How To Guides

Learn what devices and printers you can use with our system. We also have a list of recommended devices. Stable Internet Connection Every aspect of the system runs online and therefore requires you to be connected to the internet to receive orders. Here are a few recommendations about how to set up your internet: Use your own internet connection instead of a shared connection so you have greater control Keep a 3G / 4G mobile internet connection as a backup in-case there is an interruption with your normal connection. Consider using your phone on hotspot mode for such instances. Consider exclusively using a 3G / 4G mobile internet connection. Certain countries have a much more reliable mobile network such as Australia. IT staff occasionally set up an internet firewall for small business to prevent accessing harmful content. Ensure that foodvillage.menu is white-listed on your firewall to avoid connection issues to our servers. Ignore this if you are using your own subdomain. Computer or Tablet To manage your online store and orders, you will need a device that can access the internet. At a minimum, we recommend using a tablet or bigger. Phone access is possible but maybe limiting. Printer This is optional but very helpful for managing orders You can automatically or manually print new orders using any printer whose drivers are installed on an Android device, Windows or Linux PC. To clarify, this means if you can print from an application like Word or Notepad, then it’s compatible with our service. We highly recommend using a thermal receipt printer. Compatible devices: Android 1.5, 1.6, 2, 3, 4 Windows – 7, 8, 10 Linux – requires NodeJS Recommended Computers & Tablets We highly recommend using an Android device or Windows 10 tablet/computer. Windows provides the greatest flexibility and allows for wireless order printing whilst being able to use the order and table booking dashboard. Worldwide Windows 10 tablets are abundant and cheap these days. You can’t go wrong choosing from one of the major brands. Some notable brands include: Lenevo ASUS HP Microsoft – Surface Pro Tablet Chuwi – Decent Chinese brand, starting from around $200 Recommended Printers You can use any printer with Windows or Linux drivers or any printer that works with ESCPOS using Android, so you are not restricted to just the printers we recommend. Branded Printers Organized from lowest to highest price. PushPrinter PX-90 – Available with Ethernet or Bluetooth (Recommended) Epson TM-T20 – Available with USB or Ethernet Epson TM-M30 – Bluetooth Epson TM-T82-II-i – USB and Ethernet, supporting many connected devices Star Micronics TSP143 – Available as Bluetooth or USB or WIFI Ideal Setup

Get started creating your account, restaurant and setting up your menus. Place a test order and see the order management process. Quick-start Steps After subscribing to your account a link to the admin login page will be emailed to your with your login information. Do allow up to half a business day for this email. Once you are at the admin dashboard, press “Create New Restaurant” Fill out your restaurant details and create the restaurant Click on your new restaurant to see the restaurant dashboard On the left menu, visit the “Menus” section Create a menu, create a category and then create a standard dish under it On the left menu, click on “Orders” to view the order management interface Open up your online store in a new tab by pressing “Visit Store” on the left menu Place an order through your website See the order come through automatically on your orders page. Select the order and try changing the order status or wait time. Use the “Actions” select to delete the test order when done What’s Next At this point, you can customise the system as you please and start accepting orders. We recommend you continue reading the articles in this section. You will learn how to configure the system to your requirements and manage orders in-depth.

