Preparing for Pre-orders: Your 7 Step Guide

Introducing pre-order menus during this period brings plenty of benefits: streamlined operations, better stock control, and happier guests. With pre-orders, you can forecast demand more accurately, reduce food waste, and ensure the kitchen has everything it needs. It also eases the last-minute rush, giving staff more time to focus on service and creating a smoother, more enjoyable experience for everyone.

Here are some of the top things to consider when introducing new starters to the system, or for those that need a quick refresher.

7 steps for a smooth setup of Pre-order

1. Booking rules setup
2. Pre-order send configuration
3. Pre-arrival checks (morning preparation)
4. Kitchen team preparation
5. POS checks
6. Front-of-house preparation
7. Guest arrival process

*This process flow requires you to have the following Zonal solutions: Aztec, iOrder, Events & Tables

1. Setting up your booking rules

By now, Christmas bookings are likely already picking up speed, with customers returning from summer and turning their attention to festive plans. If you haven’t set up your booking rules yet, don’t worry, it’s not too late!

If you’re planning to take deposits, pre-orders, or pre-payments, the first step is enabling the correct booking rules as early as possible. Even if your menus aren’t signed off yet in EPOS/Aztec or iOrder, or if your marketing team is still finalising the copy, you can still set up the rules for bookings being made today. Doing this can help avoid extra manual work later, ensuring a smoother process for both you and your guests.

Once the final details are agreed (and tested), and when your rules are in place, you can then trigger email notifications to your guests that the ability to place their pre-orders is now open.

Here are some example scenarios that may help, along with some simple actions you can do to get yourself ahead, or simply back on track:

Scenario 1:

“I currently have no Booking Rules defined, but I want to be taking pre-orders”

Ok, so you are taking bookings without any rules/requirements. At this stage, you will need to:

Create the new Booking Rule.
Edit each existing booking manually to apply the new rule/requirements.
Any new bookings made after you enable the booking rule will be subject to the conditions automatically.

If you haven’t created your rule, but you do want to add an ad hoc payment to a booking, you can manually add a requirement to that singular booking. You will need to edit the booking and edit the booking requirement.

Scenario 2:

“I have a rule in place for a deposit only, but need to include a pre-order request”

Ok, so you are taking bookings with a rule defined for deposits already. But now you want all of these bookings to also require a pre-order. In this scenario, you will need to:

Edit the Booking Rule.
Add the action of pre-order with the required timeframes.

When editing a rule, you will be asked if you want to trigger notification to existing bookings on that rule. We recommend selecting YES as this helps set expectations.

Guests will see that a pre-order is due but won’t see the menu or be able to order until you open the pre-order for selections.

Scenario 3:

“I have a rule requesting a deposit & pre-order in place. I now want to get them to pre-pay for their items”

This resolution for this is pretty much the same as scenario 2. But what we highlight here is that you must edit the existing booking rule and add the action within.

Booking rules work on a hierarchy. If you try to use two separate booking rules (one for deposits, one for pre-orders), only one will apply.

2. Know your pre-order send setup

Pre-orders require key configurations defining how and when they are sent to the POS. It’s important to know what your setup is as this will help set you and your teams expectations when it comes to what you do on the day. We’ve outlined the below setup that the majority of configurations we see being:

Send Time: 4am – 7am

This is when pre-orders will attempt to send orders to the site POS, starting from 4am on the dining date of the booking. There is a window of a few hours to allow for re-tries and in some instances, high volumes. After 7am on the day, any errors will then be visible to you in the Events Host application, allowing you plenty of time to resolve any issues manually.

Pick Up Time: 23:59

All pre-orders will display on POS with a pickup time of 23:59. This means the order will remain on the POS, unsent, unassigned until 23:59 on that same day.

Delayed Order Send time: X mins before pickup time

Pre-orders will automatically send to the kitchen X minutes before the pickup time set above, unless manual intervention has occurred. If no manual intervention has occurred, the order will be sent to the kitchen without a table number. This is why we recommend this pickup time being set to 23:59 to prevent orders sending directly to the kitchen without Table Numbers.

3. Pre-Arrival Checks

When it comes to the day. After your pre-order sends have taken place, it’s now time to log onto the Events Host platform. We suggest going to the Day Diary tab. This will display all bookings for the day.

Any pre-order sending errors will appear in red – in the example it shows, Error sending PreOrder to EPOS.

To troubleshoot any errors, navigate to the chef reports on the Reports tab. Using the date range selector, amend the start and end date to the current day. All pre-orders will display. In the example shown, using the Event view of the report, you can easily see the reason for a pre-order not sending.

In this example, the error is an item out of stock. To resolve this error, the item will need to be placed back in stock on the POS. Once this is done, select Resend pre-order on the chef report.

4. Kitchen Team Preparations

Once all errors have been resolved, you may want to ensure the kitchen team have a copy of the chef report. This way they can prepare large orders in advance. For this we recommend using the report from the Events Host app. We suggest using the report that states the number of items per event (as shown in the image). The chef report can then be printed from the host application.

5. POS Checks

Once a pre-order reaches the POS, they are stored on the till as delayed orders.

To view the orders, navigate to Pick up Account on the till (often found in Options). This will display all open accounts within the sales area.

Use filtering at the bottom of the screen to display only Delayed Orders. If the venue as multiple sales areas, it is recommended that the Sales Area Account filter is deselected to show all orders across the venue.

Ensure all bookings that have a successful pre-order are displayed. Please note additional orders may display if using delayed ordering for other elements.

6.Front-of-house Preparation 

Run Sheets are part of a “Central Reservations” additional feature  in Events. If you do not see this option within your setup, you may need to speak to your Account Manager.

This particular feature is really useful for those large bookings. To access the Run Sheet, open the booking on Events Host, scroll towards the bottom and select Generate Run Sheet. Click the desired options, generate and print once loaded.

7. Guest Arrival

Now that you have prepared your morning tasks, it’s time for the guests to arrive. The steps below offer a walkthrough of the recommended steps for handling bookings once guests have arrived at the venue.

Step 1: Seating a booking

Once the booking has arrived and the guests are ready to go to their table, seat the guest on the Tables Host platform.

If the booking has a deposit, the Redeem Deposit box will display. Use the Seat & Redeem button to add the deposit to the table (if the option does not display, please speak to your Account Manager who will be able to enable this feature for you).

Once completed, the table will be opened on the POS with the booking name and deposit.

Step 2: Check the Pre-order with the guests

Once all the guests have arrived and are seated, using the chef report or run sheet, you can confirm all pre-ordered items are correct with your guests.

Step 3: Add the Pre-order to the table on the POS

Log on to the till and navigate to delayed orders (found in Pick Up Account usually in Options, use filtering to display delayed orders only).

1. Select the correct delayed order (pre-order).

2. The order preparation prompt is then displayed asking if you wish to start preparing the order. It is important that you select No so that you can assign the pre-order to a table. If Yes is selected, this will send the pre-order straight to the kitchen without a table number.

3. Selecting No will open the order on to the Order Pad.

4. Add the order to the table where the booking is seated by opening the table plan on POS. In the example shown, the Tables button is selected to open the table plan; this may be worded differently in different estates.

5. A box will display asking Do you want to merge Order Number X with Table X? select All Items to add all pre-order products to the table.

6. Once added to the table, make any required changes from the checks done in step 2 . On completion, click Save and this will send the finalised order to the kitchen.