Features · Catering lead times
Set how much lead time you need before customers can place an order, create different rules for different products, automatically enforced.
Catering Lead Times are the main thing separating a good quality catering platform from a simple eCommerce store. Before building Easy Flow Catering, we asked our first customer: “Why not just use Shopify?”
“Shopify doesn't have cut-off rules. So someone could put in an order at like 12 am for us to fulfil at 9 am the next day. We'd still do it, but I'd have to call in extra staff and the staff would be exhausted and it wouldn't really make us any money.”
So we built the catering lead times feature so you can set how much lead time you require before a customer can submit an order. This takes the stress out of managing your catering orders, but also improves your customer experience. You can imagine how disappointed a customer would be after submitting an order to find out that you can't fulfil it.
Let's say one of your most popular catering items is a rotisserie chicken platter. Your kitchen needs a full day to source the birds, brine them, and have them ready for pickup. So you create a catering lead time called “24 hour lead time” and assign your rotisserie chicken platter to it.
Now a customer trying to order at 9 pm Tuesday for 9 am Wednesday delivery sees a banner: “Rotisserie chicken platter needs 24 hours notice — earliest available is Thursday.” They can pick a different product for tomorrow, or push their order to Thursday. Either way, you don't get the 9 pm panic order you can't fulfil.
What your customer sees when they try to order inside the lead time window.
Yes.
Christmas week, Mother's Day, EOFY function season: your prep times get longer because your kitchen is at capacity, your suppliers are slower, and your staff are stretched. A 12-hour lead time that works fine in March isn't going to hold up on 22 December.
In Easy Flow Catering, you can update any catering lead time in seconds. Change your “hot food” rule from 12 hours to 48 hours for the fortnight before Christmas, save, and every customer touching that category from that moment on is playing by the new rules. No developer, no support ticket, no menu rebuild.
When the busy period ends, dial it back. Or duplicate a rule, name it “Christmas 2027 — hot food,” and swap it in and out year on year.
The caterers we've spoken to who don't have this end up doing one of two things: turning off online orders entirely for the busy weeks (leaving money on the table), or accepting orders they can't actually fulfil and burning out their team. Catering lead times that flex with your calendar mean neither.
In the rotisserie chicken example, you may create a category called “hot food”. You can then add that “hot food” category to the catering lead time, meaning customers will not be able to order unless you have at least 12 hours of lead time to prep.
Update lead times, cut-off times, and active days from the admin panel.
No problem. You can create multiple catering lead times and assign different lead times to those rules. You can then assign the relevant product categories to those rules.
If you have a catering lead time of 12 hours and another of 6 hours, Easy Flow Catering will flag the products that are outside their lead time and encourage the customer to choose something else.
Yes. Update any catering lead time in seconds — change your "hot food" rule from 12 hours to 48 hours for the fortnight before Christmas, save, and every customer from that moment on is playing by the new rules. No developer, no support ticket, no menu rebuild.
No problem. You can create multiple catering lead times, each with a different lead time, and assign the relevant product categories to each one. Fresh salads on a 6-hour rule, hot food on a 12-hour rule, celebration cakes on a 48-hour rule — all running at once.
Easy Flow Catering checks every item against its rule. If a customer picks a delivery time that falls inside any product's lead time window, that product is flagged and the customer is encouraged to pick something else or move their delivery date.
Yes. Instead of a silent error, the customer sees a clear banner explaining the lead time and the earliest available date for that item. They can pick another product or push their order out — either way you avoid the panic order you cannot fulfil.
Book a 20-minute demo and we'll walk through it with your menu.
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