Question 1

Card payments aren't going through / checkout won't open

Accepted Answer

Online payments run on your own Stripe account, so the account has to be connected and the keys saved before checkout works. Create (or sign in to) your Stripe account and finish their identity/bank verification. In Stripe → Developers → API keys, copy the secret key. Send it to your PlateLogic contact to save as STRIPE_SECRET_KEY — never paste keys into email threads you don't control. Ask them to add the webhook endpoint /api/public/webhooks/stripe and save the signing secret. Test with a real card for a small amount, then refund it from the console.

Question 2

Apple Pay / Google Pay don't appear

Accepted Answer

Both appear automatically in Stripe Checkout once the wallets are enabled on your Stripe account: Stripe → Settings → Payment methods. Apple Pay also requires your domain to be verified in Stripe.

Question 3

I want to take cash or card at the counter instead

Accepted Answer

Turn on in-person payment in Manage → Business. You can accept both: customers pick at checkout, and in-person orders show as unpaid in the console until you mark them.

Question 4

A refund won't process

Accepted Answer

Orders can only be auto-refunded before the kitchen starts preparing them. After that, the refund becomes store credit for the customer instead — that's deliberate, so you're not out of pocket on food already cooked. Card refunds also require the Stripe secret key to still be valid; if you rotated it in Stripe, the new key must be saved on the deployment.

Question 5

Delivery isn't set up — how do I get the keys?

Accepted Answer

You create your own DoorDash Developer account and enter three values yourself. They're stored encrypted and nobody has to email them around. Sign up at the DoorDash Developer portal and create a Drive credential. Copy the Developer ID, Key ID and Signing Secret. In PlateLogic go to Manage → Delivery and paste all three, with environment set to Sandbox. Place a test delivery order and dispatch it from the console to confirm a quote comes back. Once DoorDash approves your account, switch the environment to Production.

Question 6

Customers can't choose delivery at checkout

Accepted Answer

Three things gate the delivery option: your plan must include delivery, Accepts delivery must be on in Manage → Business, and the order has to meet the delivery minimum. Check Manage → Business → order types and enable delivery. Check the delivery fee and minimum on the location — a very high minimum silently hides the option on small carts. If delivery is missing entirely from the settings, your plan is on Base; ask your PlateLogic contact to move you to Pro.

Question 7

Dispatch fails or no quote comes back

Accepted Answer

Most failures are credential or address problems. Re-enter the DoorDash credentials — a trailing space in the signing secret is the most common cause. Confirm you're in the right environment: sandbox keys fail in production and vice versa. Check the pickup address and map pin on the location: an address DoorDash can't resolve returns no quote. Verify the customer's delivery address is inside DoorDash's coverage for your area.

Question 8

Delivery status doesn't update by itself

Accepted Answer

Automatic updates require the DoorDash status webhook to be pointed at your site. Without it everything still works — staff just press Refresh on the order. Ask your PlateLogic contact to set DOORDASH_WEBHOOK_TOKEN and register the callback URL with DoorDash.

Question 9

I edited the menu but the website still shows the old one

Accepted Answer

Menus publish immediately and embeds refresh automatically. A stale menu is almost always a browser cache or an unsaved item. Confirm the item shows as saved and Available in Manage → Menu. Hard-refresh the page (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + R). If you have multiple locations, check you edited the right location's menu. For marketplace menus, re-run the sync from Manage → Platforms.

Question 10

How do I add 'no lettuce' or 'add bacon +$1'?

Accepted Answer

Those are option groups on the item. Manage → Menu → open the item → Option groups. Add a group (e.g. 'Add-ons'), choose whether it's required and how many options a guest may pick. Add options inside it and give paid ones a price. Removals like 'no lettuce' get a price of 0.

Question 11

The map pin is in the wrong place

Accepted Answer

Geocoding from a street address is approximate. You can set the exact point yourself. Manage → Locations → open the location → Set pin. Drag the pin, or paste a Google Maps link/coordinates and let it parse them. Check the accuracy indicator and the resolved address text before saving.

Question 12

I can't add a second location

Accepted Answer

Multiple locations are a Pro feature. Once enabled, each location has its own menu and settings, and bulk settings updates can be rolled back from Manage → Locations if a change goes wrong.

Question 13

How do I add a staff member?

