Restaurants, Now You Can Ask for Pickup Date and Time at Checkout

If you sell locally, your customers might want to order online and come over to your store to pick up their purchases. No shipping costs, no worries about the product availability or delivery time — in-store pickup gives your customers the freedom they want.

At the same time, in-store pickup relieves merchants from shipping issues. It also leads to a faster checkout and more conversions, since customers don’t have to fill in shipping details.

All you need is some sort of a physical location: a brick and mortar store, a pop-up shop, partners with a physical store, etc. Which is why the in-store pickup option is especially popular with restaurants and cafes.

Along with many shipping and local delivery options, every Ecwid online store supports in-store pickup. Let customers choose from several pickup locations, see and manage pickup orders in your Ecwid Control Panel and send email notifications to customers when their order is ready for pickup.

We’ve now enhanced in-store pickup with some new fields:

• Customer name
• Phone number
• Pickup date and time

Ask Customers to Specify the Exact Day and Time for Pickup

Now customers can pick up their order when it’s convenient for them and it won’t be all of a sudden to you. Enable to “ask for pickup date and time at checkout” in Settings → Shipping → In-store Pickup.

Restaurants can especially utilize this feature to prepare fresh food for pickup. Imagine: a customer decides to grab some food for dinner after work. He or she places an order and lets you know when to expect them. You can now easily get the order ready by the time they arrive.

Here’s how it works.

1. Customers pick a date and time at checkout.
2. As soon as the order is placed, the date and time are saved on the order details page and will be sent via order email notifications to the customer and merchant.

   Pickup date and time in the “New Order Placed” email for a merchant

3. You’ll be able to see the pickup information in Control Panel → My Sales → Order details.

   Pickup date and time in order details on My Sales page

Related: 6 Ways Restaurants Can Earn More With an Online Store

Set Up Business Hours for Pickup

Rest assured, you won’t have customers trying to pick up orders when you are closed. Set up business hours and intervals every day specifically for in-store pickup. This way, your customers will have to pick a date and time from the available range.

For example: if you run a bar, it’s likely to get crowded in the evenings, so the kitchen can be overloaded even without to-go orders. If offline sales are your priority, set up business hours for pickup so that they exclude prime times in your physical store.

Let Your Customers Know How Long it Takes You to Prepare an Order

Provide your customers with an estimated order fulfillment time if it takes you some time to get an order ready for pickup. This way, customers will only be able to schedule their pickup from the options that provide you enough time to fulfill the order.

Say you set your Order Fulfillment Time to be 30 minutes. If a customer places an order at 11:30 am, the datepicker won’t let them choose a pickup time that is within that 30 minute period — meaning the first available pickup time will be 12:00 pm.

Pickup date and time is great for restaurants, wholesale merchants, bakeries, car mechanics, and retailers that sell items like balloons, large household appliances, personalized products and product sets. Basically, any type of product that requires a certain amount of time to get ready.

If your products are ready to order, choose “Immediate”.

Also read: A Complete Guide to Starting a Food Truck Business

Ask for Customer Name and Phone Number to Contact Them

Customer name and phone number appear at checkout without additional settings. They act as optional fields, which means if a customer wants to skip them, they’ll be able to do so.

If you want to make phone number a required field, go to General → Settings → Cart → Checkout Settings and tick “Require phone number at checkout”. This way, customers won’t be able to complete checkout without entering their phone number.

Customer name and phone number will come in handy to:

• Confirm the order
• Clarify order details
• Send an SMS notification (remind of the order)
• Connect with a customer if they haven’t appeared in time.

In-store Pickup with customer name and phone number is available for all Ecwid stores. Giving your customers the option to set a pickup date and time is available on the Business plan and higher.

Learn more about how Ecwid pickup and delivery features can impact your ecommerce business

• Local Businesses, Step Up Your Game with Delivery Time Picker at Checkout
• Estimated Delivery Date at Checkout: Trust and Conversion
• Selling Online with Local Delivery Made Easy
• What Is Curbside Pickup?
• How to Set Up Curbside Pickup and Local Delivery
• How Does Curbside Pickup Work For Restaurants?
• Restaurants, Now You Can Ask for Pickup Date and Time at Checkout