Square for Restaurants alternative · UK and Ireland · sourced and dated 4 November 2026

A Square for Restaurants alternative for UK and Irish restaurants that live by the booking

Square for Restaurants is a till and a payments service, and its restaurant page brings table bookings in through partners. Slotina is built from the other end of the evening: the booking, the room and the door first, with the order, the kitchen display and the bill for the same table.

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What Square is, in its own words

Square, owned by Block, Inc., describes its restaurant product as a POS on iPad and on Square's own devices, with a kitchen display, table management and coursing, online ordering, self-service kiosks, team tools and its own card payments. In the UK the payment service is Squareup Europe Ltd, authorised by the FCA; in Ireland it is Squareup International Limited, regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.

It has things going for it that are worth saying first. There is a free plan with no monthly fee, where you pay only the processing fee on each payment; no long-term contract is needed and you can change plan at any time; and you can use the iPads and printers you already have. For table bookings, its restaurant pages in the UK and in Ireland bring reservations in through partners; the pages we opened describe no reservations system of Square's own.

Square for Restaurants and Slotina, as of 4 November 2026

Facts as of 4 November 2026, for the UK and Ireland. Square facts from squareup.com, read 4 November 2026 and linked below.
	Square for Restaurants	Slotina
Who runs it	Square, owned by Block, Inc.; payments by Squareup Europe Ltd in the UK and Squareup International Limited in Ireland.squareup.com, UK and Irish pages	Belavin Limited, registered in the UK. It runs no payment service: card payments go through the restaurant's own Stripe account.
How the price is set	Three plans: Free (no monthly fee, processing fees only), Plus (a monthly fee per location after a 30-day free trial) and Premium (custom, above a stated annual card turnover). Some features are paid add-ons. In Ireland the same model in euros, VAT on top.squareup.com UK pricing; Irish restaurant page	Published: £99 per location a month for the first 100 UK restaurants that pay, then £149, plus VAT where applicable. In Ireland, €179 per location a month. One plan: the bookings, the kitchen display, stock, the rota and unlimited staff and devices are all in it. Your card payments go through your own Stripe account, which charges its own fee.
Contract	No long-term contract; plans can be changed at any time.squareup.com UK pricing and restaurant page	Month to month: you cancel at the end of any month.
Table bookings	Brought in through reservation partners; the pages opened describe no reservations system of Square's own.squareup.com UK and Irish restaurant pages	A booking page at your own address, phone bookings at the host stand against the real free times, walk-ins seated in one tap, and a waiting list at the door that guests can join from their phone.
Tables and the floor	Table management on every plan; floor plan customisation and coursing in the paid plans.squareup.com UK pricing	Each room drawn to its real size, named table combinations, and a host-stand screen that seats, moves and combines parties; courses after the first wait until the waiter fires them.
Kitchen display	Collects online and dine-in orders; unlimited devices in the paid plans, charged per device on the free plan.squareup.com UK pricing and restaurant page	A kitchen and bar display by station, as many screens as you like: each dish reaches its station within 5 seconds of the waiter's tap, and a ticket turns amber, then red, at the station's own minute limits.
Stock	Ingredient inventory through a paid add-on from a partner.squareup.com UK pricing and restaurant page	Stock in grams, millilitres or pieces, a recipe for each dish, counts, deliveries and waste, suppliers and purchase orders.
Staff	Time tracking and clock-in on every plan; fuller team management and shift scheduling in the paid plans, or paid for on the free plan; staff-scheduling integrations named.squareup.com UK pricing and restaurant page	A weekly rota and a time clock, rostered against worked hours, with a CSV of the hours for your accountant. Hours only, no payroll.
When the internet drops	It needs an internet connection; with compatible hardware, offline card payments are possible for up to 24 hours, with stated exceptions.squareup.com UK pricing	Slotina's app keeps each waiter's unsent rounds on the phone and sends them once, in order, when the connection is back; taking a card and the kitchen display both run over the connection.
Card payments and hardware	Processed by Square, at rates that differ for in-person, online and keyed-in payments; hardware sold separately, or existing iPads and printers used.squareup.com UK pricing	Tap to Pay on a phone, or the guest pays a check from the table's QR code, straight into your own Stripe account with no Slotina commission. Any tablet or phone with a web browser runs it.
Connections to other systems	Integrations named in accounting, delivery and ordering platforms, and reservations.squareup.com UK restaurant page	Slotina connects to none of these; its CSV files are how the figures travel.