Accepted Answer

Staff can work orders; only the owner can edit the menu, delivery settings and business profile. Have the staff member sign up at /auth with their own email. In Manage → Staff, invite or add them and pick the Staff role. They sign in at /staff-login and land on /console.

Question 14

The tablet isn't alerting us to new orders

Accepted Answer

Alerts need the console open and notification permission granted on that device. Open /console on the tablet and allow notifications when prompted. In Manage → Push notifications, confirm the device is listed and sound/vibration are on. Check quiet hours — during those windows alerts are intentionally silent. Keep the tablet awake (disable screen timeout) and add the console to the home screen.

Question 15

Order emails or SMS aren't sending

Accepted Answer

Emails need a verified sender domain and SMS needs a Twilio number configured on the deployment. Until those are set, notifications are recorded as 'skipped' in the notification log rather than failing loudly. Check Manage → Notifications for the log, then ask your PlateLogic contact to finish the setup. SMS alerts are a Pro feature.

Question 16

Can I remove a bad review?

Accepted Answer

Only verified customers who actually completed an order can post. You can approve, hide or publicly respond to any review from Manage → Reviews — hiding removes it from the storefront but keeps it in your records.

Question 17

How do I connect my POS (Square, Clover, Toast or another)?

Accepted Answer

Go to Manage → POS and pick your till. You paste one credential from your POS, then choose which of the three flows you want: import the menu, send online orders to the POS, and let the POS mark items sold out. Each one is a separate switch, so you can start with just the menu. Square: Developer Dashboard → your application → Production access token, plus your location ID. Clover: Setup → API Tokens → create a token with read access to Inventory and write access to Orders, plus your merchant ID. Toast: ask your Toast rep for partner API access, then paste the access token and your restaurant GUID. Any other POS: choose 'Other POS (webhook)' and give us your menu URL and order URL — both must be public https addresses. Save a signing secret (any long random string) and paste the same value into your POS, so each side can prove requests are genuine. Copy the webhook URL shown on the card into your POS as the inventory / sold-out webhook.

Question 18

The menu import failed or brought in the wrong prices

Accepted Answer

The import reads your POS catalogue and copies categories, items, prices and modifiers in. It never deletes anything you typed by hand, and re-running it updates the same items rather than duplicating them. If it fails, the card shows the exact message from your POS. The usual causes are an expired access token, a token without inventory read permission, or the wrong merchant/location ID. Fix the credential, save, then press 'Import menu now' again. Prices come straight from the POS, so a wrong price is almost always wrong in the POS item too — fix it there and re-import.

Question 19

Online orders aren't printing on the POS

Accepted Answer

Check that 'Connected' and 'Send online orders to POS' are both on, and that the last sync on the card doesn't show an error. A POS outage never blocks a customer's checkout — the order is still taken and appears in the kitchen console. Once the POS is reachable again you can re-send the order from the console. Tickets attach to real POS items only after a menu import, because that's what maps our items to the POS ones. Without it the ticket still prints, using the item names.

Question 20

How do I connect my menu to Google, Apple Maps or Yelp?

Accepted Answer

Each channel gets a private menu link (a feed) from us. You paste that link into the platform once, and from then on you press Publish here after menu changes instead of editing six different dashboards. Google and Apple receive a structured (schema.org) menu they can read automatically. Yelp, Tripadvisor, Facebook and any custom partner receive a JSON menu feed. Manage → Channels → switch on the channel you want. Copy the feed URL shown on that card — it already contains the private token, so treat it like a password. Paste it into that platform's business dashboard (Google Business Profile → Menu / food ordering link, Apple Business Connect → Menu, Yelp → Menu URL). Press Publish to all so the platform gets the current menu right away. Repeat per location — each location has its own feed.

Question 21

Publishing to a channel failed or the platform shows an old menu

Accepted Answer

The Last publish card shows the result per channel. A failure there is almost always a token that has been regenerated (so the platform is calling an old URL) or a partner endpoint that is temporarily down. Platforms also cache: Google and Apple re-read the feed on their own schedule, so a change can take a few hours to appear on their side even when publishing succeeded here. Open the channel card and re-copy the feed URL, then re-paste it on the platform. Press Publish to all again and check the result badge. For a custom partner, confirm they are verifying the signature header with the same signing secret you saved.

Question 22

Can I change how my ordering site looks?

