We are a new doughnut delivery service. We provide freshly made doughnuts to customers in the local area.
Our circumstances:
Our doughnuts require being prepared overnight.
We can only make a maximum number of doughnuts per day (108)
However, if we receive a low number of orders, we will make less doughnuts (batches are in 36 so will be a multiple of that, hence 108).
It is very likely that we will have unallocated doughnuts from the batch.
We can only deliver to local areas, using a combination of our own bikes as well as couriers. Delivery occurs on set days between set times.
Therefore, we are trying to see if Shopify can enable us to:
Enable a limit PER DELIVERY DATE on number of units
Prompt customers to place an order at least one day before, with a cut off time of 10pm (so we know how many doughnuts to make).
Restrict customers to local locations.
Get customers to select delivery date and time.
Still allow for the sale of the leftover units on the day.
Output the orders per delivery date into a summary for a baking schedule.
Keep the delivery locations and routes neatly organised.
Thinking out loud, one solution is that if an inventory limit per delivery date were established, then the shop could simply remain selling units even on the day of baking and we can still receive those orders (maybe just with wording to heavily suggest prebooking ahead of schedule to avoid disappointment). But then how do we know whether one day is going to be a full batch or a half batch? Maybe at 10pm the inventory is adjusted to the minimum amount.
Our challenge is not unique, and I can see multiple questions from others hear searching for answers.
We are currently looking at Zapietās Store Pickup + Delivery app, as well as Limitsify. But we can only get halfway there and it still feels like we have no control over the number of orders that are happening.
So, turning to the community, from Shopify users to app developersā¦ does anyone have a tried and tested solutions for any and all of the above?
I donāt have a solution for you Iām afraid. But, I listened to a podcast with a founder doing a very similar thing to you (but with cookies), i.e. hyper local, has to be warm from the oven upon delivery.
I think you are going need custom development to build your custom ruleset. I donāt think youāre going to find a point and click solution to your problem.
Shopify has an active developer community and does a good job of vetting developers so you donāt have to waste your time and money with point-and-click āweb agenciesā.
Please consider hiring a custom developer through this community.
Now, if you want to partner with a developer to build a ready-made app, I (and other developers) are all ears. If youāre convinced of the marketability of such an app, hire a developer to build it and then sell it in the app marketplace (pro-tip, it will be more complicated and time consuming than you think).
You have a really interesting use case and one we have actually come across fairly frequently. We currently have over 500 bakeries actively using Store Pickup + Delivery and have rapidly been working on a solution to limit the number of items available per day/location. Itās still a fair while off from release and would only cover part of your requirements, as it does not go so far as switching the available inventory automatically at specific times of day.
Although as part of this project we are building a number of APIās that a developer could easily use to solve that last requirement.
If you would like to work together on this and be our first pilot store let me know
Thanks,
Andy
p.s. Just to set expectations this is not something we can enable immediately. It is very much a work in progress.
Thanks Jacob, I fully believe that there is a solid user base for this that will increase as time grows.
Itās an extremely accessible business for people to get into (baking in general I mean), but the moment you move beyond a friend texting you asking for an order you realise the baking part itself is the āeasyā bit, its just streamlining the sales process is so cumbersome as you scale. Whereas it seems a lot of other types of businesses have ready made solutions someone can put together themselves to just get up and go, the sticking point really is the idea of a limited quanity per day (that you really want to sell, ie no holder stock) and how you handle that.
After peeking into the backed of Shopify and Liquid, I fully appreciate how its not going to be trivial to code, but if I can verbally explain the logic outloud then I know it can be done
I would be happy to fill that last-mile role. Iāve looked at Zapiet to save some dev time on another project - didnāt use it, but itās worth consideration.
Hey @Doughnaughty ,> > Andy here from Zapiet!> > You have a really interesting use case and one we have actually come across fairly frequently. We currently have over 500 bakeries actively using Store Pickup + Delivery and have rapidly been working on a solution to limit the number of items available per day/location. Itās still a fair while off from release and would only cover part of your requirements, as it does not go so far as switching the available inventory automatically at specific times of day.> > Although as part of this project we are building a number of APIās that a developer could easily use to solve that last requirement.> > If you would like to work together on this and be our first pilot store let me know> > Thanks,> > Andy> > p.s. Just to set expectations this is not something we can enable immediately. It is very much a work in progress.