Sources for the Square column (read 4 November 2026)

What stays out of Slotina

Slotina does not connect to a till, card machine, delivery platform or accounting software you already use.
No countertop card terminal or self-service kiosk: cards are taken with Tap to Pay on a phone, or paid by the guest from the table's QR code, into your own Stripe account.
Card payments and the kitchen screens run over the connection; while it is down, only the waiter's rounds wait on the phone, and they go once it returns.

What Slotina puts in the one price

The booking is the first screen

Your booking page, the phone and the door land in one book, against the tables you really have. A party of eight is placed on the tables you named as pushable, not on a list someone has to rearrange at six.

One table, from door to bill

The host seats the party, the waiter sends rounds by seat and course, the kitchen display shows each station its tickets, and the same table's bill is split by dish, by seat or evenly.

Nothing to add on

The kitchen display, stock, the rota and the sales reports are in the one price, with as many screens, staff logins and phones as you need. A second kitchen screen leaves the price where it was.

Choose Square for Restaurants if

You want to start with no monthly fee at all, paying only Square's processing fee on each transaction, and add to the plan as you grow.
Your trade is mostly counter and takeaway, table bookings are rare, and a POS with self-service kiosks suits you.
You want countertop hardware from the same company, or need to keep taking cards for a while when the connection drops, which Square describes with compatible hardware.
Your POS has to talk to delivery platforms or accounting software, which Square lists and Slotina does not connect to.

Moving from Square to Slotina

Bring the menu as a file
Where your item list can be saved as a CSV or Excel file, Slotina's menu import takes it, shows a preview before saving and can be undone afterwards. The allergens are then checked by hand against the 14; any allergen word the import cannot match is listed for you rather than guessed.
Bring the bookings from your partner
Your bookings live with the reservation partner you used. Export them from there as a file and import it in Slotina; you check how the columns are matched and see a preview, future bookings arrive confirmed and waiting for a table, and marketing consent is read from one partner's own opt-in column only, and only when you tick to confirm it; from any other partner's file, none comes across.
Rooms, tables and stations
Draw the rooms and their tables, choose your services and turn times, and send each menu category to its kitchen or bar station, each with its own minute limits.
Open with a lunch, not a weekend
Create a login for each member of staff and connect the restaurant's Stripe account, then run Slotina first on a quiet lunch service before a full Friday or Saturday.

Square for Restaurants questions

Does Square for Restaurants have its own table booking system?

Not on the pages we read on 4 November 2026: its UK and Irish restaurant pages bring reservations in through partners and describe no booking system of Square's own. In Slotina the booking page, phone bookings, walk-ins and the waiting list are part of the one monthly price.

Is Slotina a Square KDS alternative?

Yes, if you take the whole system: Slotina's kitchen display shows each station its tickets within 5 seconds of the waiter's tap, with as many screens as you need in the one price. It shows the tickets of Slotina's own orders, so the order screen and the kitchen screen are one system.

Can I keep Square for payments and use Slotina for the room?

You can, but they stay separate, because Slotina does not connect to Square. A payment taken on another machine is recorded on Slotina's bill by hand as card or other, so if you want one record of the evening, take orders and payments in Slotina from the first service.

Does Square for Restaurants sell in Ireland as well?

Yes. Square sells its restaurant product in Ireland through Squareup International Limited, on the same plan model in euros, and Slotina is priced for Ireland in euro.