Our business model is relying on the idea of a freemium model as we provide a simplified do-it-yourself ordering platform for free, easy to use by anyone. There are no hidden fees, commissions or contracts.

However, we also offer a set of premium features (which are more complex) that the customers can choose to pay for if they find them useful for their business, for example: online payments, promotions, sales optimized restaurant websites, branded mobile apps.

Also, those who want our staff/support team to take care of the system implementation may help us operate by paying extra for those services (e.g. having our team configure the menu, instead of configuring it yourself).

In a sense our business model is very similar to the business model of other internet companies that provide awesome functionality for free (combining monetization elements inspired from Firefox, Wikipedia, Dropbox or more profitable entities like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, etc).The difference is that we come with this service in an industry that was not used to benefit from such freebies until now.

We do not support, nor encourage, an email, fax or desktop solution for taking orders, and there are many good reasons why we chose to provide an app instead. Shortly put, your online sales will be low if you take orders without the app we provide.

One way to increase your business is to provide existing customers a truly great service so that they will order again and again. The online ordering experience is part of that service. If you can accept and confirm orders within seconds plus giving an individual delivery / pickup time, your customers will be delighted.

In order to achieve an almost real-time reaction by the restaurant, we first need to assure your client that the restaurant is ready to take the order and to make some noise once a new order arrives. Traditionally, the telephone is assuring the client that the restaurant is ready to take the order. If you do not pick-up the phone in a timely manner people just call somewhere else, right? Simple.

Using a mobile app is ideal for this purpose of replicating what was appreciated by the clients on phone orders and add the benefits of online handling on top. You just need an affordable device for order-taking, one that is easy to set up and use, without too much hassle.

Minimal requests for an order-taking tablet/smartphone are:

• charging while on
• good wi-fi signal (if you want to connect through a wi-fi hotspot)
• loud speaker
• android v 8.1 or later (with Google Play supported)
• decent materials (meaning not to fall apart after 2 months of usage and get a broken charger socket, displaced screen, etc).

If you look in the Admin panel you can find a section called Publishing, containing Facebook and Website.

To place the “See MENU & Order” button on your website, you need to copy the HTML code (which you find in the Admin panel > Publishing > Website) and paste it in the HTML source code of a page on your website. If you are not the creator of your website, then please ask your website administrator to help you out with this. It should only take a few minutes.

Make sure your button will be visible from your main homepage. For example, we have seen the button placed only at the bottom of contact page which significantly diminishes the chances of getting any online orders.

The issue is that when you open the Facebook mobile app, you will not be able to see the apps/buttons/tabs you have installed on your Facebook page. The reason is that Facebook mobile does not allow any third party apps to be shown on mobiles. This does not apply only to GloriaFood, but also to any other applications made for Facebook.

However, we provide a smart link for posting on Facebook. You may use this link over the “Shop Now” call to action on your Facebook page, or to create pinned posts about ordering. This smart link detects the device type and serves the menu in the appropriate format, including mobile.

You can find your smart link along with step by step visual instructions in your admin area, under Publishing → Facebook. You will unlock Facebook Sharing and Shop Now as soon as you publish the app on Facebook.

Yes. the system is already available in most used languages and more are added every month by our community of contributors.

If you didn’t find your language available in the admin area settings, it is possible to speed its release by translating some parts in our translation module.

If you wish to contribute simply drop us an email at contact@bromayafood.com. Make sure you specify the login email address of your restaurant account signed-up with us, and the language you are interested in.

Printing orders with the Order Taking App

Our order taking app can be connected to multiple Epson and Star thermal printers.

Thermal printers are widely used in restaurants. They are robust, fast, require no toner change and paper costs are close to nothing. Epson and Star are leading manufacturers in this segment.

The app supports three types of printer connection:

• LAN (Ethernet) – the thermal printer is connected by network cable to a WiFi router and accesses the same WiFi network as the order taking device does;
• WLAN (WiFi) – the thermal printer connects wirelessly to the same WiFi network that’s used by the order taking device;
• Bluetooth – the thermal printer connects directly to the order taking device via Bluetooth.

To add a printer, open the order taking app and select Thermal printer from the menu. The app will guide you through adding a LAN, WiFi or Bluetooth printer.

• When adding a LAN / WiFi printer, double check that the printer and your order taking device are connected to the same network.
• When adding a Bluetooth printer, first pair the printer with the device and then add the printer in the app.

In case you have multiple working stations, you can add several printers and have your orders printed on all of them. The iOS version of the Order Taking App supports adding multiple printers with different connectivity types (like shown in the image below). On Android, all your printers must have the same connectivity type (all LAN/WiFI or all Bluetooth).Furthermore, you can go in the Admin Panel and decide exactly what to be printed on each printer: which template, number of copies and language. For text-only printers you will be limited to the text-only receipt template. But for printers that support image printing, you can create custom restaurant receipts and assign them as needed per printers.

