Turning ordering on
What this covers
The switch, the prerequisites, and what to do before your first service with it. Needs the manage-settings permission.
The switch
Property Settings → Public Pages Design (/settings/public-pages), on
the Menu tab:
- Allow Online Ordering — "Guests can browse the menu and place orders directly from their phone. Requires a table QR code."
- Allow Interactions (Summon Waiter & Request Bill) — the two buttons, covered in Call waiter and request bill.
Both need the matching feature on your plan and the switch on. Either one off means guests just read the menu.
Before you switch it on
- Check every price. Guests will order from these, unsupervised.
- Check availability. Anything off should be marked Sold Out.
- Check your option groups. A steak with no cooking-temperature choice generates a phone call to the table.
- Print and place the table codes, and scan each one to confirm it shows the right table. See QR codes for your menu and tables.
- Know the session timeout. A table's ordering session closes after three hours of inactivity, and that is fixed. See Table sessions.
- Decide who watches the Orders board, and on which screen.
Do a dry run
Sit at a table, scan the code, order something, and watch it arrive on the Orders board. Then move it through preparing and served, and see what the guest's phone shows. Ten minutes, before a service, with your team watching.
Start small
A sensible first step is to leave ordering on but tell staff to keep taking orders as usual. Guests who want to order from their phone will; everyone else carries on. You learn how it behaves without betting a service on it.
Some restaurants only ever use it for drinks and extras, which is a perfectly good outcome — the second round is where it saves the most time.
Turning it off again
Switch off Allow Online Ordering and guests can still read the menu; they just cannot order. Nothing is lost, and existing orders are unaffected. You can turn it off for a busy Saturday and back on for Sunday lunch if you want.