasing. If you need a counter system as well, keep the one you have or buy one locally, and let the ordering side sit beside it. Our guide to a pos system for f&b covers what a counter system should be judged on.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use Square in Kuwait?

Not for taking card payments. Square's help centre lists the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, France and Spain, and Kuwait is not among them. You also have to be in the country where the account was opened, and Square hardware is only approved for the country it was sold for.

Is Get Menu a replacement for a Square terminal?

No. A terminal takes a card at your counter, and Get Menu does not do that. It handles the orders that arrive from a phone: the menu, the checkout, the WhatsApp messages, the delivery address, loyalty and the reports. Many restaurants run a local register at the counter and Get Menu for everything else.

Can customers pay online?

No. Payment is cash or a card machine when the food arrives, so no card details are stored anywhere in the system. In Kuwait this is usually what customers expect in any case.

Do my customers need an app?

No. The menu is a web page they open from a link or a printed code. Loyalty cards go into the Google Wallet already on the phone.

What happens after the free trial?

The trial runs 15 days and no card details are asked for to begin it, so nothing can be charged by accident. At the end you choose a plan and carry on, or you do nothing and the account is suspended.