Opening hours look like the simplest setting in the whole system — until a customer orders four minutes before closing, or a Friday-night rush makes a 20-minute prep time impossible by 8pm. This is the part of setup worth spending real time on, covered lightly in the getting-started page but worth its own explanation here.
Three separate numbers, not one
- Opening hours — when the site accepts orders at all, per service if you run separate lunch and dinner windows.
- Capacity — how many orders the kitchen can realistically take in a given slot before quality slips.
- Prep time — the honest gap between an order landing and it being ready, which is not the same number on a quiet Tuesday and a busy Friday.
Treating all three as one setting is how a "20 minutes" promise turns into a 40-minute wait and a bad review. They're separate for a reason.
Set it pessimistic, not optimistic
Set prep time to your busiest realistic night, not your best one. A customer who's told 35 minutes and gets it in 20 is delighted. A customer told 20 and waiting at 35 is the call your front-of-house has to take.
Where this shows up later
A realistic prep time is also what makes live order status actually useful — a status screen that says "ready in 20" repeatedly when it takes 35 trains customers to stop trusting it. Get the number right here and the rest of the ordering experience holds together.
No setup fee, no contract, cancel any time. Nomvo is £69 a month, or £54 a month equivalent billed annually — no commission on any order.
