Order Ahead is a feature that allows customers to place orders for a future pickup or delivery time. Currently, this is limited to only the current day.
Once the order is placed, payment is processed immediately and the order is immediately sent to the kitchen. However, the order will go to the Upcoming tab on the KDS, and will not roll over to the Pending tab on the KDS until the selected pickup time.
If a Preparation Time is configured for the Vendor, then the order will move to the Pending tab at Pickup Time - Preparation Time.
(Ex: If prep time is 30 minutes and the pickup time is 4:00 PM, it will move to Pending at 3:30 PM)
Initial Release Version
- Connect 11.4
- Interact Web 3.2
- Ordering API - Interact Web 3.2 release version
- KDS iOS
Before You Begin
This workflow is only supported on Interact Web with OAPI enabled.
Connect Setup
- On the Vendor navigate to the Order Ahead tab.
- If the vendor is going to use Order Ahead, then enable it for the vendor on the Order Ahead tab.
- Once this is enabled, the times that are available for the vendor should be visible
- To add a new time, click and drag a new time frame on the grid to set the range that you want and save changes.
- Time slots are only available in 15 minute increments, and the last time selected will NOT be an available time for selection.
- For example: If you want 12:00, 12:15, 12:30 and 12:45 to be available pickup times, then you must select 12:00 - 1:00 PM.
- If you want 1:00 PM to also be an option then you should select 12:00 - 1:15 PM as the time frame.
- To remove times, click the X in the upper right corner and save changes.
- To adjust an existing time block, you can click and drag the top or bottom of the blue window and save changes.
- If a vendor becomes overwhelmed with orders for a time and a client needs to remove time slots from selection then they can achieve this by setting new windows.
- For example, if at the beginning of the day a vendor is accepting orders from 12:00 - 2:45PM, but later in the day they want to remove the 1:00 - 1:45 PM time options due to a large volume of orders then this.
- Should be updated to become this:
- On the Vendor → Details tab you can also configure the preparation time that will control when orders will move from the Upcoming tab on the KDS to the Pending tab.
- In the below example this is set to 30 minutes, so orders at this vendor will move from Upcoming to Pending 30 minutes prior to the pickup time.
- In the below example this is set to 30 minutes, so orders at this vendor will move from Upcoming to Pending 30 minutes prior to the pickup time.
Interact Web
- If a vendor has Order Ahead enabled then whether the vendor is open or closed the button on the Vendor selection page will now read Order.
- Tapping on the Order button on the vendor will prompt the user to select whether they want to place an order for now or later. The default option is Now.
- Selecting Later will let the customer pick which time they wish to place an order for. Right now the day dropdown only has the option of Today
- Once the customer clicks Continue they are taken to the Offerings page, and from there can browse the menu. The menu displayed will be the menu for the selected time. For example, if I am placing an order at 7:00 AM but select a 1:00 PM pickup time, the menu I see will be the menu I would see at 1:00 PM, and I will not see any menu items that are only available in the morning (based on day parts assigned to the items).
- Customers will see their selected pickup time in the upper left corner of the page when they are viewing the menu:
- Tapping on the arrow will re-open the time selection modal and the customer can change their pickup time if they want to.
- If they select a time that requires updates to their cart, they will be alerted that one or more of the items in their cart is not available at the time they have selected, and be able to decide to continue or not.
- If they click the X then this modal will close and their time will not be changed. Clicking Continue will remove the item(s) from their cart and update their time.
- The customer will see their pickup time in the Cart page, but at this point if they want to change the time they will need to return to the menu to do so.
- However, if they hit Checkout and the system determines that time is no longer available for any reason, then the customer will presented with an error and they will be required to change their time selection.
- Once the customer checks out, their time is shown on the Order Confirmation screen.
Hardware Considerations
- This is not compatible with Android KDS.
Additional Information
- The KDS user must be assigned to the same vendor that the "upcoming" order was placed under, for the "upcoming" tab to work. This means that the KDS account cannot be a "subvendor" type. It needs to be a "vendor" type.