Run orders from the kitchen
Online orders arrive in Restaurant > Orders. Service is a timing job, so the useful habit is different from a shop's.
The flow
- The order arrives and you are notified.
- You accept it and start cooking.
- It goes out for collection or delivery.
- You mark it complete.
Move each order along as it happens, not at the end of service. The status is what tells the customer where their food is; a stack of orders all marked complete at 11pm tells them nothing all evening.
Watch the incoming list, not your email
During service, keep the orders page open. Email is fine for a quiet Tuesday and useless at 7pm on a Saturday.
The menu itself
Restaurant > Items holds your dishes, and Categories groups them into courses.
Each dish has a Status - use it. Marking something unavailable takes seconds, and is the difference between a customer choosing something else and a customer being told after they paid.
Allergens and dietary tags
Every dish carries:
- Dietary tags - Vegetarian, Vegan, Gluten-free, Nut-free, Halal, Spicy.
- Allergens - the full statutory fourteen: gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soya, milk, tree nuts, celery, mustard, sesame, sulphites, lupin, molluscs.
Fill these in properly. In much of Europe declaring allergens is a legal obligation, not a courtesy, and online ordering removes the conversation where someone would otherwise have asked. This is the single most important part of your menu data.
Keep them accurate as recipes change. An allergen tag that was right last year is not a defence.
Good to know
- Photos sell dishes. A dish with a photo is ordered noticeably more often than one without.
- Descriptions do too. Name the things that make it good; "with rosemary and lemon" outsells "chicken".
- Sort Order and Featured control what people see first. Put your best margin near the top.