Accepted Answer

Yes — Manage → Business → Site style. There are five templates: Ember (bold and warm), Linen (calm and editorial), Market (dense, photo-led), Neon (late-night, high contrast) and Atelier (minimal and centred). Templates change layout and typography; your brand colours are set separately. Brand colours are a Pro feature — on Base the platform colours are used.

Question 23

How do I put my menu or ordering on my existing website?

Accepted Answer

Every location has an embeddable menu and a hosted ordering page. Copy the snippet from the embed panel in Manage and paste it into your website where you want the menu to appear — it resizes itself and refreshes automatically whenever you edit the menu. If your site builder blocks scripts, link to the hosted page instead (or your custom domain once it is verified). Both index in search.

Question 24

What is the About page for?

Accepted Answer

Each location gets a crawlable About page at /<your-slug>/about with your story, full menu, hours, address and FAQs, marked up with restaurant, menu and FAQ structured data. That is what search engines and AI assistants read when someone asks for food near you, so filling in your address, hours and tagline in Manage → Business does most of the local SEO work for you.

Question 25

How do I check my SEO before I publish?

Accepted Answer

Manage → SEO preview shows exactly what search engines will see for the selected location: the search-result preview, every meta tag, the structured data (JSON-LD) you can copy, the breadcrumb trail and the sitemap URLs registered for that location. Fix anything flagged there — a missing address, unparsed hours, or a title/description that is too long or too short — then use the one-click links to Google's Rich Results Test and the schema.org validator to confirm on the live page.

Question 26

How does QR code ordering work?

Accepted Answer

Manage → QR codes generates a printable code per table plus one general code. Scanning a table code opens your menu with that table pre-selected, so the guest orders from their seat and the kitchen ticket shows the table number. Table ordering uses the dine-in flow, which is a Pro feature. The general QR code works on any plan and opens normal pickup ordering. Enter your table names or a range (for example 1-12) and generate. Download or print the sheet and place one code per table. Test one with a phone before printing the whole set — the code encodes the location slug, so reprint if you ever change the slug.

Question 27

Automated review requests aren't going out

Accepted Answer

Review requests are a Pro feature. One request is sent per order, shortly after the order is marked completed, to the guest who placed it — so only real customers can review. They are skipped when the switch is off, when the guest left no email or phone, when email/SMS sending isn't configured yet, or when that order has already been asked. Check Manage → Notifications for the log entry and the reason.

Question 28

How do I add employees and give them a PIN?

Accepted Answer

Employees are per location, so add them on the location they actually work at. Each person gets a display name (what shows on tickets), one or more console roles, and a 4–6 digit PIN they type on the shared tablet. PINs are stored hashed — you can reset one but never read it back, so hand out a new PIN if someone forgets theirs. Go to Manage → Team → Roster and press Add employee. Fill in the full name, the short display name, and optionally job title, email and phone. Tick the consoles they need: kitchen and expo see order tickets, front desk and server see the floor, reservations and waitlist, manager sees everything. Press Set PIN and give them a 4–6 digit code. Never share one PIN between two people — attribution and clock records depend on it. Leave someone? Switch them to Inactive instead of deleting, so their past timesheets and order attribution stay intact.

Question 29

How do I build the weekly schedule and handle swap requests?

Accepted Answer

The schedule builder works one week at a time. Shifts you publish show on each employee's console when they unlock with their PIN. Open Manage → Team → Schedule and pick the week. Add a shift per person per day with start and end times, plus a role if the shift is console-specific. Use Copy previous week to duplicate a stable rota, then adjust the exceptions. Swap, change and drop requests from staff appear as Pending — approve or decline with an optional note. Approving rewrites the schedule automatically.

Question 30

Clock-ins, breaks and exporting timesheets

Accepted Answer

Staff clock in and out with their PIN on the shared tablet, and breaks are tracked as paid or unpaid. Everything lands in Manage → Team → Timesheets for the date range you pick. Corrections require a reason and are recorded in the activity log, so payroll edits are always traceable. Pick the date range in Manage → Team → Timesheets. Check for open entries — someone who forgot to clock out shows with no end time. Edit an entry to fix the times, entering a short reason (for example 'forgot to clock out'). Press Export CSV to hand the totals to payroll. Missing hours are almost always a missing PIN punch: confirm the employee is Active and has a PIN set.

Question 31

How do I build my floor plan?

