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]

Hi @Alex_ , I appreciate that our cases are being escalated.

[LordPies]

Hi @Alex_ 

This problem still exists, but i look forward to seeing what happens. 

[roastology]

No improvements, had more orders yesterday on our closed day and I posted another comment yesterday and I tweeted customer support even though they were closed asking for a feature to fix this issue. I agree it is a real issue that is causing customer dissatisfaction and costing us money when we have to refund order. 

[LordPies]

@roastology 

I feel ya. I too, look forward to being able to polish this portion of the service. 

[hratchad]

Nothing yet Lordpies.  They said they were working on a beta for some customers to try and that they would be in touch, but nothing yet!

[mksavage]

@LordPies No improvements here. We actually decided to drastically cut our menu so that, for now, we only offer items that we can make during all operating hours, which has obviously had a huge impact on sales. We can't continue with a limited menu forever, but I keep hoping Square will come up with a fix soon.

[Joe]

We appreciate everyones patience here! We hope to be back with some more specific updates here soon. Thanks for hanging tough. 

[LordPies]

@Joe , Awesome, thank you!

[LordPies]

We have a constant problem where customers try to order an item that is only available for a specific day. 

Using modifiers to force them to pick a date and time works to an extent. However, the turnaround time setting on the website does not align up with the date and time of the actual pickup, causing a constant flow of confused people when they get an automated email that reflects the pickup turnaround setting. 

Currently, there doesn't seem to be a way to change an existing order. What if customer wants to pickup for another day? or a different time? What if you promoted for a holiday in which you can only order a certain item on that specific date and the system still thinks you meant 1, 2, 3, 4 days/weeks from the day of ordering (there is currently no way to limit an item to be picked up only on a specific date). 

[nika]

Hey @LordPies. Thanks for bringing this up. I moved your post here for the sake of tracking it as a feature request and keeping similar posts all in one place.

We'll keep you and others posted of any future releases as @Alex_ mentions above.

[LordPies]

Hi @nika , thank you for moving the request here. 

I sincerely think Square and Weebly really need to step up their game. Changing an order pickup date and time is the #1 massive headache that our business is suffering as we're currently doing online only orders. 

I get it, that assigning an item to be only have a turnaround available at a specific date may be complicated and perhaps not a popular request becuase on the majority, most businesses and restaurants in particular have the same menu or product every day. Get order, fill it in, done.

But we're a small bakery. We have a rotating weekly menu. We encourage people to preorder their pies in advance. There isn't even an option to change the turnaround time to be "9 days" becuase the intervals are 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks. I'm ok with this not being implemented becuase it'd be tedious and a daily task to update it for each item. 

There is also no way to turn off "as soon as possible" feature at the end of checkout which is right next to "schedule for later" option. It would be nice to be able to either remove one or both of them. When the customers acutally write in their schedule-for-laters, the order system on the ipad syncs up, and the automatic emails work like they are supposed to. 

More than anything, we sincerely need to be able to change the pickup date and time. We currently cannot correct an order. It creates a nightmare of organization becuase we have to write down every order on paper and keep track of changes. We personally call and email every order up to confirm they know exactly when to come in, and tell customers to ignore the incorrect info.

This also makes it so that the "Orders" section of the ipad in Square useless to keep track of orders becuase it only ever shows orders in the turnaroud time settings. The email notifications to customers, this is where things can get difficult. We currently use modifiers that are required to select, which list the dates and time of their pickups. We put descriptons on the items, on the social media posts, etc. But becuase of the turnaround time settings being based on the time they ordered and independent of the actual date of pickup, and if they do not enter their schedule-for-later info at the end of checkout, they will get an email saying their order is scheduled for a different date and time; all because the turnaround time setting doesn't care what date a product will be ready. 

We tried editing the email templates as well. There isn't a way to remove the "your order will be ready &date at &time. or even move that around. We can only change things by adding text at the top, in which i put down a disclaimer to not trust the first line and instead, to look lower in the email where the modifiers are located.

[casadyc]

Thank you SO MUCH for posting this. I cannot say AMEN more sincerely!

[mksavage]

@LordPies YES! This feels like a pretty basic feature -- allowing us to set the availability of each item to specific days/times. I imagine most small restaurants have this same challenge and it would be a much-appreciated feature. Even Ordering.App has a rudimentary (albeit sloppy) version of this. Square, please help!

[Alex_]

Hi @mksavage,

I appreciate you reaching back out.

At the moment we do not have a public timeline as to when new features will be released. Please know that every time a seller brings up feedback, their voice is being passed on to the appropriate team in order to help implement these changes.

We understand that it might be difficult waiting for something to be built out, but our engineers are working on various different requests brought up by our sellers, and working with Apple, Google, and our other partners in order to approve these changes and be able to push them out in future updates.

[casadyc]

Hi Alex,

I totally appreciate how challenging it is to prioritize so many feature requests for software. And I've seen the Square team quickly deploying new, helpful features out to assist small businesses manage the new world of COVID-19, and I'm grateful for that.

