Technology

Square unveils handheld device, next-gen food, beverage platform

Photo: Adobe Stock

May 13, 2025

Payment company Square has released Square Handheld, a pocketable POS for all restaurant businesses. For full-service restaurants, employees can take orders tableside or from across the bar, and for quick-service restaurants, that means cutting down on lines during a busy rush.

The new item's advanced features include:

• A spill- and splash-resistant 6.2-inch Gorilla Glass touchscreen and an IP54 rating, which means it can stand up to accidental drops, water, and dust.
• A long-lasting battery designed to power through a whole day.
• A barcode scanner to quickly scan in retail offerings like merch or bottles of wine.
• A camera for capturing photos of new menu or retail items.

"Square Handheld is powerful, profitable, and predictable. It's sleek and slim, and it gives us 10x the power in the palms of our hands (and our pockets) and helps us to elevate our hospitality in the front of house," Chad Sykora, CEO at Krootz Brewing Company in Gainesville, Texas, said in the press release. "It's easy to be hands-free as staff members round corners. Now, they can focus on keeping food steady. Each of our bartenders and servers have been fighting over getting their hands on one!"

Square also released its redesigned, unified Square Point of Sale app, which lets restaurants get started even faster with Square and for greater flexibility selling across different revenue streams. There are now different, purpose-built modes to meet the specific complex needs of full-service restaurants as well as QSRs in one single app.

"Square has gone big in restaurants, and it shows, with our product velocity accelerating to best meet the needs of new and existing sellers," Ming-Tai Huh, head of food and beverage at Square, added in the press release. "Square is the technology backbone for restaurants across the world, from neighborhood cafés to national chains — and with this latest release, we're giving single unit and multi-unit restaurants the tools they need to operate efficiently and to thrive in today's dynamic marketplace."

The brand also:

• Strengthened its partnership with Sysco.
• Streamlined Uber Eats and DoorDash integrations.
• Resy allows sellers to streamline bookings, manage table assignments, and access detailed guest insights.
• Thanx extended Squares loyalty capabilities, now delivering more advanced data insights and personalization to equip sellers with robust loyalty capabilities that drive repeat visits and maximize revenue.