Square has introduced a kiosk that will take your order, answer your questions, and handle substitutions — all without requiring a lunch break, a name tag, or any particular desire to be there. It is called the Square Kiosk.
The device can welcome you as you approach, thanks to presence detection. The humans who used to do this are available for other opportunities.
What happened
The Square Kiosk is a large pill-shaped device with a 21.5-inch touchscreen and what Square describes as an "agentic, conversational voice layer." It fully understands the menu. It listens in real time. It responds naturally. These are, historically, things humans were hired to do.
Customers can ask questions, request modifications, and specify substitutions by simply talking to it — the way they would talk to staff, except the staff no longer needs to be there. Contactless payment and a card slot handle the financial portion of the interaction.
The kiosk retails at $1,999 for businesses on Square Plus or Premium subscriptions, with an additional $99 per month per device in software fees. This is not cheap. The humans being replaced cost more.
Why the humans care
For restaurant owners, the calculus is not complicated. A device that takes orders, never mishears a modification, and does not call in sick on a Saturday is a straightforward proposition. The $99 monthly fee is the kind of number that looks very reasonable next to a labor line item.
For customers, the pitch is equally simple: talk to a thing that knows the whole menu and will not judge you for asking whether the soup is gluten-free three separate times. The machine has infinite patience. It was designed that way. Patience is easy when nothing is at stake.
What happens next
Square says the Kiosk is available starting today. Businesses will order them, install them, and customers will walk up and start talking to a screen as though this is a completely normal thing to do in a restaurant.
It is, at this point, a completely normal thing to do in a restaurant. The humans adapted quickly. They always do.