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How to sell a Christmas or weekend takeaway special

Updated

Ho ho ho! 🎄 It's still a while until Christmas, but that doesn't mean you can't start selling Christmas takeaway boxes already. It's possible to add your Christmas takeaway specials already and keep offering your normal every-week takeaway up until then. You can use the same steps to offer a weekend-special.

Want to offer your takeaway special at different pickup and delivery times than your normal takeaway? Or do you want to accept more orders for your special? Both are possible!

📌 First time? Have you never used the takeaway module before and need to start from scratch? No problem! We guide you through the setup here.

Add your Christmas or weekend takeaway special

  • In Formitable, go to Products > Takeaway.

  • Click on Add product, add a catching photo, title, description, and the price of your special. Save.

  • Open the Takeaway settings by clicking the gear icon ⚙️.

  • You can leave your 'Accept orders in advance' the way you have it right now. We will make an exception for Christmas products.

  • Click on Product availability and Add.

  • Select your takeaway product special and set the date for example to 25th and 26th of December. Or whichever day or days you want to offer it.

  • Click on Save.

Your guests can now place their normal takeaway orders, and additionally, place their orders for the Christmas or weekend special.

📌 Different delivery and pickup times or unlimited number of orders

For your special takeaway product, the normal delivery and pickup times will be used as determined for the specific days of the week. The 'Maximum orders per 15 minutes' limit will also be applied. It's possible though to overrule these for your special.

  • Want to offer your special at specific delivery or pickup times? Enable 'Custom order hours' and fill in the custom times.

  • Want to allow for more orders? You can ignore your normal order limit by enabling the option 'Ignore max. orders per timeslot'

What if I do or don't want to offer my normal takeaway during the Christmas period?

💡 Set 'Accept orders in advance' to 6 days. This way your guests can book a week in advance and you keep maximum control over de delivery and pickup times. Takeaway orders are mostly placed short term. In practice, we see hardly any takeaway orders ever being placed more than a week in advance. The only exception to this are special holidays. e.g. Christmas. You can add these specials with the 'Product Availability'.

📌 Add only your specials to the 'Product Availability.' This way they can be ordered further in advance than the aforementioned 6 days. Be aware that any product added at 'Product availability' will only be available on the chosen days. Not before and not after. Do not add your regular products at Product availability, only your specials.

  • Do you want to use different pickup/delivery times on Christmas? Structurally change the pickup/delivery times for the days of the week when you are open around Christmas. This will be applied for all takeaway products.

  • Do you not want to offer specific normal takeaway products on Christmas? Set the 'Daily Product Limit' for the specific product on the specific days to 0.

  • Do you not want to offer any of your normal takeaway products on Christmas? Disable pickup and delivery for the days of the week that you do not want to offer them. Your special with the product availability settings will overrule the closed days.

The checkout page takes the custom order times for your specials into account. If guests have a special in their shopping basket that can only be ordered up until 16.00 instead of 17.00, then all products in the basket can only be ordered until 16.00.

After the Christmas days, you can change the pickup and delivery times back to the original normal times.

Promote your takeaway special

Each takeaway product has a unique ID which you can use to promote it directly on all your marketing channels. Guests will be guided directly to the specific product in your Formitable takeaway shop.

Promote takeaway special in email campaigns

In Formitable, go to Campaigns and create a new campaign. Select the Takeaway block and select the takeaway product you want to promote in your mail.

Add takeaway special to the Formitable Promotional pop-up

In Formitable, go to Settings > Widgets. In the Promotional pop-up section, select 'Promote a specific takeaway product' as button. Select the specific takeaway product underneath.

In Formitable, go to Products > Takeaways and select the product you want to promote. Click on the share URL button at the top and copy the link. Use this link in your social media posts.

Create an interactive button on your website

Use the HTML anchor #ft-openTakeaway-[PRODUCT_ID] as link in the button on your website. The product ID can be found by clicking on the share button, as described in the section above. (Use a direct link in social media posts).

The product ID is the 8 digit code at the end of the link.

In the example above you would use #ft-openTakeaway-9892674d in the button.

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