Add online order option or improve existing process. FW Food Menu will convert your website into comprehensive food directory with unique design and online order option. This solution works for existing and brand new websites. Introduce your customers to online order feature right from your website or improve current ordering process to get most of it. Customizations to any part of ordering process reflecting your business specifics are available on demand.

Simple configuration. All food directory websites contain categories and meals and/or drinks. With FW Food Menu managing categories is a simple and creative process, allowing you to get layouts that represent your food concept the best. Managing food and drinks is easy with import/export features and "Quick" functions. Lots of add-ons available for meals enhancements to add pricing layers and discounts, images, meal bades or even multilingual menu versions. Daily specials or chef's meals can be promoted with special promos. Exploring the options is quite exciting and entertaining process, but if you look for a quick result we are happy to help with configuration of any difficulty.

Unlimited design options. While FW Food Menu comes with neat and minimal responsive design there are 4 more designs available for coffe houses, italian restaurants, sushi places and pizzerias. Any design can be modified to your taste by adding backgrounds and changing font colors. Menu can be presented as a plain list or as a tabbed structure. Categories can be designed as slideshow on top of meals with changing just a few parameters in configuration. Current variety of settings allow to replicate almost any printed menu into online version or at least make it look very similar and! responsive. It is up to you if you want to go with standard design, get one of specific designs we have or get an exclusive design for your business.

Get orders from desktops and mobiles. Responsive layout is a key in everyday life as we use smartphones everywhere. Having a nice desktop version was okay some time ago, but these days many websites make only mobile versions to make sure people with smartphones can order food on a website. Our approach is to have both versions fully usable. Why not to make a desktop version as attractive and atmospheric as your business is, and just remove some design elements for smaller screens, keeping customers focus on a food order. We test layouts as we add new features and options to make order process easy and predictable. A well-fed customer is a happy customer )

Allow take aways or delivery. Depending on a business model take aways can be as good as a delivery, if a place is busy and is located in a right spot. More often people prefer a delivery for various reasons. Often delivery layers may vary depending on distance or timing. FW Food Menu covers that all and allows to have as many delivery options as you need. If your business requires a specific delivery procedure with multistep flow, we would be happy to consult on possible solutions.

Get payments online. Most typical ways of paying online are cards and online payment systems. At the moment we have all cards option implemented with Stripe platform and PayPal payment. These 2 payment systems cover most popular approaches. Should your business require a new payment system implemented on your website online menu, we are ready to assist.

Works with Wordpress and Joomla!.These 2 platforms are the most popular platforms for websites. They are easy to use and proved their efficiency to the market during decades of online presence. Whatever platform you prefer we are ready to support you with a choice you make. Choose FW Food Menu for your food business and you will get a reliable developer and support, working with Fastw3b for years.

According to statistics, revenue in the Online Food Deliverysegment is projected to reach 5-15% in 2022 for countries all over the world. While COVID-19 pandemia performs as a booster for transition to online food ordering, for many restaurants it is a matter of staying in the business. When it comes to online presence, some restaurants can barely keep their PDF or JPG food menus actual, never mind taking orders online. How can a restaurant establish and maintain the online presence?

Let's take a look what options a restaurant have from cheap to expensive:

1. Use social networks.
2. Build a website in-house.
3. Use food menu service.
4. Hire a freelancer.
5. Hire a company.

Social networks is a great way to promote business and stay public. But it seems to be the only benefit for the restaurants. There is no special or any functionality to sell meals from any social media so far. You need to be very creative to come up with some meal folders on Facebook or save menu as Instagram stories.

Building a website in-house means the cheapest way, but involves the longest learning curve with unpredictable results. The length of the curve may mean months. It is likely that the website will never be finished and will always be in progress. To a certain degree, it is not a bad thing, but a website will not function as expected. Besides, eventually a person who started its construction will have to become full time website developer.

Food menu services or websites with subscriptions offer some decent functionality, but you lose promotion benefits. Starting as free or very cheap, they charge you more for any new feature or take commissions from every online transaction. Menu is limited to functions that a service has. Very often the only benefit of such services that you make this first step into the online presence. It's really hard to get a branded design or automate data synchronization to keep menu actual.