Hi @Andrew_Cargill , thanks for getting in touch. (You actually just got back to me on the trial extension page, so cheers again for that).
Glad to see that this is something that has been flagged by Zapiet. I actually saw that your āLimit by Shipping Dayā is a work in progress on your help pages, which initally got me very excited until saw it was Coming Soon.
Appreciate that it is not ready for release, but would absolutely love to be a part of the development of this. And to set expectations, from our end we are an extremely small business just getting started, but I would like to think we work well together on this to make sure you all are building in the right functionality.
I have booked in a meeting with your team as you directed on the other thread for Monday, would that be the best place to discuss this further?
Sure, we have both pickup and shipping limits already in-development. The first iterations of the release will simply be to cap the number of pickups or shipments per day. But we have built out the features with extensibility in mind, meaning once we release v1.0 it wonāt take us much longer to achieve what you require.
Great news that youāve got a call scheduled! They are proving to be super-helpful all round. Feel free to explain your requirements in full to my team member and they will document everything for our engineers.
Do you have a git for your work in progress? I could work directly with @Doughnaughty to start on that last-mile so itās ready to go as soon after you launch v1.0 as possible?
If youāre looking for a temporary work-around, you can manage your inventory via spreadsheet and have your MOD (or whoever is adjusting to demand) replace your Shopify inventory with up-to-date spreadsheets as needed. It wouldnāt take too much to build a node.js or C# app to manage it on a local PC if you have a local data datasource for real time inventory. In fact, that might be the route you want to go: look for a direct API connection from your local inventory data source (assuming it has good data entry controls) to Shopifyās inventory data.
Well, my client said ādonāt worry about CDN fallbackā for now. Which is good for meeting the milestone deadline I have today. Now to go see why those images didnāt load to the CDN properly (hopefully before I onboard my second subcontractor when he gets home from the subcontractor).
Good luck adjusting to the the online/delivery world, itās very different than the donut shop, coffee and newspaper world Iām missing these days.
Iāve got a customer with a similar need as in this thread. Iām a developer for them, and was wanting to either hook into your APIs, or if you have a solution then point them to that.
I hope youāre well. To confirm we are still actively working on this. Itās been a little more complicated than first anticipated, and canāt provide an ETA just yet. If you want to DM me your email address I can let you know the moment itās ready. Of course iāll also update this thread as well
Iām interested in this as well. I have a cookie shop, I discovered this thread from the IndieHackers post. Iām also using Zapiet. Iāve also been looking at Parcelify, which plays with Giftship so I can ship to multiple addresses in one order.
Great to hear from you! We are certainly still working on a solution for this. Iād have loved to already have a solution in place for you, but of course this year has been a little out of the ordinary so weāve had to focus on ensuring our app can continue to scale to meet demand. Thankfully that works all been completed now so weāre back on the case! Expect to hear from me soon
Any updates? I am also just building my donut shop and found I have the very same issue. Need to limit orders per day, limit days Iām accepting orders and only accept the order placed 24 hours in advance.
Andy here from Zapiet! I just wanted to let you know that weāve finally made some significant progress towards daily product limits. I was hoping to get some feedback from you guys to ensure that the controls we are adding are going to be meet your requirements. Iāve attached a screen recording for you below:
Currently weāve added the following:
Ability to select which products you want to have a daily limit
Daily limit can be different for each day of the week
You can increase or decrease the daily limit for specific dates of the year
@DonutDawn - We already have the ability to set a 24 hour preparation time via the app. You can also limit the number of pickup, delivery and shipping orders per day. The functionality described above is for going next level and restricting the number of individual products that can be ordered on a given day.
@Andrew_Cargill Thanks for the update. The added functionality seems to be exactly what weāre looking for so we appreciate you being the first to bring this to market.
When will this be available?
Also, is there any possibility of also adding these limits at the collection level?