To accept orders online, you need to set up your online menu. You can create and manage all your menus under the “Menus” section in the restaurant dashboard. Setup Process Menus are organized in a tree structure. Menus contain categories and categories contain dishes. The general setup process is as follows. Create a menu Create all the categories under the menu Create dishes under the categories Create option-sets to add customization to dishes Create dish tags to highlight attributes of particular dishes You will likely only need one menu. Multiple menus are useful if certain items are restricted in particular ways. You may need to create a “Breakfast” menu or a “Delivery” menu depending on your requirements Menu: Main menu– Category: Pizzas—- Dish: Ham & Cheese—- Dish: Margrita—- Dish: Veggie Supreme– Category: Sides—- Dish: Chicken Wings—- Dish: Fries– Category: Drinks—- Dish: Iced Tea—- Dish: Cola—- Dish: Water Menus These represent your actual real-life menus. Many stores have just one main menu that’s always available. Others may have a lunch & dinner menu or a pickup only menu. You will need at least one menu for your online store to work. Menu availability can depend on certain conditions such as order types (pickups or deliveries), order timings (e.g. pre-order only). They can also be restricted to certain days and timings. If you only have one menu available, there is no need to place restrictions on it. You can restrict the system globally to your business rules and the menu will work according to that. Restricting a menu to certain conditions is only needed if you have multiple menus Categories Categories represent a sub-section of a menu and consist of dishes. For example, if you have one standard menu, your categories might include: Starters Mains Sides Drinks Deserts In some instances, you may need to create a separate menu instead of using a category. For example, If you have many different categories of drinks, such as spirits, wines, beers, sodas, etc. You might want to create a separate drinks menu for all those categories instead of adding it to your food menu. Dishes Dishes represent actual items that can be purchased. There are 2 types of dishes. Standard Dishes A standard dish works as you would expect. You would use it to create items such: Ham sandwich Veggie pizza Vanilla ice-cream Dish Ingredients Standard dishes can contain a list of ingredients. The purpose of this is to allow customers to easily remove certain ingredients. A customer can remove the desired ingredients when they select the dish. Combo Dishes Combos are a special type of dish that contain other dishes. It allows you to create a list of choices for customers to select various standard dishes. For example, you can create: Choose 3 pizzas, 2 sides and 2 drinks Choose a burger, side and drink To do this you will first need to have created some standard dishes. Then when creating your combo, you can create 4 choices, 3 pizza choices and one drink choice. You can then assign dish choices to the pizzas and drinks for customers to choose from. Combo dishes cannot contain option sets or ingredients directly. Instead when a customer chooses a standard dish within a combo, if the chosen standard dish has any option sets assigned to it, a user can customize it accordingly. Dish Availability & Status There are 3 statuses available for a dish. They are: Hidden – hides dish from the menu Not available – prevents ordering and shows not available on the dish Out of stock – prevents ordering and shows out of stock on the dish In the admin dashboard, you can edit the status of a dish by checking the tickbox on the left of it. Then select the desired status from the popup menu. Option Sets All dish customization is done using option sets. Option sets are a configurable set of options that can be assigned to any number of dishes. With option sets, you are able to create requirements such as: Select your pizza crust Select one or more sauces Select at least 4 toppings To learn how to create an option set that meets your requirements, read the descriptions of each of the settings available when creating an option set. Each setting is explained in detail. Dish Tags Tags allow you to highly particular attributes about a dish with a fully customizable visual indicator. You can create tags for attributes such as: Spicy Vegan Gluten-free Common Menu Problems No menu or categories showing under the store For your menu to display in your online store, make sure to add at least one category and one dish to it. Dish images to large We highly recommend that you use the website https://www.birme.net or https://tinypng.com/ to optimize all your images. Given that the maximum image width is only around 600 pixels, it’s best to make sure all your images are no wider than that. This is going to help significantly with your page load time, especially for mobile customers.

