WP EasyCart is a very flexible platform with some very specific needs and markets, one of those powerful features being a restaurant ordering and management system for your WordPress. Imaging being able to take orders for items over your website, customers able to schedule when they want to pick up those items, either that day, or in the future… all while working around a timed schedule of your operating store hours.
For example, using WP EasyCart, customers can order that day an item from your store, and pick up right away (based on your expected wait time) OR they could pick it up in a couple hours during a scheduled timeframe (determined by you). That’s what WP EasyCart can offer.
Another example, using WP EasyCart, customer can preorder an item from your store, and schedule to pick it up on a specific day (based on your schedule) AND they can pick an open time slot that you set according to your schedule.
Even setup a store schedule that takes into account holidays or expected closing times, so users can not pick or select those days or times. It’s flexible and powerful.
How it Works – Quick Start
- Set your store schedule. Settings -> Store Schedule menu. These are your days open, pickup windows, expected wait times, and available options
- Enable the restaurant system in checkout. Settings -> Checkout menu. This allows you to set expected wait times and scheduling to show for users at the final payment panel of checkout.
- Enable products either for preorder or for restaurant pickup. Product -> Basic Settings. Each individual item can be enabled either for preorder OR for daily pickup scheduling.
- Turn ON order management features to show order pickup dates and times. Settings -> Additional settings. Not needed for everyone, but helpful as you manage incoming orders to see the times scheduled and sort.
How it Works – Detailed Walk Through
To get started, we want to establish and setup a base store schedule. The core 7 days of the week you can establish a base schedule here in our Settings -> Store Schedule for this task. Click the pencil icon to adjust settings OR you can click ‘Add New’ here and create your own holiday and special exemptions.
Once you are editing, notice you can adjust the timeframe, preorder options, and restaurant options here. Some days you may not want to allow preorders, and other days you may not want to have in-store restaurant pickups that day. Holidays are good examples, where these will act as overrides to the base schedule. If no custom day is setup, the system will follow your base schedule.
Preorder times have an open/close period that you set this day, and also provide a timeframe when preordering can start/end. For example, you may allow users to preorder 2 weeks in advance to pickup and only pickup in the morning or afternoon hours the day of scheduling.
Restaurant times have an start/end period for that day. Users will be given the option to select ASAP (As Soon As Possible) which will adhere to your checkout settings prep time OR they can pick a time period later that same day which will adhere to your block schedule time set in the checkout settings. More on this later.
Checkout Settings
Once you establish a base store schedule, it’s time to setup the checkout. During a regular store checkout on your website, users will be given the option to schedule a pickup time that day for restaurant orders or a pickup time for preorders at a later date. Go to Settings -> Checkout panel and you can engage scheduling here. Notice you can set the scheduling range for restaurant orders (15 minutes in this example) and prep time (30 minutes in this example) as well as establish custom messages/instructions.
The way it works is a user will checkout and on the payment page have the ability to pick a date/time and the ranges are set here. For example, if you have a coffee shop and restaurant orders that day need 20 minutes to prep, you can setup 20 minutes here and users who select ASAP to pickup will be given an estimated time 20 minutes in the future. You need at ‘least’ 20 minutes to get the order ready. Useful for most meal, coffee, and restaurants.
Turn on Product Settings
Now that you have a store schedule, and checkout is engaged, lets dive into a product. Each product can be either a preorder item OR it can be a restaurant pickup item.
Restaurant pickup items mean the user will order and that day they will pick up. They will have the option to pick up ‘ASAP’ (As Soon As Possible) which will adhere to your schedule above OR they can schedule it for different hours in the future (according to your scheduled blocks set above).
Go to a Product -> Basic Settings panel to engage either or one of those options.
During checkout a preorder user will see the following in their checkout payment page for scheduling. Notice they can select a future date AND pickup time all according to your store schedule and hours.
During checkout a restaurant order will see the following in their checkout payment page for scheduling. Notice there are 2 options. ASAP means they will pickup as soon as possible, but the time frame they will see will show a time based on your checkout setting prep time. The Schedule for Later option is going to show future times and blocks, again based on your schedule, where users can pickup that day.
Order Management
Once users schedule and place an order, you will be able to manage these within our order manager. We have a couple settings to turn on that will help you see dates and times as this is pretty unique to just restaurant systems.
Go to Settings -> Additional Settings to engage the 2 extra order columns.
By turning these on, your order manager will now show 2 extra columns as shown below. Notice the ‘Pick Up Date‘ and the ‘Restaurant Time‘ column here. This can be helpful for sorting the orders based on a time. Another helpful option is to use our Bulk Actions here and export orders to a CSV file spreadsheet.
Within each order, you will also notice either the Pickup Date or Restaurant Time the user entered. In this example, we show both, but you will normally see one or the other and also edit them if necessary.
Adding Tips & Gratuity
An additional option that can be useful for restaurant type business is to engage the easycart tip system. Go to Settings -> Checkout and enable the Tips / Gratuity section. It’s important that you also provide defaults here such as 10, 15, 20, 25 all separated by a comma. These allow users to select tips and also enter custom tips if they wish.
During checkout, users will be present with an option to add an additional tip/gratuity which is customary in this industry. Notice the default values are pre-calculated as well as a custom entry amount is available.
Using WP EasyCart for Restaurant Businesses
With WP EasyCart’s Premium Edition, you can unlock the full power of a restaurant business online. Post-pandemic changed the rules and many restaurant business looked to leverage new ways to make food and takeout convenient. With WP EasyCart, we have provided a powerful solution at an economical price for small to medium businesses wanting to get on board. To learn more about the powerful solution we offer, visit www.wpeasycart.com and review our premium edition.
