Online ordering for cafés and bakeries

A café or a bakery makes its money in short windows: the commute, the lunch hour, and the weekend when people want a cake that is still there when they arrive. The counter queue is the thing that loses the sale. An order placed before they reach the door, for a time you can actually hit, keeps that queue short. Chefzi is the page for that pre-order and the kitchen app that rings when it lands. Collection is the main job. Delivery is there only if you already send someone out.

The menu should be as simple as the board. Coffee sizes, milk, an extra shot, a syrup if you charge for it, a sandwich, a salad and the cakes that are in the case today. Those are modifiers and items with prices, not a note the barista has to interpret while a queue is watching. If a cake is finished, mark it sold out so the next person cannot pay for it. When you stop serving a lunch item, mark that item sold out. It does not come off the page on a clock by itself. There is no switch to hide a whole category, so mark the finished lunch dishes and leave the drinks up.

A requested collection time is the point of a café page. A customer asks for a time. You set how far ahead they can book and how much notice you need. Closing time is the cut-off. There is no slot grid and no cap on orders that share a time. The lead time is for the location, so a cake and a flat white share the notice you set. Say on the item if a cake needs longer, and take those orders in the way you already do when the notice is not long enough. An “as soon as possible” pile at 8:30 is the problem a requested time is there to prevent. Pause ordering if the counter falls behind.

Most cafés do not need a delivery zone on day one. If you do deliver, limit it to the offices or the streets you already walk or drive, with a fee and a minimum that make the trip worth it. Show both before payment. A single sandwich sent across town is not a delivery business. Collection-only is a complete setup, not a missing feature. Hours belong at the top of the page, including the days you are closed and the afternoon you shut the kitchen but leave the coffee machine on. The address has to be the door they will actually walk to. A pin on the wrong street is a missed collection even when the payment worked.

The page itself can be the whole website, generated from the menu, with your photos, your hours and a short description you are willing to stand behind. Or you keep the site you already have and paste an ordering snippet into it. Either way the order lands on an Android tablet that rings until someone accepts with a prep time or rejects with a reason. A quiet email inbox is how a lunch order sits unseen until the customer is at the counter. The tablet needs Android 8 or newer, a speaker you have heard over the machine, and a charger. It is not an iPad app.

Chefzi does not take a commission on the cake or the coffee. The first three months are free, then £19 a month for cash or no-card payments, or £29 a month with online card payments through Stripe per location, excluding VAT. There is no setup fee. Cancel in the free months and you pay nothing. Card processing stays with your payment provider. That monthly number is the same on a quiet Monday as on a Saturday, which is the point for a shop whose trade is lumpy. A marketplace app is an odd fit for a neighbourhood café, and you do not need one for the regulars who already walk past. Put the link on Instagram, in the window and on the Google profile. One link.

If the current order button is GloriaFood, that product retires on 30 April 2027. The move is included. Send the drinks, the sizes, the lunch items, the cakes and the pre-order rules, plus the hours. Then order on a phone the way a customer would: one drink with a modifier that changes the price, one item that should be sold out, and one requested time tomorrow morning if you take next-day cake orders. Accept the test so you have heard the ring. Change the website button and the Google link after that. Run both until a real pre-order has been accepted.

Allergen information for cakes and sandwiches is yours to write. The page shows the note you provide. Photos are welcome when they are of your counter. A stock photo of a city you are not in does not help. You can edit the words and the pictures after the site is generated, without a developer. A promo code can be switched off in the dashboard. If you also trade on Just Eat, a discount on your own page has to stay inside their Your Price Promise unless you have agreed otherwise. Book a call and send the menu. A missing price is a question, not a guess.

The monthly fee is also on pricing. Zones are on delivery zones. Published marketplace rates go in the commission calculator, which is a projection from those rates and the numbers you type.