Busy-time messaging and large orders on your ordering website
If you use Capacity Management, your ordering website only offers time slots your kitchen can actually serve. When slots are removed because you're busy, customers could previously see a shorter list of times with no explanation. The website now tells them why.
What customers see
When a customer picks Schedule for a collection or delivery order, one of two messages can appear above the time picker:
- "We're busier than usual — earliest available time is 19:45" — orders already in your kitchen have filled the earlier slots, so the first free slot is later than normal. The time shown is the earliest slot still available.
- "Large order — this will take approximately 75 minutes" — the customer's own order is too big to fit in a single time slot. The website works out how many slots the order needs and only offers times where the kitchen can finish it. The minutes shown reflect how long the order takes to prepare, based on your slot settings.
If neither situation applies, no message is shown and the customer sees the normal list of times.
Note: The messages appear automatically — there is nothing to switch on for the website itself. They are driven entirely by your Capacity Management settings.
"Earliest available" instead of ASAP
Stores that use Capacity Management no longer show an ASAP button. Because every order has to fit the available slots, offering "ASAP" could promise a time the kitchen can't actually meet. Instead, the website opens straight to the time picker with the first free slot already selected, labelled "Earliest available — 6:18 PM".
- For a small order at a quiet time, this is effectively ASAP — the customer can start their order right away without choosing a time.
- For a large order or a busy period, the earliest slot is later, and the "busier than usual" or "large order" message above explains why.
Customers can still pick a later date or time from the picker if they'd prefer.
Note: Stores that do not use Capacity Management are unchanged — they still show the usual ASAP / Schedule choice.
What controls this
The messages come from your store's Capacity Management settings in the back office:
- Capacity Management must be enabled for the store.
- Slots can be limited by orders per slot (how many orders you can start in each slot) or products per slot (how many items — for example pizzas — your kitchen can produce per slot).
- With a products-per-slot limit, you can choose which products count towards the cap, so only the items that go through your bottleneck (such as a pizza conveyor) are counted.
The "busier than usual" message can appear with either limit type. The "large order" message only appears when you limit by products per slot, because that's how the website knows a single order is bigger than one slot.
Common questions
Can I change the wording? No — the wording is standard and kept consistent across your website, app, and POS.
A customer says they can't find any times at all. If every remaining slot for the day is full, the website tells the customer the store isn't taking orders at that time. Check your Capacity Management limits — if they're set too low, you may be turning away orders you could serve.
What happened to the ASAP option? On stores that use Capacity Management, ASAP is replaced by "Earliest available — [time]" — the first free slot, already selected. This keeps the quoted time honest, because every order has to fit the available slots. Stores without Capacity Management still show ASAP as normal.