Your venue’s operating hours will determine when mobile food & beverage ordering is available at your venue. But while your venue may be open all day, for example your operating hours have been configured from 10 am to 8 pm, your kitchen may only start to take orders for hot food from 12 pm to 3 pm.
Creating stock periods in Venue Manager is a great way to set separate blocks of availability that you can apply to your food & beverage checkout and control when certain sections of your menu are available.
If we continue using the example above, with ROLLER you're able to create a stock period for hot food with the hours set from 12 pm to 3 pm. This stock period can then be assigned to all sections of your online menu that have hot food, which is only available to order during this time.
This guide walks through how to set operating hours and create stock periods for mobile food & beverage ordering in Venue Manager.
How it works
- Set your venue's operating hours so your checkout will only be available to guests when your venue is open.
- Next, create your stock periods and choose the days and times your checkout (or sections of your menu) are available. Keep reading to learn how.
- Finally, link your stock periods to your menu sections so availability is controlled automatically.
- Continue building your checkout. To learn more, read the guide Create your food and beverage checkout for mobile food & beverage ordering.
Set your operating hours
First, you’ll need to define the hours of availability for mobile food & beverage ordering at your venue. To do this, you configure your venue’s operating hours.
Guests will only be able to access mobile food & beverage ordering during your operating hours, otherwise the checkouts will be unavailable.
By default, all menu items in your food & beverage checkouts will be available to guests based on your operating hours. But, if there are sections of your menu that are only available at specific times of the day, you can override your operating hours with stock periods, keep reading for more information.
Create a stock period
To create a stock period, follow the steps below.
- From Venue Manager, go to Products > Stock > Stock periods.
- Select Create period.
- Add a title for the stock period (eg Hot food).
- The description will be auto filled by the hours you set. You can change this description if you like.
- Add the hours of availability for each day of the week (eg 12 pm to 3 pm).
- Select the
icon if the stock products are not available on any day of the week.
- Save the stock period.
Manage stock periods
You have the ability to edit and delete stock periods at any time. Follow the steps below.
- Edit: Select the stock period card to edit its name, description or the hours of availability in the right-side panel, then select Save.
- Delete: You can only remove stock periods that haven't been linked to any menu sections. Select the stock period card, then select the options menu (3 dots) in the right-side panel next to its name. Select Delete stock period.
Assign stock periods to menu sections in your food & beverage checkout
Once you’ve set your operating hours and created stock periods as part of preparing for mobile food & beverage ordering, you can start to create and build your checkout.
As part of this process, you’ll create menu sections that guests will use to navigate through your menu. For example, your menu could have four sections: Hot food, Snacks, Cold drinks and Hot drinks. Each of these sections have different availability, which you’ve captured in your stock periods. Now, all you have to do is assign these stock periods to the corresponding menu sections and continue building your checkout.
To learn how to link your stock periods with your menu sections, read the guide Create your food and beverage checkout for mobile food & beverage ordering.