What is Catering?

When your guests need to place a large order for their parties, gatherings, or anytime, Catering offers a suite of solutions to help your business handle these orders right inside Online Ordering.

In Online Ordering each Catering location will exist as its own individual Online Ordering store. Note that if a separate loyalty plan will exist for the Catering sites that differs from the locations existing loyalty plan then an additional PXS location will need to be created for each Catering site.
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There are a few options for setting up Catering stores in Online Ordering:

For existing Paytronix Online Ordering clients that already have stores configured for regular ordering, we offer the ability to clone your regular restaurant into a Catering version of that store. All the existing store settings will copy over (including POS (Point of Sale) configuration, DSP (Delivery Service Provider) settings, Payments, etc.). From here, you can start to configure your Catering store’s menu and settings as you see fit. You can find this copy functionality in Manage Restaurants>Actions>Copy as Catering Store.
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In addition to copying, we also offer the ability to create Catering stores from scratch. To create a new store in Online Ordering, navigate to the upper right corner of your screen and click on the person icon then Admin.
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Scroll down the page to Create New Restaurant and fill out your store’s information. Check the box to mark the store as Catering only.
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If you have a file representing your stores you want to upload, upload them as tab-separated file (TSV). Columns may be in any order and optional columns may be omitted.

To upload the file, navigate to Manage Restaurants>Add Restaurants from File.
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When you are done creating your stores in the Online Ordering platform, be sure to create the corresponding stores in the PXS and link by store code. For more information on creating a new store in the PXS, please read How Do I Set Up a New Store in Paytronix?
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Catering stores offer the ability to set “headcounts” on orders. To enable this for a store, navigate to General Settings > Catering > Enable Catering Headcount.

Once this setting is enabled, you can set the number of guests that each menu item feeds. To set the number of guests fed for a menu item, navigate to the menu tab, select the item you wish to configure, and set the field Catering Fed Headcount. You will also want to enable the field under Advanced>Include in Catering Order Fed Headcount.. Leaving the second field unset will mean that this item is more of a side item and does not directly contribute to the total number of guests fed for an order.

Combos are another option that have added support for a head count. A head count for combos can be configured one of two ways:

Note: Each combo item needs to be configured and all combos do not have to have the same configuration
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Paytronix Online Ordering offers the ability to display a pre-configured “bundle” of your menu items or Suggested Order that a guest can add directly to their order. To create a Suggested Order, navigate to the order details page of a previous order containing the desired menu items. This can be from a guest’s order or manufactured by submitting a test order directly to the store with the desired items.

From there, select Set as Suggested Order in the top right.
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You will be prompted to fill out some information about the Suggested Order, including

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Once you have filled out the information click Save.

You can now manage the suggested order by navigating to the Settings>Suggested Orders tab in the navbar. The Suggested Orders settings page is available at both the restaurant and merchant level and can be navigated to in the same way via the navigation bar.

At the restaurant level you will see all the Suggested Orders that apply to this restaurant. If you have Cataloging or Enterprise Menu Management (EMM) enabled for your merchant, your suggested orders will be able to apply to all locations where the contents of the Suggested Order are available.
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NOTE: You cannot directly edit the contents of the Suggested Order. If you need to create a modified version of a Suggested Order, you would need to place a new order with different menu items, set as a Suggested Order, and delete the old Suggested Order.

Delivery is just as important for catering orders as it is for standard orders. In addition to being able to configure your own first-party delivery, we have integrated with DoorDash’s Large Order Fulfillment service, to allow third-party delivery on catering orders. This can be setup the same way regular third-party party delivery is set up for DoorDash and the system will automatically use the Large Order Fulfillment service for catering store orders.

DoorDash Large Order Fulfillment offers a “White Glove Service”, in which the delivery driver will also assist in the setup of the catering order upon arrival. To make this service available to your guests, you will need to enable a prebuilt custom checkout field. To do this, navigate to Settings>Menu/Checkout Settings>Custom Checkout Fields and select the prebuilt field Catering Delivery Setup. Once enabled, guests of your menu will be given the option to opt-in to using this service.

Delivery Zone Order Minimums have been added to support first-party delivery. A customer may want to offer first-party delivery to a larger area of the city if the amount of the catering order is worth it. These settings are configured in the Settings\Delivery Settings for each zone if desired.
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​Group Ordering
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Group Ordering can be configured for a catering location if desired. A feature has been added that will email the Group Order originator once the entire group of people have ordered. There is no configuration required for this setting.
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Catering stores accept orders largely the same way that regular stores do, with some enhancements to the order flow to improve Catering experiences. By nature, Catering orders are larger and take more time to prepare. Due to this, when a catering store is created, we default to a lead time of 24 hours and disable ASAP ordering. These settings can be configured differently if desired.
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Catering stores have the option to set a down payment on the order, meaning the guest only pays X% of the order up front. This amount can be configured via General Settings>Catering>Catering Upfront Percent. To charge the full amount up front simply set a value of '1' for the setting.
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Catering orders are also editable by the Catering admin until they are “locked”. The setting that controls the “lock” time for an order can be found at General Settings>Catering>Catering Lock Before. This is the number of hours before the order is due that the order will lock. The default setting is 24 hours.
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Because Catering orders are editable until they are locked, we do not send them to the POS immediately upon submission. We hold the order until a configurable amount of time before the order is due. Like the Lock Before setting, this time can be configured at General Setting>Catering>Catering Send Before. The value for this setting must be 1+ hours less than the Lock Before setting, as the order must be locked before we can send it into the POS for fulfillment.
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The Catering admin for a store can edit a catering order until it is locked. To do this, navigate to the Order Details page of the order in question, and click Edit in the top right corner.
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Note that edits made to a Catering order will affect the final amount due to the guest when the order is locked.
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For your reference, here is an example flow of a guest submitted Catering order:

There are several tools at the Catering admin’s disposal to manage and organize Catering orders in the Paytronix Online Ordering Admin site.
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The admin will have the ability to view all Catering orders in a calendar view on the admin site. To get to the calendar view navigate to Orders in the navbar and click Calendar in the top right.
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To see the major events happening in the lifecycle of an order, there is a timeline visual on the order details page. To see this you will need to navigate to the Order Details page for any order then scroll towards the bottom.
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When looking for a store to order from, guests will land on the Order Experience Builder (OXB) location picker and be presented with several different store options. Stores marked as Catering (depicted below) will be the ones that offer the full Catering feature set. Guests will have the option to filter by Catering/Non-Catering specifically.
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When a guest starts a Catering order, they will be presented with additional Order Detail fields, specific to a Catering order.

For example:

Next, the guest will start to build their order. As your guests add items to their cart, the Catering Fed Headcounts that you associated with each menu item will be added. This will then power the Feed-O-Meter, where you’ll be able to see how many guests they can feed with the items in their cart.

The Feed-O-Meter is a great way to ensure that the items you select for your order, will appropriately feed the number of people you included when you started your order.
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Suggested Orders will be visible to your guests at the top of the menu’s landing page.
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If desired you can provide your guests with a view into their Catering order’s timeline by selecting the Enable Catering Step Component located under Menu/Checkout Settings/Enable Catering Step Component.
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Your guests will then be able to see a timeline at the top of their screen as various stages of their order are completed, including Order Placed, Down Payment Collected and Food Ready.
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For additional assistance, please contact your solutions consultant or customer success manager, or email [email protected].