Your restaurant services represent the various order types you accept. View our video for an in-depth explanation of all the settings available. There are 4 services currently available. They are: Pickup – orders that are picked up in store by customers to take away Delivery – orders that are delivered to the customer’s address Dine-in – orders that are placed by customers currently seated in your store Table booking – a reservation made for a later date and time How To Configure Your Services Visit your restaurant dashboard and go to the settings page Select the “Services” tab and edit your settings as required Enabling & Disabling Services You can enable or disable services as needed. Go to the desired service settings and simply toggle the “Enabled” switch to enable or disable it. You must have at least one service enabled Service Notes You can add custom notes for each service that will be shown to the customer when selected. Useful if you need to convey an important message to your customer Order Timings A customer is only able to place an order due immediately if your store is opened. Orders for a later date must be scheduled within your opening hours. As such, order timings are mostly controlled by your store opening hours. From there, each service has it’s own separate order timing settings that allow your more in-depth control. Enabling & Disabling Order Times Under the “Order Timings” tab in the service settings, you can enable and disable both immediate and scheduled orders. First Order Offset This is the period of time from when your store first opens to when you will accept the first order. For example, if the first order offset is set to 30 minutes and your store opens at 9:00am, the first order can be placed or scheduled at 9:30am. Last Order Offset This is the period of time from when your store closes to when the last order will be accepted. For example, if the last order offset is set to 30 minutes and your store closes at 9:00pm, the last order can be placed or scheduled at 8:30pm. Order Offset The normal order offset only applies for scheduled orders at a later time. This is the period from now when a scheduled order can be made. For example, it’s there to prevent customers from scheduling order in the next 10 minutes instead of just asking for it to be due ASAP. So for example, if your order offset is 30 minutes and the current time is 6:00pm, the next time a customer can schedule an order would be 7:00pm. If they want it before 7:00pm, they can still just order for ASAP instead. If the order offset was 15 minutes, then the customer can order for 6:30pm. The order offset also acts as a cut-off point to give you time to meet the order schedule. For example, if it’s 6:00pm and your order offset is 30 minutes. If the customer is scheduling an order for 7:00pm, they must place the order before 6:30pm. This is to give you 30 minutes to meet the scheduled time. If they take too long and the time passes 6:30pm, they will receive a notification to tell them that the order has been changed to due ASAP instead of their scheduled time, 7:00pm. Custom Service Hours Each service can have its own independent operating hours. Setting custom operating hours for a particular service will override the operating hours set for your store location. Estimated Wait Times & Auto Statuses To help you better manage your orders and customer expectations, we provide a streamlined way to calculate order wait times and automatically update statuses. There are 6 order statuses: Un-confirmed Confirmed Ready On Route (delivery only) Complete Cancelled Both estimated wait times and automated status updates are connected to the same timing settings. This is so that your status updates and wait times are in sync with each other. This avoids any customer confusion. These timing settings are: Setting (minutes) From Status To Status Time till confirm Unconfirmed Confirmed Time till ready Confirmed Ready Time till on route (delivery only) Ready On Route Time till complete Ready Complete Time till confirm is the time between when an order is placed to when it’s confirmed. Setting time till confirm to “0” will result in instant order confirmation. You will need to also enable auto status for the confirmed status. Time till ready is the time it takes you to prepare an order after it’s confirmed The time till on route status is effectively the time between when an order is prepared to when it is taken by the delivery driver. Time till complete is useful for automatically marking orders as complete Estimated Wait Times A stated, customer wait times are calculated using the above timing settings. How estimated wait time are calculated for pickup or dine-in orders For pickup and dine-in orders, the estimated wait time is calculating but adding the time till confirm with the time till ready values. So for example, if your time till confirm was 5 and your time till ready was 20. The customer would get an estimated wait time of 20 + 5 = 25 minutes. If you have not added a value for time till confirm or time till ready, the estimated wait time would not be calculated. How estimated wait time is calculate for delivery orders For deliveries, the wait time is calculating by adding the time till confirm + time till ready + time till on route together. Then the driving time is added onto that. The driving time is determined using an external service that takes into account traffic data. This provides the customer with an extremely accurate wait time for their order to be delivered. Assuming If you have not added a value for time till confirm or time till ready or time till on route, the delivery time would not be calculated. Automated Statuses Automated statuses

When you first create your restaurant, the default theme is relatively blank. It’s up to you to customise it to represent your brand. Design settings are located under the settings page in the design How To Customize Your Design Visit the restaurant settings page and go to the design tab Press “Open Design Mode” to open up the site design editor Go through each of the setting sections and customize options as needed Quickstart Recommendation To get a great looking site quickly, just use our base theme, add your logo and add a nice header background image. It also helps to have a nice header title and subtitle. || We recommend using a PC or tablet to design your site for the best experience Recommend Images Dimensions Logo image – 300 pixels wide by 100 pixels high wide Header image – 1920 pixels wide by 500 pixels high Logo icon – 350 by 350 pixel square Product image (dish style: card) – 720 pixels wide by 480 pixels high

