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WooCommerce integration with PrinterCo for Order Management

Spice Nights is an Indian takeaway based in Horsham, West Sussex. They have a good local client base and were crowned the County Times Takeaway of the Year.

The Challenge

Spice Nights were selling online through services such as Just Eat & Hungry House. They wanted to gain control of their customer data and also avoid the commission they had to pay on every sale to these services. They found that a lot of their loyal customers were ordering through these services rather than calling up as they used to do in the past. This meant that they were paying a commission on every sale even though these were existing or repeat customers.

They wanted to build their own website but the sticking point was being able to process online orders quickly in busy periods. The order had to be printed out in the takeaway automatically where they could accept/reject the order, and specify whether they accepted the requested delivery/collection time or if they wanted to specify it themselves.

The Solution

We used an Android thermal receipt printer from PrinterCo which connected to the internet via WiFi or with a SIM card. This printer uses WiFi as standard, but if there was a connectivity issue, it uses the SIM card so that any WiFi issues would not affect the ability to receive, print and process orders. We also used an MTM SIM card that could hop between carriers in case the signal from one carrier was not strong enough or was experiencing issues.

As soon as an order was placed on the website, it printed out in the takeaway automatically and played a notification ringtone. Spice Nights then used the printer to accept/reject the order, and also to set the accepted delivery/collection time. We then sent this information to the customer immediately so that they knew their order was accepted and also when the accepted delivery/collection time was.

The website started taking orders on the first day and has been busy ever since and is working really well for Spice Nights and saving them money on the commission they would have had to paid otherwise.

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