Online ordering system for website - take away fast food

[Vegeta]

Hi guy's I am in the process of launching a website for my takeaway and I want to know how I would go about including a menu on the page that customers can order from and decide to pay by card or cash on delivery or collection? There are a lot of companies out there providing such facilities but the prices seem a bit steep for me the cheapest being

Shortcut - 5% commission then VAT on top and the customer is charged card handling fees

ordys - £35 a month and the debit card fees are deducted from the bill (therefore the business pays for them).

I would assume a good host + some sort of scripting and a merchant service would be a cheaper option than the cheapest currently available? Thank you.

 

[Vegeta]

Currently I have zilch setup! Sorry I should have been more specific. I would like to know how to take payments but also have a menu setup so customers can add/remove items and I can set a delivery area. I will be creating a website also this will be easy enough but i'm not sure how to create the menu part/adding things to the carts/customer accounts and taking payments.

 

[Vegeta]

No knowledge in the slightest.

 

[Vegeta]

Just been sent this by a friend on these forums https://www.braintreepayments.com/ - They seem to be the best and cheap too! The website creation won't be anything fancy i'll probably use dreamweaver or use a website host who register the address for me and provide one of those easy to build online tools they have where you place your logos etc.

EDIT: I was just after a 'payment gateway' but I didn't know what they were called there seems to be quite a few of them.

 

[Vegeta]

I think I've bitten off more than I can chew. I have no website creation past I thought they are fairly easy to create however I have no idea how to create a order form or integrate these payment gateways it all seems to be code related.

 

[Vegeta]

If you have no experience, you could just use a service like just-eat?

Just eat charge 11% commission on every order and there's a initial setup fee of around £350-£1000 I think. I don't want to be associated with justeat simply because they have dozens of competitors on their own website to mine! I want to keep it my brand only.

I am slowing learning via google (as always) to achieve what i'm after.

 

[Vegeta]

Wordpress - I might try my hand at this

 

[Vegeta]

Thanks dneill2006 looks like a good solution plenty of options to mull over this weekend!

 

[Vegeta]

I've got quite a lot of experience in this sector and I know a lot of other business owners and justeat isn't something I want to go on. Yes I will being use a 3rd party piece of software Number_25 I didn't realize it was a complicating as it was! I'm fairly good at learning software so I may not have any experience I can learn anything given time - I did make some flash sites in my teens (over 10 years ago mind).

 

[Vegeta]

I put together an online ordering system for a local takeaway.

Essentially set up a WordPress site with WooCommerce, added their menu and options in and set up PayPal as a payment gateway. Worked well, a lot cheaper than just eat. If you have a card reader and the company has an online payment gateway you could use that rather than PayPal.

You don't need to worry about SSL and security as the payment is handled externally (and securely).

With regard to the shop getting the order we just set up a mailbox dedicated to the orders and when a mail popped in you just read/printed it, fairly straightforward.

This is exactly what i'm looking to do. Just curious what theme did you use and how did you manage the order page and set different deliveries for different areas? In the area's i'm delivering too the postcode starts off the same but we charge different deliveries in another area i'm not sure how to go about this as I cannot simply highlight an area to set delivery prices for? Thank you.

 

[Vegeta]

We leaflet + advertise anyways. We leaflet all areas every 2 months. I am growing the business slowly and it is getting busier week upon week I just want a website to allow customers to place online orders + reduce errors on our end taking the orders + time for us taking calls etc.

I might do what you said about the discount - join justeat for a year then abolish it but the business is picking up pretty quickly. I know other business owners in the area and we aren't doing much less for a new venture + no online presence.

 

[Vegeta]

I've helped run another takeaway in the same area for 10 years I know the area quite well and the better places in that area aren't on justeat therefore being part of the food portal gives a bad image of the place imo. I will consider it of course but right now I don't feel I have to as my profits are increasing weekly and i'd rather spend the £500-£1000 fee marketing my own website/takeaway than pay a 3rd company to do it all for me charge me quite a bit. I imagine most fast food takeaways hate websites like justeat but go on to survive. It is great for the consumer and well it has forced many places to make the effort and create their own websites now rather than just take calls over the phone.

 

[Vegeta]

Well i'm not sure you've read the other posts but i'll be using opencart and a payment gateway from a large company be it Paypal or whoever that will deal with all the PCI compliance issues etc. I have all the respect in the world for anyone who webdesigns but quite frankly I don't see the point in paying for a website that will look worse and have poorer functionality at a higher price! The websites created by opencart or wordpress look more professional than 99% of custom built jobs in my eyes. There are no security issues seeing as i'm not doing anything bar editing a template adding dishes etc.

 

[Vegeta]

I've actually found a company they were able to do me a deal I've scored great EPOS software £100 per terminal (two pc's i've setup myself so the hardware costs are tiny) and £100 for a ordering website that integrates with the EPOS system! so £300 all in and £20 a month maintenance very happy with that. EPOS system has the lot postcode lookup/maps and callerid (I need to buy the CIT module however which I will but it's not neccesary my phones have callerid and for now we're entering them manually).