Is there a way to limit item or category availability depending on time of day? ex. Breakfast

[mksavage]

For online ordering, there needs to be a feature that allows restaurants to limit the availability of certain items depending on the time of day. For example, if your breakfast menu is only available until 3pm, there needs to be an option to make these items unavailable after 3pm.

[LordPies]

Impressive attempt at tryign to make this website work for  you. It seems like a simple solution of moving "schedule for later" as a modifier option that's also a required selection (already exists as per modifier settings) would have fixed your problems as well as mine. 

I'm still having this problem where I cannot ever get the site to line up with picking up orders on a later date. I'm a bakery that promotes products to be picked up on a specific day (Fridays only, or December 24th but not on Christmas Day), instead, it operates on linear from the date of ordering (ex: 1 day, 2 day etc)

[xyz]

LordPies

Yeah - I was using the forced modifiers for "pick a day of the week" and "pick a time" - so the item in their cart would say "Fajita Bar - Tuesday 1/1/99 - 5:15pm"...... but then when they check out - Square defaults to ASAP (confusing) and then Square would let them pick any of our operating hours (7:30am-4pm) when this meal was only available 4pm-6pm... to confusing....

I could see the challenges of selling on only one specific date - you would have to make a "Pie" location - with business hours of Friday only x:xx am - x:xx pm and shoppers would have to select that particular menu to shop from. Which means they couldn't order a pie and a loaf of bread on the same order.... doh!

Good luck!

[LordPies]

Yeah, I strongly believe that Square's development team just seems to think that restaurants only operate with a set menu that's availble every day, ready to be made as soon as you order. 

The only workaround with the fact that the email notifications and orders always say a different pickup date due to the turnaround settings, is to go into your email template and put in giant disclaimer at the top of the email in big red text like i did. 

The one thing that the email notifications got correct, it shows the modifiers they selected right next to the picture of their orders. So, I pointed out in the red text, warning them that "your order will be ready by:" is incorrect due to Square settings and we can't chage it. The actual correct info is lower in the email next to the picture of their order. 

Is it unprofessional? Sure, but at least we can point out that their email did say the correct answer right there. We still get a handful of really angry customers that drove a hour or more to find out that their order was not on the right day/time becuase they didn't read these big red letters. That's kinda on them, but really, its mostly on Square since they're the ones that made this exceptionally hard to use since they integrated with weebly and cannot prioritize this kind of fix. I'm still bemused it is this hard for them to prioritize such an important fact of running a business: taking orders for pickup on a different, specific date.

Like.... holiday orders amirtie?  

[marascafe]

Just to make sure I'm understanding what you're saying--if I wanted to have a different menu for every day of the week, I could just set different location names, and assign the proper menu items to those location names? 

[LordPies]

Technically, you don't always need to make a new location name. Each product item has the ability to have their own turnaround settings individually. 

Now the challenge here is whether the product will be up on the site, available to buy, or availalbe to pickup at the correct times. 

[xyz]

Marascafe

Under Online : Items : Categories - you can designate a different category for each day of the week and set hours available for each of those menus.

The challenge is getting the settings & availability times from there to align with your business hours of operation and your item prep times.

The ultimate goal would be to have all the menus visible 24/7 - with the ability for customers to place an order in advance for a future date. For example - view your Tuesday menu on Monday - then place the order on Monday for Tuesday pick up at a specific time.

There are so many settings that have to align to get it to work that way if that is your ultimate goal.

[sunbirdcapecod]

We are in the exact same predicament. Square Online currently offers only one meal period: Open until Closed. Candidly, this is a serious oversight that desperately needs to be addressed. It is detrimental to the majority of food service businesses who otherwise love Square, us included.

For example, do you eat one meal per day? No. Do you eat the same thing for breakfast, lunch and dinner each day? I hope not! Then why would we be selling you (and getting our restaurants set up for) dinner during breakfast service? We wouldn't. Or breakfast during dinner service? We wouldn't!

It's a fundamental problem in the current workflow of your user experience, both front and backend. But it is fixable...

SOLUTIONS:

A) Disable products when they aren't available so customers can't order them.

B) Fade them down and disable link-throughs, but keep them visible so customers know they exist. This way they can come back at the right times to order what they saw and wanted.

C) Make it easy for customers to see when certain products have limited availability, and what those times are.

Visual:
"Flag" or "label" items with limited windows of availability, site-wide.