Accepted Answer

The layout is a simple drag-and-drop map of your real room. Table labels are what staff and guests see, so use the names you already say out loud ('12', 'Patio 3', 'Bar 2'). Go to Manage → Floor → Layout and press Add table. Give it a label, seat count, section (Dining, Patio, Bar…) and shape. Drag tables into the same arrangement as the real room, then press Save layout. Mark a table Out of service instead of deleting it if it's temporarily unusable — deleting loses its history. Multiple locations each keep their own layout; switch location at the top before editing.

Question 32

Turning on guest reservations and the online waitlist

Accepted Answer

Dine-in settings control what guests see on your storefront: whether they can book a table, join the waitlist, the party sizes you accept, how much notice a booking needs, and the average table turn used to quote wait times. Open Manage → Floor → Dine-in settings. Turn on Accept online reservations and/or Accept online waitlist. Set minimum and maximum party size — larger groups are told to call instead. Set the reservation lead time (how far ahead a booking must be made) and the average turn time in minutes. Add a short note if you have house rules (deposits, 15-minute grace period, and so on) — it shows on the guest form. Save, then open your storefront and confirm the 'Book a table' card appears.

Question 33

Wait quotes look wrong / guests aren't being notified

Accepted Answer

Quotes are calculated from your average turn time, the number of parties already waiting, and which tables fit the party. A quote that's always too short usually means the turn time is set lower than reality. Waitlist texts need SMS on your plan and a mobile number on the entry; reservation confirmations go by email when the guest supplies one. Raise or lower Average turn time in Manage → Floor → Dine-in settings. Make sure every real table is Active with the correct seat count — inactive tables are excluded from quotes. Clear finished tables in the /floor console; a table left as seated makes every quote longer. If texts never arrive, confirm SMS alerts are enabled and the guest entered a mobile number.

Question 34

Who clocked in, accepted that order or changed the table?

Accepted Answer

Manage → Activity is a read-only log of every operational action at this location: clock-ins and clock-outs, breaks, order acceptance and status changes, table status and seating changes, and reservation or waitlist edits. Entries can't be edited or deleted, which is what makes them useful for payroll disputes and refund questions. Use it before changing anyone's timesheet. Open Manage → Activity. Filter by category (clock, orders, floor) or press Refresh for the newest entries. Each row shows the action, the account that performed it, the employee or table involved, and the timestamp.

Question 35

Setting up the bar console and liquor inventory

Accepted Answer

The bar console is a dedicated ticket lane for drink orders, separate from the kitchen, so bartenders aren't scrolling past food tickets to find a round of drinks. Liquor inventory tracks bottles and pours against your menu's drink recipes, so a cocktail sold decrements the bottles it's made from. Manage → Bar → add your liquor items with bottle size and cost. Attach a recipe (pour amounts) to each cocktail or drink item in Manage → Menu. Turn on the Bar console role for the staff who work it, then have them open /console and pick the Bar lane.

Question 36

Par levels and 86 sync in the inventory console

Accepted Answer

The inventory console tracks on-hand quantities against a par level you set per item. When stock drops to or below zero, the item is automatically marked 86'd (sold out) across ordering — no need to flip it manually in the menu. Restocking or correcting a count in the console clears the 86 automatically once you're back above zero. Manage → Inventory → add the item and set its par level and current count. Link it to the menu item(s) it depletes, so sales decrement it automatically. Watch the Low stock and 86'd filters during service to restock before you run out.

Question 37

Setting up multiple kitchen lines and ticket routing

Accepted Answer

Larger kitchens can split into lines (for example Grill, Salad, Pizza), each with its own ticket queue. A menu item is assigned to a line, so a single order can fire tickets to several stations at once. Manage → Kitchen → Lines and add each line you run. Open each menu item and assign it to a line — items with no line print on the default line. Staff open /console and choose their line to see only that station's tickets.

Question 38

Drawing polygon delivery zones

Accepted Answer

Instead of a flat radius, you can draw exact delivery zones on a map — useful for rivers, highways or neighbourhoods you don't want to cover even though they're within distance. Each zone can carry its own delivery fee and minimum, and an address outside every zone is refused delivery even if it's close by road. Manage → Delivery → Zones → Draw zone. Click points on the map to trace the area you deliver to, then set its fee and minimum. Add more zones for tiered pricing (closer zone cheaper, farther zone pricier) — zones are checked in the order you list them.

