Scheduled Orders for Caterers: Taking a Saturday Order on Tuesday

Scheduled food orders let a customer place an order today for a date and time later in the week, pay for it now, and have it land in your kitchen's queue on the right day. For a caterer that is the entire business. Almost nothing you cook is wanted in the next forty minutes; almost everything is wanted on a specific Saturday at 1 pm, for 40 people, at an address you have not seen yet.

This post walks through how a caterer takes a Saturday order on Tuesday with scheduled orders on Tezzu: how the customer picks the date and slot, how the money is collected, where the order sits until the day, and how you plan the week from a dated list instead of from a notebook and six WhatsApp threads.

Why catering does not fit the "deliver in 40 minutes" flow

Most online ordering is built around a customer who is hungry now. The menu is live, the kitchen cooks on receipt, and a rider leaves within half an hour. A caterer's order is the opposite shape: large, dated, often negotiated, and paid before anyone chops an onion.

Without a scheduling feature you handle this in chat. The customer messages on Tuesday, you reply with a per-head price, they confirm on Wednesday, you ask for an advance on Thursday, and on Saturday morning you scroll back through the thread to find the headcount. One wrong scroll and 40 boxes become 30. The same failure mode is described in catering orders on WhatsApp; this post is about the fix.

A scheduled order fixes it by making the date, the slot, the headcount, the address and the payment part of the order itself, captured once, at the moment the customer commits.

What a Saturday order has to capture on Tuesday

Before touching any software, list what you need to know to cook and deliver a catering order without a follow-up call. For most caterers it is six things.

• Delivery date and a time window: Saturday, 12:30 to 1:00 pm.
• Headcount, or the number of boxes, trays or plates.
• The package: which menu, veg or non-veg, any build-your-own choices.
• Delivery address, with a landmark and a contact number at the venue.
• Payment status: how much is paid, how much is due on the day.
• Notes: "no onion in the dal", "gate 2, ask for security".

A good scheduled order collects all six at checkout. If your current process collects three and chases the rest in chat, every order costs you two more conversations than it should.

Step by step: the customer books Saturday on Tuesday

Here is the flow as the customer sees it when your catering menu runs on WhatsApp ordering with scheduling turned on.

1. On Tuesday evening the customer messages your WhatsApp number or opens your store page. The bot shows your catering categories: office lunch boxes, party trays, pooja thalis.
2. They pick "Office lunch box, veg" at ₹180 per head and set the quantity to 40. If the package is a build-your-own bundle, they choose two sabzis, one dal and rice or roti from the options you listed.
3. At checkout they choose delivery, enter the office address, and the bot quotes the delivery charge for that zone.
4. They pick a date and a slot from the ones you offer: Saturday, 12:30 to 1:00 pm.
5. They pay by UPI or card, or select cash on delivery if you allow it for that order size.
6. The confirmation arrives on WhatsApp with every detail: 40 veg lunch boxes, Saturday 12:30, the address, the amount paid.

Nothing in that flow needed you. The order is in your dashboard with a Saturday date on it before you have finished Tuesday's dinner service. The wider mechanics of slots, cut-offs and capacity are covered in scheduled delivery and pre-orders.

Pricing and payment for advance orders

Catering is priced per head or per tray, and the customer should see the arithmetic before they confirm. Here is a worked example for a 40-person office lunch.

The ₹10 is the same whether the order is ₹800 or ₹8,250; there is no commission on top. If you want a floor on order size, build it into the package itself: a lunch box package with "minimum 20" in its name and description keeps the ₹180 price from being used for three boxes.

Full payment, cash on the day, or an advance

Tezzu charges the order at checkout: the customer pays the whole amount online, or you allow cash on delivery and collect on Saturday. Prepaid is the safer default for a dated order. A cancelled 40-box lunch at 11 am on Saturday is a loss you cannot resell.

Some customers will ask for an advance instead of full payment. One simple way to handle it with the two options above is to list a fixed "Booking advance" item on the catering menu at, say, ₹2,000, take that online, and note the balance as payable on delivery. The arithmetic of advances, and how to word the policy, is in how to collect advance payment for food orders.

What this looks like on Tezzu

Scheduling is set up once in the dashboard. You decide which dates and time slots customers can pick, so a caterer who needs two days' notice simply does not offer tomorrow. The catering menu is built like any other Tezzu menu: categories for lunch boxes, trays and thalis, variants for veg and non-veg, add-ons for sweets and raita, and bundles for fixed packages. A build-your-own bundle lets the customer assemble a thali from your list at a fixed per-head price, which removes the "can I swap the paneer for a dal" messages.

When the order comes in, it appears in the live dashboard and on the staff app with its delivery date and slot, alongside the quantity, address, payment status and notes. Orders due today and orders due Saturday sit in the same list, each carrying its own date, so the person planning the week can see Saturday's load on Tuesday. The staff app rings for the new order as it would for any other, and a KOT can be printed on the day you cook, with the quantity and every bundle choice on it.

Payment runs through Razorpay for UPI and cards, or cash on delivery where you allow it, and you can issue a GST bill for the office that ordered. The customer gets WhatsApp updates as you move the order through preparing, out for delivery and delivered, and a rating request once it arrives. Everything about the order, including the date the customer chose and the notes they typed, is on one screen. The full list of what the dashboard does is on the features page.

Planning the week from a dated list

Once orders arrive with dates, the week plans itself. On Wednesday morning, open the orders list, look at Friday and Saturday, and total the headcount. That number drives the shopping list, the number of boxes to order from the packaging supplier, and whether you need a second rider for the lunch slot.

Two habits make this work. First, mark orders as preparing on the morning you start cooking, so the customer gets a WhatsApp update and knows you have not forgotten. Second, move the order to out for delivery when the van leaves, which gives the office receptionist a heads-up before the boxes arrive at the gate.

For pickup orders, the same idea applies to a collection time: the customer books a slot to collect trays from your kitchen, and the order shows that time. Setting those collection points up is covered in self-pickup points in Tezzu.

Wedding and festival weeks are where dated orders earn their keep, because the orders are bigger and further apart. Wedding season catering orders on WhatsApp covers the extra steps for those weeks.

Frequently asked questions

Can customers schedule a food order for a later date on WhatsApp?

Yes, when the ordering system supports it. On Tezzu the customer picks a date and a time slot at checkout from the ones you offer, pays by UPI, card or cash on delivery, and gets a WhatsApp confirmation with the date on it. The order appears in your dashboard with that date, so a Saturday order placed on Tuesday waits in the list until you cook it.

How far in advance can a catering order be placed?

That is your call. You decide which dates and slots are open, so a caterer who needs 48 hours' notice offers slots from the day after tomorrow onward, and one who can handle next-day orders opens tomorrow as well. Keep the open window honest; the point of scheduling is that every order in the list is one you can deliver.

How do I take an advance payment for a scheduled catering order?

Tezzu collects the full amount online at checkout or marks the order as cash on delivery. If you want a part-payment, list a fixed booking advance as a menu item, take that online, and note the balance as due on delivery. Full prepayment is simpler and safer for dated orders, because a cancelled 40-box lunch cannot be resold.

Does a scheduled order go to the kitchen immediately?

It goes to the dashboard and staff app immediately, with its delivery date and slot, so you know it exists. Cooking is up to you. Most caterers will print the KOT on the morning of the delivery date and move the order to preparing then, which also sends the customer a WhatsApp update that the order is under way.