Square Releases Its First Autonomous Kiosk with an AI Assistant
Square has released its first autonomous kiosk for restaurants: a 21.5-inch screen and an AI assistant that answers guests' questions based on the establishment's specific menu. Details in the article.
Square has unveiled its first fully autonomous self-service kiosk: a 21.5-inch screen with a built-in AI assistant that restaurant guests can talk to while ordering. Until now, the company — one of the most widespread providers of ordering systems for small businesses and restaurant chains — had not dealt with kiosk hardware, and now it does.
What the device can do
Square Kiosk answers guests' questions in a live dialogue format: "What vegetarian items do you have?" or "Show me everything under ten dollars." The assistant is trained on the specific restaurant's menu — including popular items and dish combinations that make sense to suggest together (the upselling mechanics familiar to anyone who has ever ordered fries with a burger).
Formally, this is the same kiosk that has been standing in food courts for the past ten years or so. The practical difference is the interface: instead of tapping through tabs, the guest formulates a request in words. The screen searches, filters, and suggests. The cashier is completely removed from the process — the device is autonomous, a standalone piece of equipment rather than a module for an existing terminal.
What the company says
James Schonzeit, head of food & beverage at Square, described the idea this way:
"Now, when you walk up to a kiosk, you can place an order in a way that feels genuinely natural — and that, hopefully, shows the restaurant at its best."
The phrase "hopefully" betrays an honest caution. AI in food service still promises more than it consistently delivers, and Square knows it.
What this changes for the market
The main practical question for food service operators: does a voice kiosk cut costs and raise the average check? Square's answer is upselling through personalized recommendations based on the establishment's own menu. The kiosk knows what gets ordered most often and serves that knowledge to the guest at the right moment.
For small businesses, the entry threshold is of particular interest. Square has historically built its business by giving small establishments infrastructure on the level of large chains: payments, orders, inventory. Now a kiosk with conversational AI (a system that understands natural-language requests and answers them based on a specific menu) has been added to that list.
The bottom line
Square is the first of the "countertop" ordering platforms to make it to its own kiosk hardware — and with AI on board from the start. The bet is obvious: voice dialogue instead of menu navigation will boost conversion and the average check.
Restaurant operators will be the ones testing the hypothesis. It's on them to count: how many seconds the kiosk saves per order and how many dollars it adds to it. Square hasn't shared any numbers yet — which is an answer in itself. It's too early.
Source: Adweek
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