Feature Request - A way to 'close' store for the night when sold out

[Smithward]

As a food outlet we can only make a finite number of items per day. Once we have sold all of those available items we would like to stop online orders for that day. 

The only 2 options we can see are both unsuitable: 

If we change all items to 0 inventory, this prevents people from ordering ahead for the following day(s). (This would be a common behaviour for our loyal customers - "oh, they're sold out tonight, let's order for tomorrow instead")

If we edit the Pickup/Delivery Hours to change the day to 'closed', that is then applied to the same day of week for all subsequent weeks e.g. we're about to sell out tonight (Friday) but we still want people to be able to order ahead for next Friday.

Is there an elegant solution?

Thanks

[Seamus]

EDIT: You can now mark items as "Sold Out"!

Hey @Smithward - I can't think of any super elegant solutions here unfortunately!

I think what you'd need here is something like a "close early for the day/we're all sold out for today" or "pause orders for x amount of time" option.

The only other advice I was able to find was to set up an announcement saying orders are closed for the day - however this won't account for people who don't read the announcement. With that said, it might be worth trialing an announcement to see what sort of impact this has.

I'll also pass on your suggestion.

[Smithward]

Thanks @Seamus  

Yes, the messaging would need to be pretty clear too. Last night a customer ordered after we'd switched to 'closed'. Because we were already closed there were no available pickup slots so his order was assigned for next day pickup, but he turned up last night anyway. He thought the store website "must be broken" 🙄 

[abrokenangel]

This also happened to us today and has happened a few times over the last few months. Many people don't read the announcement at the top of the store page and ignore the date/time it says pickup will be available. If they DO realize what they've done, they try to call over and over... after we've already turned the phone off because we're closed. Then they come down anyway and show up well after the kitchen is closed, but while we're still there cleaning up. Not a good first impression. We also like to leave the online store "open" so that customers can order for the next morning, but we've been having to manually turn it off every night to keep this type of mixup from happening. Hoping a solution comes along to help here.

[Seamus]

Thanks for the feedback @abrokenangel, I can see how this must be frustrating!

I'm trying to think of another way around this but I can't really come up with much that already exists - if you want customers to be able to order ahead for the next day this option is available, but by having that option there you're obviously also opening it up for people to place orders in advance who for whatever reason don't actually notice that they are placing an order for another day. You've got to make the choice of accommodating for customers who don't read vs making the option unavailable for everyone.

I'm thinking maybe the best solution would be for the system to not automatically assign the next available time slot, but force/prompt the customer into making a decision about when their pickup is, so they are more engaged in the ordering process. I am aware that we hope to make the pickup/delivery time slot more visible/selectable from within the checkout so we might see this sort of thing in an update - I'll pass your feedback on to our Ecommerce team for consideration as they continue to build out the product!

[Smithward]

We sold out last night and we used the announcement pop-up to let people know. I think this may have been a feature that was only available on a higher plan originally, so we hadn't thought about using it before.

It's impossible for customers to not see it. 

We still had to temporarily close the online store to prevent determined purchasers, but the pop-up was more effective than adding text to the site.

With regard to the next available/as soon as possible vs select a time, yes, the process is currently too passive and some users are not acknowledging the options.  

As a pick-up only business, from our perspective there's also inconsistency in language - at checkout, the 'as soon as possible' option says "ready AFTER xday xx:xxpm", while the 'select a time' option says "ready AT xday xx:xxpm".  Both should be "at".

In the cart, prior to checkout, the only mention of availability is "after". Which is confusing.

It would be good if selecting/confirming a time for pick-up/delivery was prominent on the home page and be highlighted at checkout. The cart should reflect any choice set or also have the option to set. If it's already been set at any earlier stage it should require final confirmation at checkout.

[Seamus]

Hey @Smithward - great call on the pop-ups!

Agreed that better pickup slot options would be ideal. From what I can see improved options for selecting order fulfillment options in-cart are on the product roadmap, so hopefully we'll see some movement in the next quarter!

[Seamus]

@Smithward @abrokenangel You can now mark items as "Sold Out" via Square POS, Dashboard and Square Online!