Here at Hotplate, we get to work with thousands of chefs and bakers, and many of them come to us after some truly scary experiences trying to manage orders on their own. Orders lost in DMs, customers who never paid, drowning in unruly spreadsheets. Ask any chef who's been at it a while, and they'll have a disaster or two to share.
So in the spirit of spooky season, we're sharing five of them, some straight from the chefs who lived through them. The holidays are the busiest time of year to sell food, and that's exactly when these nightmares tend to strike. The good news: every one of them can be avoided. Here's how Hotplate keeps them out of your kitchen.
#1: Chasing down payments
Before Hotplate, Sophie of Butter and Crumble tried just about every way to take orders.
"I was taking orders via DMs. I stopped pretty quickly because it was so hard to keep track of. Then I started using a really outdated WordPress website that was so confusing. One Valentine's Day we had a huge issue where nobody got charged. I had no money in the bank account, and I had to very awkwardly email everyone and say, 'Sorry, I need your money.'" — Sophie, Butter and Crumble
Imagine baking for one of the biggest days of the year, then realizing none of it was paid for.
How Hotplate keeps it from happening: on Hotplate, every order is a preorder, and an order isn't placed until the customer pays. You only ever bake for orders that are already paid for, so there's no chasing anyone down afterwards.
Today, Butter and Crumble runs its holiday drops on Hotplate. Read the story behind their biggest drop of the year.
#2: Selling more than you can make
It's the night before Thanksgiving pickup. You tally up the orders from your DMs, texts and comments, and realize you promised 60 pies when you only have 40 pie shells. Now you're either baking until sunrise or messaging customers to cancel.
How Hotplate keeps it from happening: Hotplate has all the inventory controls you could need. You can set limits:
Per item, so you never sell more than you can make.
Per menu section. You can set an overarching cap on all of your pies if you don’t care how many of each flavor are ordered, but you have a total number of pie shells.
Per pickup time. If you can only make 3 pizzas every 15 minutes, you can set exactly that.
On orders per pickup time, so you can limit foot traffic at your door, or make sure you have time to chat with each customer.
When something sells out, it sells out. You’re protected from overselling and avoid awkward cancellations.
#3: Customers who forget to pick up
Your pickup window is almost over, and there's still a table full of orders with names on them. So you start texting customers one by one, hoping they see it in time. Some write back. Some don't. And you spend the rest of your day figuring out what to do.
How Hotplate keeps it from happening: Hotplate automatically texts your customers 24 hours, 2 hours and 15 minutes before their pickup time. Your customers get a reminder right when they need it, so you can spend pickup day handing out orders instead of chasing people down.
#4: Drowning in admin
For a lot of chefs, the cooking is the easy part. The hard part is everything else: the order spreadsheet, keeping track of payments, inventory, sending reminders, handwriting order tickets. Sandra of Gipsy Hill Bakery knows the feeling.
"Hotplate is such an amazing platform and has really changed the way I do business. [The admin] part of the business was hard, sometimes it was a nightmare, and Rishi came along at just the right time and he kind of saved me because I was drowning in inefficiency." — Sandra, Gipsy Hill Bakery
How Hotplate keeps it from happening: Hotplate brings it all into one place:
Marketing: drop texts to your subscribers.
Payments and payouts: customers pay when they order, and the money lands in your Payout tab.
Inventory: limits by item, section and pickup time.
Order tickets: including printed tickets for your pickup table.
In-person payments: Tap to Pay at markets and pop-ups, on the same customer list.
Reviews: see what customers loved, and reply to them.
Other tools handle some of these things, but you'd have to tape several of them together to do them all. With Hotplate, it's one tool, so you can spend the holidays cooking instead of doing admin.
#5: Nobody answers when you need help
Sometimes you just need to talk to a real human to get your questions answered. But with a lot of platforms, all you get is an automatic reply, and an answer days later, long after your pickup is over.
How Hotplate keeps it from happening: Hotplate has a support team you can actually reach. Text or call us at 1-888-CHEF-HOT (1-888-243-3468), and you'll hear back from a real person on our team. We're our chefs' biggest fans, and we want your holidays to go smoothly too.
"I love Hotplate because I use all of the features, and if I don't know something, I text you guys. And that's so nice that I can just have this." — Steph, Barrel & Bee
And from a chef who texted our support team last season:
"I think we've gone through 3–4 different online sales platforms over the years and am very happy with what you provide, by far the most reliable and functional. Keep it up!"
Keep the horror out of your holidays
The holidays should be your best season, not your scariest. Set up your holiday drop on Hotplate and leave the nightmares behind.
New to Hotplate, or coming back after a break? Start with your Hotplate holiday checklist, or find more ideas in Holiday HQ.
