How is Order ETA Calculated on FanFood?

We’ve all been there: impatiently checking our phone every 3 seconds after placing a food order, just in case we missed the text alert saying “Your food is ready!”

The experience is even trickier at a live event venue. Given the constant shift in traffic at concession stands and food courts, it can be difficult for guests to get a sense of when their food will be ready. Even for food stand operators, the order fulfillment time varies considerably throughout the event. There could be peak hours when the food stands are crushed by the amount of orders, and slow periods when there are barely any visitors. 

Inaccurate signals of wait time and fulfillment time can lead to several problems for both operators and guests:

1. Guests will have unrealistic expectations about when their food is ready, and will likely feel frustrated if the wait time is longer than they anticipated.
2. When concession stands are already at capacity with existing orders, any new incoming orders will only add on to the chaos for the fulfillment team, and frustration for the waiting guests.
3. In the case of delivery orders (to seat, table, suite or car), estimating a wait time is even more complex since runners will have to navigate through various sections of the venue, resulting in different speed of delivery.

Is there a better way to communicate an accurate order ETA to the customers, so they can have reasonable expectations when placing orders? FanFood now has the capability of automatically calculating a very close order ETA on the platform, and here’s how it works:

Step 1: Tell us the baseline of your operations

Since every venue operates differently, our system needs some initial input to establish a baseline for ETA projections.

When you initially configure your venue and store settings on FanFood (a step that our Customer Success team can do for you), you have the option to enter your current fulfillment time so that our system can calculate the ETA based on this input. There are just two numbers we’d need from you:

1. Average time it takes to prep a single order in a low-traffic period
2. Average time it takes to deliver an order after it has been prepped (if you choose to over on-premise delivery)

And then you’re all set! Our system will handle the rest.

Step 2: Set a limit order quantity if you want to cap order volume at a certain number

This is an optional step, but if you know that the most number of orders you can fulfill within 15 minutes is say 50, you have the option to input that number into the FanFood system and when you reach 50 new orders in 15 minutes, the system will automatically pause incoming orders for you.

This way your team doesn’t have to stress over the ever increasing order count, and can focus on fulfilling the existing orders in progress.

Here’s how FanFood works its magic.

After you put in your average fulfillment time during the initial configuration process, the system will take that as the default wait time and reflect that for each store for the customers.

After someone places an order, the system will automatically factor in the estimated prep time for that order, and reflect that new ETA estimate at the store level. 

The same order ETA is reflected within the Manager Portal as well. When your staff looks at the order queue, the due time for each order is automatically updated given how many orders are in the queue, and what the ETA communicated to the customer is.

For delivery orders, the system will automatically reflect the estimated delivery due time in the Runner App as well. 

One article is barely enough to cover all that FanFood is capable of. If you’re interested to see a full demo, fill out the form below to get in touch!