Visual:
Small colored text band with availability display, perhaps located under Item Title text. Or as a "ribbon" over the image itself (similar to "sold out" etc) so it doesn't throw off the tidy grid layout vertically.

Possible labels...
"Available from 7am-2pm", "from 7am-2pm", "7am—2pm only", or even just "7am—2pm"

* the colored background calls customer's attention to the issue so they don't miss it.

Feature Request:
Add a checkbox: "Always Available" (checked off by default - aka "active")

When un-checked, below that, 2 time-based dropdown menus "From" and "Until" are enabled.

Store owner can set item availability window there.

Bonus: Might want to add some conditions that confirm it's a viable window and throw an error message if it's not.

Adding this feature allows food service businesses to disable certain products and menu items during different meal periods. In other words, it accurately reflects their menus, and how they run their businesses.

It also gives customers the ability to see all of what the business offers—even though some things might be unavailable (aka "disabled"). They otherwise won't know what they don't know exists.

Until this problem is resolved, food service businesses are being forced to sell morning stuff at night, night stuff during the morning, and everything in between which makes no sense at all.

As a  co-owner of one, I truly feel for ALL small businesses right now, and I hope this helps us all out in some small way. Chins up!

[Alex_]

@casadyc, @LordPies, @sunbirdcapecod,

Thank you for providing each perspective and insight on this request. Times are especially tough right now, so we definitely understand the importance of providing you with the best tools needed to succeed. 

We appreciate the patience and we will be sure to let you know if anything changes.

[mksavage]

Hi @Alex_! Is there any update on this? Or a way to know if this feature is even in the queue for development? This really is an essential feature especially during COVID when 100% of our sales are online for takeout. Without this feature, we are having to consider switching online ordering and POS systems. Before I do that, it would be helpful to know if this feature might be coming soon. Thank you!

[LordPies]

Last weekend's sales, I still had people confused with their orders and this is for not letting us being able to restrict items to a specific date and time window for pickups.

I cannot change the date and time of orders to update them to their correct pickup dates and times. I'm okay with doing the extra work. I want my customers to get an updated email with a correct date and time after i set them on the correct path. I use modifiers theyre required to fill in and they still get incorrect dates and times all due to  turnaround time settings.

This problem makes the "orders" feature of your ipad app inaccurate to use and causes a host of other micro-issues.

[LordPies]

Square created the best POS system I've used and I really loathe that this derails my train. Be nice to be able to change order's pickup date and times at least to keep things going nicely and resolve errors. 

[Alex_]

Hey @LordPies & @mksavage,

Once we have more information. We will be sure to include it in this post. Thank you for hanging on. 

[LordPies]

Following, looking forward to seeing what happens.

[nika]

Hello @Cibo-

Regrettably there's not a way to have two separate menus with items available during specific times. This is a feature request.

As a workaround, you could make a "lunch" category and a "dinner" category, displaying their respected items in each. That way when customers click on the "lunch" category, only the options available during lunch will show. You can even write up a little disclaimer on your home page about lunch and dinner items being available only during a certain time for an additional layer of info.

If any other questions come up please let us know!

[hratchad]

Hi folks.  I have a breakfast, lunch and dinner restaurant. How can I cut off/stop customers from being able to order breakfast after 10:30 and lunch after 2:30pm?

[isabelle]

Hi @hratchad-

Welcome to the Seller Community! 🍽

This feature request is still in the works and not quite available yet, however I can confirm we're working on it. 

I'll make sure to post back in this thread when I hear something. 

[hratchad]

Thank you Isabelle. Please keep me posted, it’s very necessary. 

[mksavage]

Agreed with @hratchad - this is an incredibly necessary feature! Many of us are doing only online ordering because of the coronavirus, and not being able to time-limit orders makes for a terrible customer experience! Thank you for your work on this!

[Joe]

We will keep you updated, @hratchad! Thanks for your patience. 

[roastology]

A method other than the manual toggle on and off is needed.  For example setting off on closed days , limiting orders before a certain time before open time,  and within a certain time prior to close. 

[Valentina · Accepted solution]

Good news, all - this feature has been built out and is ready to use!✨🎉

@Tom outlined how these new Time-Based Categories will function in this Product Update post, so head there to get started. Once you've applied specific day and time availabilities, the items shown to your customers as available for purchase will change automatically throughout the day and/or week, depending on your chosen days and hours for each category.