Online Ordering (?)

Everyone has their comfort level of work they want to do with online ordering. I had to do a lot of work upfront with Ehungry.com, but it was worth it to me for a monthly fee less than $50.
For $199 per month, and $595 setup, you should expect a full service operation in return. If you have to manually key in anything, you should be surprised. Leaving you time to focus on getting business. Good luck…hope your roi is everything you expect. send us a link after setup so we can see it…and maybe steal some ideas

if you are lookin for a new POS with TOTALLY INTEGRATED OLO check out Foodtec Solutions. I will admit that I was not that big on OLO, but it has proved me wrong…I will gladly pay my monthly fee when I see those 40% higher ticket averages for OLO. Besides the obvious ease with no customer interaction it seems that must of the OLO are those really picky people that you would not rather deal with. I have my OLO programmed so that it is guaranteed by CC payment to avoid cyber punks

Love OLO!

How does your FoodTec OLO system deal with newly entered addresses, and what about the dreaded “changing address type will ‘clean up’ 26 existing customers,” when dealing with mixed-use addresses, such as those with businesses on the first floor, and apartments/condos on the upper levels?

(In FoodTec’s weird language, to “clean up” means to delete, and one does need some experience and training to properly enter new addresses/customers in FoodTec’s complex relational database.)

Also, how are you supposed to deal with mixed-use addresses on any delivery in FoodTec? Our area has tons of them, and management and the owner haven’t figured it out. A side-effect is that they stopped using the system to store customer credits for a future order because it’s too easy for them to get deleted erroneously. For instance, when the business on the first floor orders (confused as to why their address didn’t pop up this time like it did last time), and the phone noob “cleans up” all the customers in the apartments upstairs and changes the address back to “business,” all the apartment customers, credits, order history, and everything is gone in a blink. Therefore, we’ve gone back to the old “take care of everything the day of” policy of fixing mistakes and complaints, eschewing one of the supposed tools that this POS system purports to provide.

Is there a way to properly store customer information in FoodTec at an address that is both commercial and residential? Or hotel plus businesses, or residential plus hotel, etc? This has been a major trouble spot for us over the past 16 months since we upgraded from Aloha.

The FoodTec relational address database really hasn’t been as useful for us as it should have been. It’s been most helpful at hotels (capturing customer cell phone numbers is a breeze!), but otherwise, it would be easier to have all types of fields (business name, apartment/suite/room number, extension, etc.) available for the order taker to fill in as s/he sees fit without all this “address type” rigmarole.

P.S. Why doesn’t the tab key switch between fields when using the keyboard to enter customer info? :idea:

Pizza Roadie,

Only I am allowed to change an address type to avoid losing any info. Multi-use addresses are definitely a little more tricky but we use them all the time (we use this for any 1/2 addresses that the system does not recognize). I guess that is the trade-off for being able to instantly see your customer plotted on the map.

What really pisses me off are customers who use OLO and pick their street IN THE WRONG TOWN!
:twisted: happens at least 1x week!

oh yeah the tab button would be nice

Here is how i would set up your Multi-Use address.

  1. Goto Edit> Edit Other> Edit Address Types
  2. Create a new address type: I would name it Mixed Use
  3. Rank it 25. It should be listed 3rd on your list. 1) Single family 2) Apartment 3) Mixed Use
  4. In the Diff 1 field, Type: Business:
  5. In the Diff 2 field, Type : Apt:
  6. In the Diff 3 field, Type : Floor
    (you can put whatever you want in these fields that you feel pertain to the required information needed)
  7. The rest of the stuff you can leave unchecked.
    (Check off if you want any of those fields to be a required force entry) (for instance, if you want the business field to always be prompted for an entry, check off the req1 option) I would leave them empty since it could be a business or apt.
  8. Save.

Now when someone calls from 100 Main St, and this is your Business on 1st floor, apts upstairs, you set it as Mixed Use, and you have the 3 fields above to fill in the information.

So now 100 Main St is classified as a mixed use address. The next time you type in 100 Main, you can fill in the new customers Apt number or floor number , yet still leave the business field empty.

You shouldn’t be cleaning up the old address info never.
All phone people should be properly trained. If you have the addresses classified under the correct address type, you’ll never have to change it and your business can be run more smoothly. Deliveries can get to their destinations faster and without error.

PS. Don’t you like when someone writes special instuctions in the field and it stays there the next time you deliver? I had someone write in there , (goto backyard). It stayed and the next time we delivered there, the driver went in the backyard and almost got eaten alive by a rottweiler.

We keep considering it but gee, it seems like it could be a killer. We have 2 phone lines and when we get slamming busy, I’d hate to think about 10 or 20 more people at once logging on to order and the make line printer goes nuts printing all those out!

Has anyone else had a problem with order/delivery management? If we get an unexpected rush like that, our delivery times would go up by at least 20 to 30 minutes.

This is my biggest fear with online ordering too. How do you guys with OLO in place handle this? What does the system give for quote times?

When the phones start ringing we know to begin extending quote times. I’d hate for everything to be dead silent and suddenly have 20 new orders print.

Thanks for the suggestions. Nobody was properly trained on this system, it seems, because nobody at the store level even understood how the database works–or is supposed to work. It took me months to see the patterns and figure it out, and then it took me literally demonstrating to the general manager exactly what “clean up” does in order for him to understand how regulars’ info kept getting deleted.

Then I showed him what would happen the next time one of the businesses in the Hyatt Hotel building would order, and stopped just short of “cleaning up” 50 or so records that would kill all of his data for employee vs. guest ordering habits at that hotel.

“Interesting,” he said, “that is an issue.” Of course, I don’t think he knows what to do next, and frankly with everything that happens at our store every day, it’s not a super high priority. He’s been a lot more concerned just keeping system counting the right inventory in the ordertaking and bar modules. It’s really difficult for him, because the directive is always “make it the way the customer wants it,” and it’s been that way when we used Aloha, and before we even had a computer. (“Make it the way the computer counts it” isn’t really the best way to keep customers happy and coming back for more.)

At least every terminal in the restaurant doesn’t crash at the same time–I’ll hand it to FoodTec for the reliability, but for all the employees that have to use it every day, there’s sooo much not to like.

Our Default Delivery time is 35 minutes. If we start to get busy, I change the promise times in the POS and It automatically updates the website promise time for the customer to see.

A good POS system should have everything in order for you to make money with ease.

Isn’t this why we wake up in the morning? Seriously though as Rob pointed out we have default promise times for every type order (delivery, dine-in, takeout) and as we get busier we adjust those times. The online ordering automatically lets the customer know how long based on the promise time when they place their order.

Pizza Roadie, I would have changed that to a multi-use address as soon as we realized that it was a business and a hotel at the same exact address…sucks losing that info but sooner or later it has to be corrected.