Order ahead means a customer places, and usually pays for, an order before arriving and then collects it from your counter at a chosen time, instead of waiting in a queue or having it delivered. It is also called self-pickup, takeaway pre-order or click-and-collect. The customer picks a collection slot and you prepare so the order is ready when they walk in.
Why it matters
There is no rider to pay, no delivery charge to put off the customer, no commission, and the kitchen gets lead time instead of a crowd at the counter. It suits cafes near offices, bakeries, sweet shops at festival time, and restaurants in dense markets where parking is hard and customers would rather grab and go. What it needs is a clear "ready at" time you can keep and a pickup point the customer can find. Adding takeaway pre-orders to your restaurant covers the setup and the pitfalls.
Example
A sweet shop's counter queue at Diwali runs 40 minutes. With order ahead it takes 150 prepaid orders a day, each collected in a 15-minute slot from a separate counter, at an average of ₹900 a box. Compared with delivering those boxes, it saves ₹40 to ₹70 per order in rider cost and the customer pays nothing extra. On a normal weekday, a cafe that takes 30 pickup orders at ₹250 adds ₹7,500 of takeaway revenue a day without a single rider trip, and the orders are already paid when the customer arrives. Self-pickup for sweet shops works through the festival version.
On Tezzu you set up self-pickup points with a collection time, and the customer chooses pickup instead of delivery while ordering on WhatsApp or the store page.