To benefit from Custom Printing, you need:

• estaurant Order Taking App version: 1.2.21 for Android, 1.1.40 for iPhone/iPad – or higher.
• Software version of your phone or tablet: 4.4 or higher for Android, 9.0 or higher for iOS
• A compatible thermal printer that supports image printing.

Restaurant receipt templates

In the Admin you can find 2 restaurant receipt templates that we’ve prepared for you, suggestively called Client receipt and Kitchen essentials.

The Client receipt template contains:

• The payment method chosen by the customer (cash, credit card etc);
• Time to deliver/pick-up the order;
• Estimated drive time and directions (for delivery orders);
• Client’s contact info;
• The order details (including items, prices, taxes and total);
• Confirmation box for client’s signature at handout.

The Kitchen essentials template contains:

• Order type (delivery, pickup or order ahead for dine-in);
• Full order details (the items ordered with their according customizations, quantities and comments);
• Quality control box for the final check at the packing station.

Note: You need a printer with image printing capabilities in order to use these templates. If your printer can only print text, you can still get the order printed, but in a default plain-text template.

How to customize the restaurant receipt

To customize your receipts, start from one of these templates and use the restaurant receipt generator to make adjustments as you see fit. You can:

• Change font size for every single line on the receipt;
• Rearrange the sections with simple drag & drop;
• Remove sections that you don’t need;
• Add your own content by using the text-free sections

The best part is that while you make all these changes you can see a real time preview of how your restaurant receipt looks like.

You can even generate previews for different real life situation by playing with the order type (delivery, pickup, order ahead), payment method (cash, card online etc) or fulfillment time (asap or later). That’s how you make sure that everything looks exactly how you need without having to print tones of test orders.

Note: If your printer can only print text (not also images), the receipt comes out in a plain-text format that you cannot customize.

Recommended printers

We’ve looked at the most popular printers used by our clients and picked the ones that perform best. All the printers below are reliable, easy to install and support image printing. Moreover, we have them in our office for testing and are the first ones we debug in case of issues. So if you want to buy a thermal printer to connect to the order taking app, we highly recommend one from this list.

If you’re looking to buy compatible GloriaFood printer models, delivered worldwide and at quite good prices (including good shipping fees), then you can take a look at the GloriaFood collection exhibited on shopposportals.com.

When buying a printer from any other sources, pay close attention to its characteristics, as the name alone can be deceiving. There are several models under the same name, and usually they differ only by color and interface (how they are able to connect).

For example, EPSON TM-T20II is a series with 2 models. You need to buy the one with Ethernet, if you wish to connect it to the order taking app. The USB + Serial model would be completely useless.

Supported printers

• EPSON TM-T20II
  Model: Ethernet
• EPSON TM-T82
• EPSON TM-T82II
• EPSON TM-T88V
• STAR TSP143III
  Models: Ethernet (LAN) or Wi-Fi (WLAN)
• STAR TSP654
  Model: Ethernet (LAN)

Other supported printers

These printers work ok and we actively support them as well:

• EPSON TM-m30, models: Ethernet only, Ethernet + Bluetooth, Ethernet + WiFi
• EPSON TM-m30II, model: Ethernet
• EPSON TM-m30II-NT, model: Ethernet
• EPSON TM-T20, model: Ethernet
• EPSON TM-T20III, model: Ethernet
• EPSON TM-T20X, model: Ethernet
• EPSON TM-T70II, model: Ethernet, WiFi
• EPSON TM-T88IV, model: Ethernet
• EPSON TM-T82III, model: Ethernet
• EPSON TM-T82IIIL, model: Ethernet
• EPSON TM-T88VI, all models have Ethernet built-in and WiFi with dongle
• STAR TSP143
• STAR MCP31, model: Ethernet

Why we don’t recommend Bluetooth

Although the order taking app allows you to connect a thermal printer via Bluetooth, we don’t recommend it. Here’s why:

• Discovering the printer via Bluetooth is often times rather difficult. Also, for many printers, once the connection is lost, it cannot be re-established automatically;
• Bluetooth has a range of maximum 10 meters and is prone to interferences from other EM waves (like microwave oven or some WiFi networks);
• We have encountered size limitations with printers from different manufacturers (like Star TSP650II).

Why we no longer support USB

USB connection proved to be quite unreliable, that’s why we’ve decided to remove it from the Order Taking App. It turns out that it’s difficult to keep printing and charging at the same time:

• If the device is not charging, the Android system puts the device to sleep mode, so orders might not come through properly;
• When the cable is moved, the Android system may assign a new USB port. The connectivity to the printer is lost, so the device and the printer need to be repaired. In practice, repairing needs to be done several times a day.

Why we no longer support SMS printing

We also had to cut out SMS printing. Some orders are long enough to exceed the SMS limit. The end result is that the printout does not contain all items.