Question 39

Scheduled orders and pausing service

Accepted Answer

Guests can place an order for a future pickup or delivery time instead of ASAP, as long as it falls inside your open hours and any lead time you set. Pausing service (a single toggle) stops new orders coming in immediately without touching your posted hours — handy for a sudden rush, a walk-in freezer failure or the end of your printer roll. Turn on Scheduled orders and set a minimum lead time in Manage → Business. To pause, use the Pause ordering toggle at the top of the console — customers see 'not accepting orders right now' until you turn it back on. Scheduled orders already placed still fire at their chosen time even while service is paused for new ASAP orders.

Question 40

Running in-house delivery dispatch

Accepted Answer

If you use your own drivers instead of (or alongside) DoorDash Drive, the in-house dispatch console lets you assign a delivery order to a driver on staff, track it through en route and delivered, and see all drivers' current loads at a glance. Turn on In-house delivery in Manage → Delivery and add your drivers as staff with the Driver role. From the dispatch console, assign an incoming delivery order to a driver. The driver updates the order to En route and Delivered from their own device; you can reassign it if they can't take it.

Question 41

Drive-thru and curbside pickup consoles

Accepted Answer

Drive-thru and curbside are dedicated pickup lanes that show orders once they're ready, so the person outside can check a guest in without touching the kitchen ticket board. Curbside additionally accepts a guest's vehicle description and 'I'm here' notification, so staff know when to walk the order out. Turn on Drive-thru and/or Curbside pickup in Manage → Business → order types. Staff open /console and pick the Drive-thru or Curbside lane to see only ready orders for that channel. Mark the order Handed off once it leaves the building.

Question 42

Inviting staff and the accept flow

Accepted Answer

Adding a staff member in Manage → Staff sends an invite to their email instead of adding them directly. They accept it, set up their own login, and only then does their console access turn on — so nobody is added to your roster without confirming it's really them. Manage → Staff → Invite, enter their email and pick a role. They receive an email with an accept link; if they don't have an account yet it walks them through creating one. Once accepted, they show as Active in Manage → Staff and can sign in at /staff-login.

Question 43

Geofenced clock-in and the passkey requirement

Accepted Answer

You can require staff to be physically at the location to clock in — the console checks the device's location against a radius you set around the location's map pin, and refuses the clock-in if they're outside it. Passkeys (device biometrics/PIN, not a typed password) can be required for clock-in as an extra check that the phone or tablet belongs to that employee, on top of geofencing. Manage → Staff → Clock-in policy → turn on Require on-site clock-in and set the radius in metres. Turn on Require passkey if you want device-level verification as well. Staff enrol their passkey the first time they're prompted, then use it every time they clock in.

Question 44

What is Shift Hub?

Accepted Answer

Shift Hub is a live dashboard for the shift in progress: who's clocked in, current sales, average ticket time, orders in each status, and labour cost against sales so far — refreshed continuously rather than at end of day. Open Manage → Shift Hub during service. Use the labour-vs-sales KPI to decide whether to send someone home early or call in extra help. It resets each business day at your configured close time.

Question 45

Operations Optimizer (Beta)

Accepted Answer

Operations Optimizer looks at your recent order, prep-time and staffing data and suggests changes — for example adjusting par levels, staffing a line differently, or flagging a menu item that's slowing down the kitchen. It's a Beta feature: treat suggestions as a starting point, not an automatic change. Open Manage → Operations Optimizer to see current suggestions. Apply a suggestion manually where it applies (for example updating a par level in Manage → Inventory) — the Optimizer doesn't change settings for you. Suggestions refresh as more shifts' data comes in, so early days on a new location will have little to show.

Question 46

Taking card or cash payments on the tablet

Accepted Answer

Once in-person payment is on (Manage → Business), staff can take a card payment directly on the console tablet or record a cash payment against the order — both mark the order Paid immediately so it's not left showing as unpaid. Open the order and press Take payment. Choose Card to run it through the tablet's card reader / Stripe terminal flow, or Cash to record the amount tendered and change given. The order updates to Paid and the payment shows in Manage → Payments with the method used.

Question 47

Sending or printing a receipt

Accepted Answer

After a payment is taken, staff can print a receipt to the counter/kitchen printer or send one to the guest's email or phone straight from the order screen. From the paid order, press Receipt. Choose Print for a hard copy, or Send and enter/confirm the guest's email or number. A sent receipt is logged on the order so you can confirm it went out if the guest says they never got it.

Restaurant owner help