Greek food delivery and catering, Calderdale
Mr Moussaka.
A family food business, moved off a general online shop and onto an ordering system built around its every-other-Friday delivery.
“The system With Gumption built is 100 times better than what we had with WooCommerce. I now have a system that sorts out the pick list, orders the delivery route, emails out cooking instructions and allergens, and reminds people to leave a review at the end of the week. Now all I need to do is make wonderful Moussaka for all of my lovely customers.”
- 3,600+past orders read, to learn how the business really runs
- 108products from the old shop to sort out and bring across
- 1 in 3old orders paid by PayPal, so it went in from day one
Taken from the old shop's own export, so these describe the business before we moved it.
The short version.
Tony, aka Mr Moussaka, cooks Greek food and delivers it chilled, ready to reheat, every other Friday around Calderdale, Kirklees and parts of Bradford.
We replaced the old WooCommerce shop with an ordering system built for exactly that. People are now spending more and preordering up to a month in advance.
The problem.
Mr Moussaka started in 2020, on a WooCommerce shop. It did the job for years, and plenty of businesses run happily on one.
But this isn't a shop with stock on the shelves. It's a kitchen that cooks to order for one delivery, every other Friday, with orders closing at 11am on the Wednesday before. It also has specials that change every couple of months, supper clubs on their own dates, gift vouchers, and customers who want to change their order after they've paid.
So the running of the business kept drifting away from what the shop was built to do.
How we went about it.
We started with the old shop's full export, because it's better to measure a business than to guess at it. It held every order, product, gift card and coupon, and it changed the plan. A third of orders had been paid by PayPal, so that went in at the start, when it could easily have been left for later.
We wrote the import so it could be run again and again, with a report each time, so customers, voucher codes and order history could be checked properly before anyone relied on them. The kitchen printer was moved in a way that meant its old setting could simply be put back if anything went wrong.
What we built.
All of it is live, and all of it was built around how this kitchen works. Orders happen at order.mrmoussaka.co.uk, and the main website's job is to be found and send people there.
Order by date.
Customers pick a delivery date, and it closes itself at 11am on the Wednesday before. Once a date is full, it leaves the shop.
A dips board with its own maths.
Tap the dips you fancy, pitta included. The more you pick, the more you save, worked out as you choose.
A pick list for every date.
Each delivery date has its own pick list and packing slips, counting exactly what to cook. Dip boards and bundles are broken down into their parts, so nothing gets missed.
Tickets that print themselves.
Orders print on the kitchen's receipt printer, grouped by section, so the kitchen isn't reading anything off a screen with floury hands.
The delivery route, in order.
The delivery run page has a route planner built in, and every driver has their own link, the same each week, with their run on it.
Cooking guides and allergens by email.
The delivered email carries a cooking guide for exactly what that order brought, with each dish's current allergens. A printed version folds up to go in with the food.
A nudge for a review.
At the end of the week, customers get a reminder to leave a review. It used to be a job somebody had to remember.
Changing a paid order.
Staff can change an order after it's paid and choose how to settle up: on the house, with a payment link, or by email once it's ready.
Accounts, vouchers and newsletters.
Guest checkout still works, and an account collects points and credit. Gift vouchers can be spent over several orders, referring a friend earns a fiver each way, and newsletters go out from the same system.
Supper clubs and specials.
A specials board that changes, plus supper clubs and one-off menus on their own dates, all run from the same admin screens.
A catering builder.
Tell it how many you're feeding, and it proposes a menu and a rough price in minutes, ready to turn into an enquiry.
A new website and new photos.
The old WordPress site became a fast, hand-built one, with pages for the places Mr Moussaka caters. We shot new food photography for it too.
What changed.
Tony's words at the top of this page say most of it. It's working for him, too: people are spending more, and they're preordering up to a month in advance.
The awkward parts now have a proper home. The menu, the dates, the pick list, the drivers and the changes to paid orders all run from one system, and nobody has to bend a general shop into doing them. The orders, the customers and the vouchers came too.
The new website is a separate job, aimed mostly at catering searches, and it only went up in October. We'll report on that once there's a fair stretch to compare.
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