Having a pre-ordering service is excellent for both businesses and customers.
While businesses can profit by selling food in advance, customers can use the pre-order option to save time and avoid waiting in line.
Let's see how you can set up your pre-orders.
Enable the pre-ordering service.
You can set up your pre-ordering settings in the outlet settings under the delivery and pickup sections.
You can choose to either serve both ASAP and pre-orders or one of them.
💡 Please note that choosing the option "Accept ASAP orders" alone will disable all the advance ordering capabilities, including later today and tomorrow.
When the option Accept pre-orders is enabled:
The business can take orders up to the Max days in advance. This can be anywhere from later today to 30 days.
Max days in advance option specifies how far in advance a user can order.
The business specifies the Minimum lead time (15 min by default), which is the minimum time before a customer needs to place an order to schedule it for today.
The Minimum lead time is applicable only for today's orders. It will be added to preparation + delivery time for delivery and preparation time for pickup.
The business can also specify the Slot length (30 min by default), which is the delivery intervals.
The Minimum lead time is used to calculate the available slots for today. From the next day, all slots are available to be scheduled, considering the preparation and delivery times for all slots as configured.
Changes in the dashboard.
Besides the new settings under Delivery and Pickup modes, further changes were added to the dashboard:
Once you accept a scheduled order, the orders will go into the Scheduled tab on the Live orders management dashboard.
A new SMS message update will go out to your customers when the order is accepted, saying the order has been scheduled.
There will be an alert at preparation time to remind you to move the order for preparation.
When moving your order to preparation, two pop-ups will appear. The first one is for entering the Prep Time + Delivery Time (for delivery option) or Prep Time (for the pickup option), and the second one is for selecting the delivery partner.
⚠️ Please note that when the order is scheduled, you will not see these pop-ups at the time of accepting it, but only when the order is moving to preparation.
Changes in your live menu.
When the pre-ordering service is activated, automatic changes will reflect on your live menu. Your customers can specify the date and time they want their pre-orders delivered or ready for pickup.
BONUS TIP
Want to learn more about how your business can profit from taking pre-orders? Check out this blog post. And why not taking advantage of Commerce Inbox to alert your customers that you are accepting pre-orders?