Nova Kitchen
A restaurant ordering system the owner controls end-to-end. Your Square Catalog renders as your custom site; customers pay you directly through Square Web Payments, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Cash App Pay; catering ordering runs on its own flow with a 48-hour lead time and a $75 minimum.
- Built
- May 2026
- Reference build
- Connected-Restaurant tier
- Status
- live demo, ready for first paying client
Before
What independent restaurants were carrying before.
A marketplace ordering channel takes 15–30% off the top of every order routed through it — every direct order recovered is straight margin.
The default online store that ships with most POS systems gets you a menu and a checkout — but no catering flow, no modern wallet payments, no dietary filters, no honest treatment of mobile.
Brand consistency goes out the window on third-party marketplaces. Your restaurant looks like every other restaurant on the platform.
When a customer orders through a marketplace, the customer is the marketplace's. You don't get the email, the loyalty signal, or the rebooking opportunity.
Most custom builds quoted at $20,000+ and 3 months. Most owners can't shoulder that to take a swing at a single conversion channel.
What we built
A system the restaurant runs without us in the room.
Nova Kitchen is a reference build for the Connected-Restaurant tier. The menu is the restaurant's Square Catalog, rendered live — when the operator edits a price or 86's an item in Square, it reflects on the site within seconds. There is no separate menu admin to maintain.
Customer payment flows through Square Web Payments with Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Cash App Pay wired alongside the card form. The same merchant rate the restaurant already pays in-store applies to every direct order — no marketplace commission, no third-party hold on funds.
Catering ordering runs on its own track: a separate menu of group platters with serves-N counts, a single cart that mode-switches with explicit operator-style confirmation, a 48-hour minimum lead time, a $75 floor, and tip + delivery encoded as Square service charges so the dashboard total matches the customer's receipt exactly.
Loyalty is automatic: every order earns one point per dollar; 100 points redeem $5 at checkout. The customer keeps their account, the restaurant keeps the relationship, and the loyalty signal compounds locally instead of leaking to a third party.
An owner-side toggle called Owner Lens overlays explanations of every Square primitive in use — what's coming from the Catalog, what's syncing to Orders, what's being recorded in Loyalty. It's the same dish, two views: diner-facing pristine, prospect-facing transparent.
What's connected, and what isn't — said up front. Connected: menu pulls live from the Square Catalog (edit a price in Square, the site reflects it in seconds); orders land in the same Square dashboard the in-store orders land in, with customer info, dietary notes, and totals attached; loyalty points credit automatically against the restaurant's existing Square Loyalty program; 86'ing an item in Square stops the site from accepting orders for it. NOT connected: ingredient-level Square Inventory decrement on each order (most prepared-food restaurants don't track this; if yours does, it's a separate scope); custom kitchen ticket printers and KDS hardware (those are Square POS configuration, not website work — the restaurant inherits whatever printer/KDS setup it already has); third-party integrations beyond Square. The current demo runs on a Square sandbox; a real restaurant connects their own production Square credentials at provisioning.
After
What the system gives the restaurant.
Every order placed on the site lands in the same Square dashboard the in-store orders land in — no separate workflow, no separate report at end of day.
Mobile-wallet checkout means returning customers can pay in two taps. Apple Pay alone tends to lift mobile checkout conversion materially over card-only forms.
Catering becomes a real conversion channel instead of an email back-and-forth. Customers self-serve the order; the kitchen sees it in the dashboard with the date, headcount, dietary notes, and contact already structured.
Loyalty credit happens automatically against Square — the restaurant doesn't run a side spreadsheet, the customer doesn't have to remember to ask for points.
The first paying client becomes the second logo on the case-studies page. Nova Kitchen is the proof-of-system; the next restaurant is the proof-of-pattern.
Customer journey
From hungry to paid in under two minutes.
- Diner says: Lunch break. Visit restaurants.spaosystems.com. Filter the menu by gluten-free, sort by price.
- System says: Sixteen dishes match. Today's lunch special is highlighted with an ON NOW pill — featured ahead of the full menu.
- Diner says: Add the tagliatelle, brown butter. Switch to Apple Pay.
- System says: Square Web Payments SDK tokenizes the wallet. Server validates the cart, applies tip + tax, places the Square order, charges the payment.
- Restaurant says:
- System says: Receipt email dispatched via Resend. Loyalty points credited to the customer's account. The diner sees a confirmation page with live email-delivery status.
- Restaurant says:
Proof
Try the live demo.
The Nova Kitchen demo is live on a Square sandbox. Place a real order — it will appear in our Square dashboard within seconds, and a receipt will land in your inbox a moment later. Toggle the Owner Lens pill (bottom-right) to see annotations explaining which Square primitive powers each surface.
Watch the full order flow.
From landing page to confirmed order, uncut — the same flow your customers would walk through on your own site.
Next
Want a system like this for your restaurant?
Start with the free growth audit — we grade your current site and ordering setup, show you exactly what we'd build, and you decide from there. If you're on Square POS, your menu syncs from day one. Month to month, cancel anytime.