We do not support, nor encourage, an email, fax or desktop solution for taking orders, and there are many good reasons why we chose to provide an app instead. Shortly put, your online sales will be low if you take orders without the app we provide.

One way to increase your business is to provide existing customers a truly great service so that they will order again and again. The online ordering experience is part of that service. If you can accept and confirm orders within seconds plus giving an individual delivery / pickup time, your customers will be delighted.

In order to achieve an almost real-time reaction by the restaurant, we first need to assure your client that the restaurant is ready to take the order and to make some noise once a new order arrives. Traditionally, the telephone is assuring the client that the restaurant is ready to take the order. If you do not pick-up the phone in a timely manner people just call somewhere else, right? Simple.

Using a mobile app is ideal for this purpose of replicating what was appreciated by the clients on phone orders and add the benefits of online handling on top. You just need an affordable device for order-taking, one that is easy to set up and use, without too much hassle.

Minimal requests for an order-taking tablet/smartphone are:

• charging while on
• good wi-fi signal (if you want to connect through a wi-fi hotspot)
• loud speaker
• android v 4.1 or later (with Google Play supported)
• decent materials (meaning not to fall apart after 2 months of usage and get a broken charger socket, displaced screen, etc).

Our system checks every few minutes if it still has a connection with your phone / tablet. In case it is not possible to establish a connection, you can not receive orders so we show this message to your customer. We thought this would be a better solution than having customers place orders without being served.

Please check to see if you are logged in the order-taking app on your mobile device, and if you have an active data plan or wifi connection. Also make sure you don’t have any app blocker or battery-saving applications installed.

The issue is that when you open the Facebook mobile app, you will not be able to see the apps/buttons/tabs you have installed on your Facebook page. The reason is that Facebook mobile does not allow any third party apps to be shown on mobiles. This does not apply only to GloriaFood, but also to any other applications made for Facebook.

However, we provide a smart link for posting on Facebook. You may use this link over the “Shop Now” call to action on your Facebook page, or to create pinned posts about ordering. This smart link detects the device type and serves the menu in the appropriate format, including mobile.

You can find your smart link along with step by step visual instructions in your admin area, under Publishing → Facebook. You will unlock Facebook Sharing and Shop Now as soon as you publish the app on Facebook

The standard for printing receipts is to use thermal printers because they are robust, fast and requires no toner change. Also the paper costs for such printers is close to nothing. But thermal printers equipped with WiFi are pretty expensive these days and quite intricate to connect to the WiFi network.

With our order-taking app (for now only on Android version) it is possible to directly print from the order-taking device (smartphone / tablet) to a thermal printer connected via USB cable, Bluetooth or Ethernet. In case of an Ethernet printer this will work as long as both the order-taking device and the thermal printer are connected to the same network via a WiFi modem or a network cable that is wired to the printer.

This is working due to a native mobile sdk integration for Epson, Seiko and Star thermal printers. You just have to update to the latest version of our Android order-taking app and you'll see another tab called "Thermal printer" from where you can connect the app for direct auto-print to a thermal printer.

So far these are officially supported printers by the integrated SDKs. Let us know if you manage to make it work with other models too.

EPSON:

TM-T20, TM-T20II, TM-T20II-m, TM-T70, TM-T70II, TM-T81II, TM-T82, TM-T82II, TM-T83II, TM-T88V, TM-T90II, TM-P20, TM-P60, TM-P60II, TM-P80, TM-U220, TM-U330, TM-m10, TM-m30

SEIKO:

DPU-S245, DPU-S445, RP-D10, RP-E10, RP-E/11

STAR:

TSP100ECO, TSP100U, TSP100GT, TSP100LAN, TSP650, TSP650II, FVP10, TSP700II, TSP800II, TUP500, TUP900, SP700

IMPORTANT: Before you try this make sure the thermal printer is correctly set (no lid open errors, load paper ok, etc) and properly connected to the WiFi/LAN network, Bluetooth or USB cable by following manufacturer's user guide instructions otherwise the printer cannot be found during the auto-discovery search. Also for proper network/settings configuration some printer models requires a first time setup using a PC and and an installation CD coming inside the package. Make sure you’ve checked that before struggling with deeper router IP settings.

Direct (auto)-printing methods: other simple ways directly from the order-taking device

We provide you the ability to auto-forward order details via SMS to an SMS printer or just copy the order details into any other application you use (more details below).

There are three cases where your customer can receive an email. When you accept, reject or miss an order. Your customer can hit the reply button and the feedback will be sent directly to you. Although the email is sent from our email server, the replies are being sent from the customer to you.

We took several initiatives to use a high quality email server which ensures that the emails will not end up in your customer’s spam folder. This email server is legally registered to us so the email template must contain our imprint. We have kept the branding to a minimum though.

For example, your restaurant serves both Chinese and Indian dishes in the same menu. You have the same categories (e.g.: starters, desserts, salads etc), but you have to use them 2 times, once for Chinese dishes, once for Indian dishes.
Our suggestion is that you create and name your categories as: Indian starters, Chinese starters, Indian desserts, Chinese desserts and so on.

The idea of our product design is to make menus simpler as clients get confused by complicated menus and that’s never good for online sales.

If you have other logistical/marketing reasons for which you should have a clear separation of menus, then it is better to sign-up with two restaurant accounts and take orders on two different mobile devices (e.g. there are two different chicken-based meals cooked by two different chefs in two different locations and people should not be able to cross-order one item from the Chinese menu and one item from the Indian menu).

If your plan is to provide a one-click ordering cart with thousands of food items, then putting the free GloriaFood solution on steroids is not the right thing for your online sales. Please consider investing in a food portal with top choices, quick search, promo items, most popular, ratings, reviews and similar features.

The FoodBooking app (free service)

This “shared app” is based on a curated list of restaurants that use our system. Typically, we invite you to take advantage of the client mobile app once your restaurant meets the eligibility criteria. These are:

• Your restaurant is real and the name you have inserted is accurate.
• Your restaurant has a website on its own domain name (like www.your-restaurant-name.extension). Sub-domains (like restaurant-name.weebly.com) are not accepted.
• The order button (or at least a link pointing to online ordering) is present and visible without scroll on the main page of the website.
• You have your real restaurant menu inserted.
• You are using one account per restaurant location.
• You have pictures properly representing the cuisine and the menu items that you have inserted.
• The connectivity score of the Order Taking App is at least 0.9 (you can check the score in the Reports section of the Admin Panel, under Connectivity Health).

If you believe you are meeting the criteria, feel free to request activation from within the Admin Panel. To check out the app, please visit www.foodbooking.com.

The restaurant branded app (premium service)

This is your own, custom-built mobile app for Android and iOS. Your restaurant is the only one listed and the app is personalized to reflect your brand, from logo to slogan and background image.

You can purchase this from within your restaurant account.