How to Take your Restaurant Online with Wix

Wix Restaurants was initially introduced in 2016 to help customers in the food and beverage industry easily build a website, and it has expanded significantly since then. The app allows restaurants and other food/drink businesses to design menus, take orders (free of commission) and let customers book tables, all in one place.

When in-person dining was halted by the pandemic, many restaurant operators had to re-evaluate their online customer interface. To bolster its offering, Wix introduced a point-of-sale (POS) system and acquired a digital ordering business.

Increased demand for takeaway

There are numerous things for restaurant owners to think through before offering an online ordering option:

• Does it work for my type of restaurant?

• Do I have the capacity?

• What are the tools I can use to start offering online ordering right now?

• How can I promote my business to get online orders?

Many new restaurants are adding online ordering, and not only those with classic "delivery" fare, but also breweries, gastropubs and chefs/gourmet eateries.

How to set up online ordering

A prerequisite to establishing online ordering is to have a menu on your website. If you don't have one, first of all you need to install the Wix Restaurant Menu App: Go to the Editor and click to “Add Apps”. Once you have the menu in place and you’ve added all your options to it, you can then add the Wix Restaurant Orders application to your site. You can tweak the design (fonts, colours and layout) and turn on the Online Ordering feature when you're happy with its look and feel.

You will be moved to the Dashboard to set up online ordering: Activate online order acceptance, enable pick-up service, feature delivery areas, customise the hours of delivery and minimum order amount, delivery time and of course, payment methods. Hit "Save" and "Publish" so that your online orders can start coming in!

Ordering advanced features

Menu modifications

There may be times when the dishes that you want to present to customers might be different from the usual dishes you serve. Instead of changing your menu, you can add a temporary one, with only the dishes that suit your current services. This will hide the regular menu from sight until you are ready to get back to it again.

Delivery hours and zones

To establish the pick-up and delivery services, you need to make sure that your physical address specified in the website settings (under “General Info”) is correct. This is where your customers will collect their orders and from where you set your delivery radius.

You can also adjust the opening hours according to the changing circumstances of your business, with maximum flexibility. For example, you could set different delivery hours and different minimum order amounts for different areas or different week days.

Phone orders

This is a cool feature for those customers who prefer placing orders over the phone (or have network issues). Once you have an online ordering feature installed, phone ordering is available for you as well. You can enable this option from the main navigation panel of Wix Restaurants.

Future orders

When you enable online ordering, your customers can place orders within working hours. The future orders feature allows them to place orders for future dates. And that means you can increase your orders and help balance workload. Not to mention, start a new day full of confirmed pre-orders :)

Online payments

To allow contactless service, you can disable the cash option and accept only virtual payments. You can even set it up so that customers can leave a tip for the delivery person online.

Managing orders: Wix Owner

Stay on top of what's going on in your restaurant, even when you’re not there: The Wix Owner app allows you to manage all aspects of your business on-the-go.

The app allows you to:

• manage orders from a mobile device

• receive instant notifications

• manage dish availability

• connect to customers.

Since restaurants were forced to enhance their digital presence due to the global situation beginning in 2020, Wix Restaurants has become one of the most convenient management tools for the restaurant industry. It's clear that a strong online presence is a necessity for a restaurant's survival, and Wix’s full-service solution is the way to go.