New Jersey runs on small restaurants
The National Restaurant Association counts 20,553 restaurant locations in New Jersey, 366,400 restaurant and foodservice jobs and $40.4 billion in restaurant and foodservice sales (2025 data), and ranks the industry as the state’s third-largest private employer. If yours closes out the day on Clover, the answers to most of your questions are already in it; the hard part is finding the time to dig them out.
What is Ordero Connect?
Ordero Connect connects to your Clover point of sale, read only, and lets you ask about your sales in plain English (or Turkish). It adds up the figures from your own orders and answers with charts.
Ordero works out every figure from your own orders, day by day in your time zone. The AI explains them and suggests what to do next, and is told to use only those figures.
| From your Clover | Questions it answers |
|---|---|
| Orders and their line items | Sales by day, week, weekday and hour; best and slowest days; best sellers by sales and by quantity |
| Refunds and discounts | What was refunded or discounted, and how often |
| Payments (with the Payments permission) | Cash, credit and debit shares, tips and sales tax collected |
| Items, categories and costs | Category sales, and margins when item costs are entered in Clover |
| Employees (with the Employees permission) | Sales and refunds by staff member |
| Order types | Dine in, take out and delivery shares |
Five questions worth asking this week
- “When are my busiest hours?” In 2026 the minimum wage for most New Jersey employees is $15.92 an hour, and the cash wage for tipped workers is $6.05, according to the state’s Department of Labor. Sales by hour show where an extra shift pays for itself and where it does not.
- “How much did we take in tips, and how do customers pay?” Cash, credit and debit shares, and tips, from your Clover payments.
- “How much sales tax did my Clover collect last month?” Prepared food sold in New Jersey restaurants is taxed at 6.625%, whether it is eaten in or taken out, per the Division of Taxation. Check the total against your return.
- “Do I sell more on rainy days or sunny days?” Connect looks up the weather at your ZIP code for each day and compares them. For a shore restaurant, ask it to set July against September.
- “Which items should I drop from the menu?” The slowest sellers by sales and by quantity, and, when item costs are entered in Clover, their margins.
Season by season
Many New Jersey restaurants live by a calendar: summer at the shore, football Sundays, snow days, the holidays. Each question can cover up to about three months, so you can ask how this month compares with the one before, which weekdays carried the season, or how a snowy week changed your mix between dine in, take out and delivery.
How to connect your Clover
- Open [Ordero Connect](/connect) and sign in with your Ordero account, or create one in a few minutes.
- Try the sample data if you like: a made-up pizzeria with three months of orders, so you can ask anything before you connect.
- Make a read-only API token in your Clover web dashboard. Give it Read on Orders, Inventory and Merchant, plus Payments (for tips, tax and payment types) and Employees (for sales by staff). Paste it into Connect with your Merchant ID; Ordero checks it and connects.
- Start your subscription: $19.99 a month, paid through Stripe. The sample data stays free.
- Ask your first question. The first read of a month or more of orders takes the longest; after that, answers come back in seconds.
What it costs
Ordero Connect is $19.99 a month per restaurant, billed by Stripe, and you can cancel any time. You can try it free with sample data first, before you connect your own Clover. If you also take phone orders, see how Ordero’s AI phone assistant answers New Jersey restaurant calls.
Questions and answers
Is Ordero Connect available for New Jersey restaurants?
Yes. Any New Jersey restaurant on Clover can connect it, from a single pizzeria to a family of locations, each with its own Clover connection.
Does Ordero Connect replace Clover’s reports?
No, it works alongside them. Clover keeps running your restaurant; Connect reads the same data and answers questions about it in plain words, with charts.
Does it read my customers’ card numbers?
No. From payments, Connect uses only amounts, tips, tax and the payment type. Your orders are read when you ask, not stored in a database.
How much does it cost?
$19.99 a month per restaurant, billed by Stripe. Cancel any time. Sample data is free to try.
Sources
- National Restaurant Association Industry at a Glance in New Jersey (2025 data)
- New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development New Jersey’s Minimum Wage to Increase to $15.92/Hour for Most Employees on Jan. 1 (October 1, 2025)
- New Jersey Division of Taxation Restaurants and New Jersey Taxes, Tax Topic Bulletin S&U-1
Figures were checked against these sources in October 2026. What Ordero does is described as it works today.