Dynamic Pick-up Time Adjustment for Orders placed online - Weebly

[grovetealounge]

Hi there!

 Ran into this problem for the first time today and not sure if there is a solution for it? Or maybe there's a feature request in here somewhere?

Currently I have my default prep time for my cafe set to 15 minutes.  98% of the time, this is plenty of time for us to complete the order and have it ready for our customers even amidst all the other orders coming in from customers who are dining in or coming through our drive-thru. This morning, however, we had a HUGE order that was placed the night before for 7:30am pickup (the absolute earliest time a pickup order is allowed). Like 10 lattes and 10 breakfast sandwiches for an office to be picked up at 7:30am. We only have 1 person working during that first 30 minutes of being open (we open at 7am) before a second comes in at 7:30. 

I'm curious...is there a way to set a parameter in my Square Online store so that if an online order (for pickup OR delivery) exceeds either a certain dollar amount OR a certain number of items that the system will add additional time onto the estimated pick-up time? For example, if my default prep time for pickup is 15 minutes - is there a way to adjust a setting so that if the order exceeds 5 items, it will add 2 minutes for every additional item on the order? So if an order has 10 items on it, it would be 15 minutes + 10 minutes (2 minutes for each of the 5 additional items over my baseline) = 25 minute prep time.

I believe there's a similar setting like this for shipping where Square Online will add an extra $x (I get to set the dollar amount) for every additional item over the baseline number I set to accommodate the extra shipping costs I would incur from the added weight and/or size of the box.

I do see that Square Online allows me to set a minimum order size for pickup/delivery. I also see that I can set a quantity limit and not allow any orders over a certain size for delivery/pickup as well.  However, what I'm looking for is something in-between.  I don't want to discourage people from placing large orders, I just want a way to give my staff extra time to make the order to ensure it's done well and in a timely manner and set the right expectation for my customer. I also don't want customers to have to split their 1 large order up into multiple smaller orders - that would certainly deter people and I don't want that.  We are also not built to take orders over the phone (we had to do it at the very beginning of the pandemic and it was terrible), so I don't want to direct customers to placing large orders over the phone either. If this is not a feature that's available, is it possible to request that it be passed along and considered?

Just to head off the inevitable comment...I don't want to bring a crew member in 30 minutes earlier and pay for the extra labor when I only need the extra set of hands that early on the rare occasion (we've been doing online ordering since the beginning of the year and this is the first time we've run into this issue).

[grovetealounge]

Oh! One other thing I forgot to mention.

I've noticed that when customers place an order that is scheduled to be picked up in the future (in this example, the order was placed at 10pm the night before and pickup was for 7:30am), the order ticket doesn't print out immediately.  The system waits until we hit the 15 minute prep time window that I've set before it prints the ticket.

Is there a way to change that? Is there a way to get it to print immediately AND 15 minutes prior to the order being picked up?

I think had the ticket for this order printed immediately (10pm last night when it was placed), it would have sat on the ticket printer for my shift leader to see as soon as she walked in this morning.  If that had been the case, she would have had 1.5 hours to prep everything and set herself up for success and ensure the order was ready when the customer arrived to pick it up. 

[BernadetteA]

Great question, @grovetealounge It's not currently possible to add additional prep time to larger orders that come through, but I can definitely see how this would be a useful feature. I'm happy to pass along your feedback to the team. 

The ticket print time will be based on the prep time. If there is not prep time the order will print immediately. Otherwise, the ticket will be in the Upcoming section under Orders on POS. You can manually print out the tickets for upcoming orders if you do not want to wait for them to automatically print at the start of the prep time. 

[grovetealounge]

Thank you for the reply!

yes, if you could pass along that feature request, I would really appreciate it! It would be really helpful to be able to toggle on the ability to add “x” number of minutes for every additional food/drink item on an order above a certain threshold (that I also get to set)

for now, we have worked with our shift leaders and they now know to just check the order page on our register first thing in the morning when they come in to see if there are any pending orders that came through overnight while we were closed

[goldburger]

this is true for upcoming orders... but if you're busy and exceed the number of order per 15 minutes than ASAP tickets will print immediately even 30 min out.... except the ones placed as pre-orders sitting in upcoming... those will print out at 15 minutes... so in the middle of the busiest time of day you'll get a jumble of pickup times and will not see those upcoming order toilets printed out until it's too late....

it's terrible. asap orders that fall out of the 15 minute window due to order throttling should be placed in Upcoming, not Active

[goldburger]

and yes i agree selecting a item threshold to increase times is great. we often know how many burgers we can make over a period of time and it's more advantageous than number of tickets.

[anasir]

How do I print scheduled pickup orders at the time of receipt? 

Our default prep time is 30 mins at the restaurant but for large orders > $100  or party trays we need more time. If someone was ordering food at 11 am to pickup at 5 pm it prints at 4:30 pm which is not enough time to prepare the order. We need it to print at 11 am when the order comes in or have different prep times based on category or the amount of sale. 

[bryan2]

Is this something thats being worked on?

[JJ_]

Thank you for taking the time to share your interest in this feature @bryan2. At this time, I don't have any updates to share.