Anybody Doing This: Text in Your Order

Interesting article.
 
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35079273/ns/local_news-los_angeles_ca/
 
Curious if anyone is accepting texts or call ahead orders from their trailer and how it is working out.
 
Not sure if I'd like it for a 1 or 2 person operation, especially during rush hour.

I'm setting up my website to where people can:

Pay for a catering session.  As well as

Place an online order, through a menu system, and pay with a credit card.

Order is then emailed to me, I'm notified on my Blackberry - and the laptop in my trailer automatically prints out the email via Outlook's settings.

Customer would then arrive to pick-up order at the time that they indicated all ready to go.

My customers are the downtown crowd, and they don't have a lot of time.  But this allows them to place an order for themselves and a handful of their colleagues and then pick them up without having to wait around for 6 burgers to cook.

I have a sandwich card with the phone # on it, also on the menus, when ever I give out a menu, I make sure to tell the customer that they can call in their order and have it ready for pick up. I get quite a few phone in's....I'm not a texter.

I offered website ordering for 2 years. I had to discontinue the service because of ISP's services were not reliable.

The problem is that emails are not in real time. Yes we do get many of our email quickly, but many come in too late. Some ISP's, Corporate, State & Federal servers send out emails in batches. The problem is you may not get the order until after the customer has arrived to pick it up. So who gets the blame, WE DO. And the customer talks " BAD PR".

I used 3 different ISP's to try get around this. Although some we better, it is not 100%. One ISP told me the only way to get 100% was to set up my own server. Not a big deal these days, any computer can serve as a server. The other half of the problem rests with the senders company/ISP. Do they delay sending emails to review outgoing emails? do they batch send?

I elected not to do the texting order, because the whole purpose of this was to speed the amount of orders in an hour. If I have to pick up a phone to receive a text and write it down, I might as well take an order. Most my phone orders are 15-20 seconds or less....I've got them trained. Time is Money. My customers know if they have a question, they better call before 11:00 because they will NOT get an answer to a question during the lunch rush. I flat out tell them so. Who remembers the episodes on Seinfeld of the Soup Nazi "NO SOUP FOR YOU!"......that's me and John Bulushi and the"Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger, Pepsi, Pepsi..." we have so much fun with this one. ooops started getting off topic...sorry

Would I do it again, YES.  I am opening another place in Little Rock and I will get some Pros brought in to do it and disclaimers stating "it ain't my fault".

K.I.S.S.  Keep it Stupid Simple

Also. Spread the word that they can call in their order anytime. Most of my phone in lunch orders come in between 9-11. "Train 'em"

Sorry old school. Old Man.
Don't what a phone to take pic's, text, twitter, vibrate  Oh My, Just want it to work when I need it.

Been doing it for years in this part of the world.  We also have speed dial numbers for most all chain resto's, McD's for delivery, just call a 4 digit number anywhere in the Country, and your order gets sent to the branch nearest your delivery address.   Then there's the foodbyphone services - http://www.foodbyphone.com , these are very good when you don't feel like going out, you can order from any resto in one order, they collect the orders and delivery to you.  Very quick, efficient and great when everybody wants something different.  They take a percentage, but it pays if you have the right menu for this type crowd.