Once the orders begin coming in, you need to be ready to fulfil them. As such, it’s important that understand the order management workflow for everything to operate smoothly. Receiving Orders In-Store Setup To completely manage the orders lifecycle, you will need to have an internet-enabled device in-store. We highly recommend using a Windows laptop or tablet with either Chrome or Firefox for the greatest compatibility. This device will need to be placed in an area where whoever is responsible for online orders can easily check, access and update orders. Order Management Interface Visit your restaurant dashboard and navigate to the orders page. The interface updates in real-time with new orders so you do not need to refresh the page. There are several key features of the order management interfaces: You can easily see whether an order is a pickup, delivery or dine-in by the icon on the left. The colour of the icon is a representation of the order’s current status. You can click an order to view the details of it and make updates Board View The board view is fantastic for actually managing orders in real-time. Orders flow from left to right along the different status columns. In the board view, the due time is the time when the customer will be coming to collect the order. For deliveries, the start delivery time is when the order must leave your store to reach the customer at their selected time. List View The list view provides you with an overview of your latest orders 10, 25, 50 or 100 orders. This view is perfect for filtering through orders and searching for specific ones. It is not well suited to actively managing orders. Viewing An Order’s Details Once you select an order, you will see a popup showing you the details of your order. Here you are able to do the following functions Change status – update the order status Modify est ready time – update on the customer’s receipt how long till the order is ready Other actions – print orders, book for delivery, refund payments, delete the order How To Manage Orders To actively manage orders, use the board view and follow the process below. Confirm or cancel any new orders received in the Un-Confirmed column. Orders in the Confirmed (Due Soon) column are due in the next 2 orders. Simply prepare the orders from the top to bottom to meet the time they are due Orders in the Confirmed (Up-Coming) section are due any time after 2 hours. You can keep an eye on what’s upcoming with this. When the order has been prepared, move it to the Ready column for customer or driver collection. If it is a delivery, move it to the On Route column once the driver has taken it. Finally, mark orders as complete when the customer collects it or the food has been delivered. || If you are unable to prepare an order by the due time, you increase the due time manually. Click an order to view the details. Using the “Modify Est. Ready Time” select bar, add the extra time required to prepare the order. This way your customers are aware of any delays. Order Statuses There are 6 different order statuses as indicated by the columns on the order management board. Un-confirmed – new orders that are not accepted yet Confirmed – orders that you have accepted and will fulfil Ready – prepared orders ready for customer or driver collection On Route – orders currently with the delivery driver (delivery only) Complete – orders that have been completed fulfilled Cancelled – orders that will not be fulfilled Updating the order status will update your customers in real-time about the status of their order. What Happens When An Order Is Placed Every time a new order is received, several things will happen. A sound notification will play if enabled If device notifications are enabled, you will receive one If automated printing is configured, the order will be printed at the respective printer You will receive an e-mail notification if configured The new order will automatically be loaded into the orders interface Notifications Device Notifications We highly recommend that you have device notifications enabled if your device supports it. When you first load the admin dashboard, your web browser will ask you if you would like to allow notifications. Please make sure that you allow this. If you did not, you will need to manually enable them from your web browser settings. This is different for every browser. For chrome on a PC, you can do this by clicking the secure lock icon beside the website URL in the address bar. This will drop down the permissions window where you can enable notifications for the current page you are on. E-Mail Notifications You can configure up to 3 email addresses to receive notifications on. Simply visit “Settings > E-mail Notifications” and configure the settings there. E-mail notifications will also include a PDF copy of the order receipt. Audio Notifications Audio notifications can be configured at “Settings > Audio Notifications”. One useful aspect to this is you can configure a sound to play until someone has tapped / clicked the screen. This is helpful to get someones attention that a new order has come through. Automated Printing If you have automated printing set up, this serves as a valuable notification for new orders. Learn how to set it up through our printing setup guide. Train Your Staff Implementing an online ordering system if you have never done so before requires some changes. Most importantly all staff must be aware that new orders can come through and must be attended to. Managing Bookings Bookings are managed very similarly through the bookings page. When a new booking is placed, it will start as unconfirmed. Verify that you can accept it and then manually update the booking status to confirmed or cancelled. This will notify your customer respectively. You can then pencil this