Wix and Square Team to Help Restaurants Streamline Ordering

Wix says a new integration with Square will help restaurants streamline their ordering.

The extended integration, announced Thursday (April 20), is designed to help eateries increase their revenue at a time when inflation anxiety is keeping consumers away from restaurants.

According to a news release, restaurant owners who use Square for Restaurants or Square Point of Sale (POS) platforms can now manage their catalogs directly from Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) firm Wix’s platform.

“Many restaurants face operational challenges juggling multiple channels to orchestrate online and in-house orders, delivery services, the kitchen, and more,” said Adam Garfield, who oversees Wix’s restaurant operations.

“Our integration with Square brings a solution to help restaurants get back time that would have been spent on duplicative efforts from using multiple platforms.”

The integration allows orders placed via Wix to be sent straight to Square’s system, letting restaurants connect their Wix online ordering with their existing hardware to streamline workflows, boost efficiency and remove the need for separate tablets.

The Square-Wix collaboration follows Square’s announcement of a host of new features, including new capabilities for restaurants.

These product rollouts are happening at a time when restaurant inflation is exceeding grocery inflation, a trend that could exacerbate restaurants’ existing challenges.

As PYMNTS reported recently, the March data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) shows food prices climbing 8.5% year-over-year, with food at home prices (groceries) rising 8.4%, versus an 8.8% increase for food away from home, meaning restaurants.

“This marks the first time in this period of high inflation that restaurant inflation exceeds that of grocery as well as the first time in years that grocery prices fell month over month (-0.2%),” PYMNTS wrote.

It’s a shift that isn’t good news for the restaurant industry, considering the extent to which consumers were already overestimating menu price hikes, even when restaurants were absorbing far more food inflation than grocers, according to PYMNTS research.

Meanwhile, a number of restaurants are operating without a financial safety net, according to “Main Street Health Q1 2023: Using Finance to Ease Recession Fears,” a PYMNTS collaboration with Enigma.

That study found that 55% of small businesses in the food, entertainment and lodging space said they have no available source of funding to help them meet a cash shortfall.