The holidays are fast approaching, and with it, the chance to reap extra profits by offering customers catered holiday meals—either to their home or business—using your NetWaiter online ordering system.

For businesses, of course, you can offer full catering services for a holiday employee meal at the office.  A discount on desserts might be a great incentive for larger orders and can be used to motivate them to order well in advance, giving your kitchen more time to prepare those large orders.

For individuals, you can focus on complete meals, or perhaps a special menu item that is popular with customers around the holidays.  In California, and many other areas of the country with large Latino populations, Christmas tamales are a favorite.  Perhaps you have special mashed potatoes that are a holiday favorite, or an unmatchable recipe for garlic cheese bread.  Make sure your customers know they can order these items online in advance.  Consider offering larger portions of your celebrated dish – it could make a great potluck item that everyone at the party will ask about.

HOLIDAY HOURS REMINDER:  Please make sure your Holiday Hours are set in your NetWaiter Management Console.  You can pre-configure your special Holiday Hours for Thanksgiving, including the days before/after Thanksgiving.  To set your Holiday Hours within your Management Console, click ‘Location Information’ and then ‘Holiday Hours’.  If you have any questions or needed assistance, contact NetWaiter and a Success Specialist will be happy to assist you.

Delivery Areas

Coming soon, your restaurant will have the ability to customize more specific delivery zones.

Within the NetWaiter Management Console, restaurants will be able to 'draw' and configure custom delivery areas on a map.  Each delivery zone can be configured with a simple click-and-drag function to encompass the exact area in which delivery is available.  As allowed now, restaurants can configure more than one delivery zone, each with its own associated settings, such as a delivery fee and an estimated delivery time.  The new delivery area configurations provide restaurants in densely populated locations the ability to configure their zones more precisely.

The current delivery zone options, based on a radius, will remain available to restaurants offering delivery based strictly on distance.  

Holiday Hours

You can now configure your holiday hours for the entire year.

Just in time for Easter - a new feature is now available in the Location Information section of the NetWaiter Management Console that allows restaurateurs to customize hours for annual holidays.  The Holiday Hours feature allows restaurants to indicate special holiday hours or if they are closed for a particular holiday.  It also allows for the creation of custom holidays throughout the year that a typical calendar might not recognize.

This new feature alleviates the need for restaurants to re-adjust their normal open/close hours each holiday.  If the Holiday Hours are configured, it will automatically account for them.  It’s an ideal tool to accommodate Thanksgiving or Easter, both of which have different dates each year.  Do you close early on New Year’s Eve?  No problem, you can configure that as well.