How to take restaurant orders on WhatsApp
Your customers already message you. The trouble is that a busy phone is a terrible order system. Here is how to keep the convenience and lose the chaos.
Why restaurants take orders on WhatsApp
Almost everyone has it, it needs no new app for the customer, and the conversation is familiar. For takeaway and collection especially, it is often faster than a phone call and cheaper than a delivery marketplace.
What goes wrong with orders in a personal phone
- Orders arrive while nobody is looking at the phone.
- Dishes and prices are typed from memory and get changed.
- The kitchen gets a screenshot, a shout or a scribble.
- There is no record of what was sold, so reports and stock miss it.
- The customer never knows whether the order was accepted.
Rules to decide before you start
- Hours. When do you accept orders? Include late hours that run past midnight.
- Minimum order. What is the smallest order worth packing?
- What kind of order. Collection, delivery, or both?
- Who accepts. A person should confirm each order against what the kitchen can really do right now.
- What the customer is told and when: accepted, rejected with a reason, ready.
Stay within the platform’s rules
WhatsApp’s business platform has its own policies. In general, you should message customers who have agreed to hear from you, use your own business number, and honor opt-outs. Rules and message types change, so read Meta’s current WhatsApp Business policies before you promote the number.
Get the order into the kitchen the same way every time
The goal is for a WhatsApp order to become a normal order: the same items, the same prices and tax, the same kitchen ticket, and a record in your reports. Anything else means retyping, and retyping is where mistakes happen.
How Fresh does it
With Fresh’s WhatsApp ordering, a customer messages your restaurant’s number and builds an order by tapping WhatsApp’s own lists and buttons. It waits on the POS until staff accept it, then becomes a real order with the same tax logic as the till. The customer is told when it is accepted, rejected or ready. Hours, minimum order and order type are settings.
Questions
Do customers need a special app?
No. They use WhatsApp, which they already have.
Can I message all my customers?
Only people who have agreed to hear from you, and never someone who has opted out. Read Meta’s current business messaging policies.