Mobile catering ordering help

[giz]

Hi,

i'm having a nightmare trying to get square to work for/with me.

i run a mobile catering/takeaway company, have no fixed address that i want publicly visible and want limited ordering for pickup only. I am currently doing pop-ups working with social clubs and pubs.

Each event is advertised using social media, the customer knows where they are going.

I would  like to be able to use two android tablets, one as a till and the other as a KDS but without having to pay a monthly subscription. i don't mind simply viewing orders created by the checkout tablet.

The scenarios i would like to happen are:

A). customer 1 orders using square online and a pickup slot is chosen by the customer.

B). customer 2 orders at the till and a pickup time is allotted to them.

pickup times are between 17:00 and 21:00 and strictly limited to one customer every 15 minutes with a maximum number of items per order of 5.

please help this is driving me mad.

[Sam_400º]

@giz, I'll try & break your question down & tackle each bit separately.

Address. You've got a legal obligation when selling online (assuming you're UK based) to provide a business address. This will be at the very least at the bottom of order confirmation emails to your customers & cannot be removed. 

That aside, you can remove the area where it displays the address on the ordering page - but I expect it will still show the address at checkout confirmation. 

I also pop up in different locations, so I've set each of these up as a different location with the full & correct collection address for each. 

With regards to 'I want but don't want to pay for....' - you'd need to work within the limitations of what's available on the standard free/processing fee only tier. Personally I think the restaurants app handles online orders better than the standard app as it automatically orders them by collection time & this can be used on the free tier where the KDS is only on a paid plan. However this is only available on iOS as far as I know 

The online system is becoming more flexible by the day, so your option 1 is pretty much the default. Set it all up & you can mark it for X amount of orders per 15 minutes, a max no of items per order & set your opening times. 

For scenario two you might want to have a read through this help article & sign up to the beta team. This area is always being updated, but last time I checked the details orders made & booked on the POS didn't take up a time slot so it might be worth keeping an eye on how it goes & timings etc. 

[giz]

You can create pick up orders in the standard app, the issue I have for that is that you can only choose from 3 or 4 time slots and I can't find any way of changing those slots or adding more.

If you choose the add for later option it throws it into a time slot outside of my opening hours!

[Sam_400º]

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@giz wrote:

You can create pick up orders in the standard app, the issue I have for that is that you can only choose from 3 or 4 time slots and I can't find any way of changing those slots or adding more.

If you choose the add for later option it throws it into a time slot outside of my opening hours!

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@JessRog - is this still one of yours in Beta? 

I'd not seen this when I was testing so has it changed? It's giving 3 options for pick up times being on the hour for then next 3 hours (so for me now at 17:18 it's giving 6, 7 or 8pm as exact times & then the option to schedule for later at any time - but only after 9pm! 

Pretty sure this feature used to give 15 minute slots over the next hour & then more after that? 

[giz]

Like I said before, it's driving me mad!

Why doesn't the online ordering pickup slots and the create a pickup order in checkout work hand in hand?!

[giz]

Do any other mobile caterers do a similar thing? Is there a work around?

[JessRog]

The feature is being gradually rolled out now - so no longer in beta @Sam_400º . 

That said - this is really good feedback, so I will pass it on to the team. 

To confirm, in an ideal world you would want to be able to book slots in 15 minute increments from the time the order is placed? 

[giz]

@JessRog  In an ideal world I would like one spot every 10 minutes but one every 15 minutes would be ok

Providing that manual ordering is working alongside online ordering so that a slot cannot be double booked.

[tranguyen]

Hi @giz, thank you for letting us know! The feature is relatively new and still being roll out gradually so we will be sure to pass all your feedback to the Product team. I'm going to have a look on my end and see if there is any workaround as well in the meantime and will be sure to follow-up on this thread if I find anything.