I just want to add some perspective on this particular issue. Prior to COVID-19, my business was 98% in-house dining, and 2% to-go/pickup. Of that 2%, all of it was call-in, and none of it was online ordering. Today, my business is 100% pickup, and of that, 95% is online ordering, and 5% is call-in.

What I'm saying is that 100% of my business transactions have changed. I'm not alone in this, and I know it's not going to change back for a very long time. I would venture to guess that there's been a massive shift of most Square for Restaurant customers toward online ordering, which means there's a bunch of us in this same boat.

Where we were previously providing customer service face-to-face, we're now having to change to providing that through convenient, streamlined transactions - including modifiable pickup times.

Before, this was a nice-to-have feature, and it was tolerable that it was missing. Now, it's essential.

Thank you to the Square engineering team for seeing the emerging needs of its customers and working towards addressing them.

Cheers,
Chad

[LordPies]

@Alex_ , I wanted to echo @mksavage 's point. He's correct on his stats. 

You absolutely do not understand the predicament your software has put us in over being able to update order pickups to different date and times. 

[LordPies]

Hi @nika  

Did any of you updated this software to allow us to change the date and time of placed orders? 

Was there any updates on the fact we cannot limit our products to be picked up on a certain date and time? 

[Cibo]

Is there a way to have two different menus available at two different times? We have a lunch menu available from 11am to 2pm and a dinner menu available from 5pm to 10pm and would like to have only the lunch menu available for online orders from 11am to 2pm and only the dinner menu available for online orders from 5pm to 10pm. Does anyone knows if it’s a possibility?

[CurbsideCafe]

I would love to know if this is an option as well.  We have a lunch only service, but we also have a market that is open for curbside pickup.  I would like all the items for the market to stay visible.  I would like the lunch menu to only show during lunch.

[Joe]

Hi there, @CurbsideCafe 👋 Thanks for reaching out to us here on the Seller Community and adding your voice in support here for these menu features! 

I think this would be a cool addition, as well. We are continuing to send these suggested features over to our Product Teams for consideration. As soon as we have more info to share in terms of an announcement, we will reach back out here and notify everyone on this thread.

Thanks, again!

[xyz]

OK - so another attempt to provide some info. I struggled with getting the time constraints to work for our cafe - a.m. menu (coffee & lunch) and we're starting pre-ordered/prepaid take home dinners for PM. Full menu is not avail for dinner time.

Soooo many issues with prep times, operating hours, trying to set time constraints to categories..... Here is what seems to be working... for the moment.

I set up 2 locations - both with the same address & business info and using same Square account.

In Online : Settings : Pickup & Delivery - One location is called AM/LUNCH MENU - it is set up for pick up - business hours 7:30a-4pm.

The other location is called DINNER MENU - it is set up for pick up - business hours 4pm-6pm.

Next - In Online : Categories I have a Lunch Menu main category - with menu sub categories set up below it.  Under Category Details : Availability it is set to "during all regular business hours (same as pick up/delivery hours)" Per the above set-up - those hours are 7:30a-4p.

Next in the same category settings - I set up a 'Family Style Dinner Meals' - it has availability set to "during all regular business hours" - per the above set up those hours are 4-6pm.

Now... back in your main Square settings - go to your item library - select an item (grilled cheese - only avail for lunch) - open item details - below the item description select 'location' and turn on or off the respective day part of the menu you don't want the item in. In this case Grilled Cheese is turned on for the Lunch Menu and turned off from the Dinner Menu.

After creating a 2nd location - when a customer goes to your page - they should be given an option on which "location" to shop from. Again - only 1 physical location - Mine says AM Lunch Menu Next avail pick up 7:30am Monday" - Right now it's Saturday night - so guests can see and shop full lunch menu options - and they can add the items to their cart. 

As noted by others - the Square notes of ASAP and some time references during check out need fixed on Square's side still. The pick up location noted in the cart also says Monday after 7:30am.

When the guest then proceeds to the cart - after entering their contact info - of course the ASAP is ticked - but below that option is Schedule For Later - The available days of the week in the drop down should match your business days of the week. Below that - the available pick up times should match with your business hours during the week. In this case I can add a Grilled Cheese sandwich for lunch on Monday at 9:55am - and I am placing the order on Saturday night.

If I then go back to the beginning of the order page and begin a new order - this time selecting the Dinner Menu location that was created - it says "pre-order available - next pick up Monday 4pm".

Selecting the dinner menu and choosing one of the Family Style dinner meals and adding it to the cart - the cart reminds me 'pick up Monday after 4pm'

Proceeding to check out and entering buyer data - again ASAP is pre-ticked as the pick up choice (meaning 4pm)  but selecting the "Schedule For Later" option brings up the available business operational days of the week - and the available pick up times are from 4pm-6pm - which matches the category settings from above.

These test orders were staged on Saturday night - outside of normal operating hours. I did struggle with settings where orders could not be placed after business hours on a Monday for Tuesday service - but the above settings seem to have corrected that.

Hope this was not to confusing and maybe helped someone. I don't have much hair left after rolling out these changes. 🙂