Freelancer may help to speed up website development process and use the knowledge of the market and technology to utilize the best and get work done with predictable results. The biggest challenge with freelancers is finding a reliable and competent person. Probably freelancer is the best option for small and medium restaurants as you would get personal developer for a reasonable pricing. Promo budget needs to be added on top of all development expenses.

Hiring a company is the more expensive (sometimes it is times expensive) option comparing to developer. You may expect more attention to details, more professional approach, more papers and longer turn-around. Companies do not rush the process and let you feel the importance of the service you pay for. Works well for medium and big restaurants, when there is a budget for online restaurant image.

There is a niche for almost any request and budget in growing food ordering business. With our FW Food Menu online food delivery system, we offer a quick start solution with further customizations and training on key features for the quickest return of investments. Contact us via website or in social networks for alternative expert advice on the best fit online for your restaurant.

Taking orders online has become a necessity for food industry in our pandemic situation. While most people would prefer to hang out with their friends in bars and restaurants face to face, online orders have always been part of a business that had a huge potential and a growing demand. There are businesses that only sell food online, which demand a very friendly ordering service and of course high quality food.

When we think of our favourite food places we imagine an atmospheric website design with interior images, actual menu with prices, locations, working hours, etc. These websites is a huge part of food industry market, but it is very rare when local food places have online food ordering option available. At best you can expect a link to a 3rd party platform where food is sold in a totally different environment and with minimal design references to a place a customer buys from. From the other hand it does the job and these solutions are popular among local providers.

Our today's topic can be an answer to both local food places owners and online food ordering systems. Why not adding an ordering option if you already have a website. Also, if you have an ordering website you can check if your process is smooth enough or it may benefit from replacing your current system with FW Food Menu plugin for Wordpress. All written below would refer to Wordpress websites.

Assuming you have a Wordpress website online and Admin access to it we will show how to turn it into online food ordering system and start taking orders online in 10 mins. The main steps are:

1. Install & verify FW Food Menu plugin - 1.5 mins
2. Create an order page - 1.5 mins
3. Add food categories (4 items) - 0.5 mins
4. Add meals to the categories (39 items) - 1.5 + 1.5 mins
5. Adjust order page layout - 1 min
6. Configure payment - 3 mins
7. Take your first order!

For payment options you will need at least 30 days subscription to FWFM Order Online add-on, which currently costs $34.99 USD. If you skip this option you will get a nice looking responsive online menu. Since our goal was to take orders online you will need that add-on which comes with PayPal and Stripe integrations that cover the most popular card payments and online PayPal payment.

Before we start make sure you are logged into your Wordpress admin, get your stopwatch handy... Ready. Steady. Go.

1. Install & verify FW Food Menu plugin

1. Download FW Food Menu ZIP installation file from the official FW Food Menu page.
   Make sure you are logged in before you download free FW Food Menu plugin. If you don't have an account, register beforehand, please.
2. Open your Wordpress admin.
3. Go to Plugins section, click Add New button on top and then Upload Plugin button.
4. Select FW Food Menu ZIP file you downloaded and click Upload button.
5. Once installation is complete hit Activate button.

Alternatively you can install from WP Admin -> Plugins -> Add New section by typing in "FW Food Menu" in a search box and hit Install button.

Congratulations! You have FW Food Menu installed on your Wordpress website.

In order to verify a website we need go to WP Admin -> Dashboard, enter Acess Code in verification box and click Verify button.

Access code is a unique customer code that can be found in Client Section on fastw3b.com.

Congratulations! Now you can install free add-ons and updates, use Fastw3b support and purchase add-ons in case of need.

2. Create an order page

1. Go to WP Admin top panel, hover your website name and click View Site menu item. Better keep it open in a seperate window so you can make changes and check your progress by refreshihng this page.
2. Open "Hello World" post by clicking the title and edit it with Edit link.
3. Rename it to "Order Page" and replace text with [fwfm_menu] shortcode.
4. Now Updatechanges and click View Post link.

Congratulations! No you have empty FW Food Menu which will be filling with content and new options in a few minutes.

3. Add food categories

To avoid dummy texts and made up examples we went to Trip Advisors's Boston quick bites directory and picked a random food place which turned out to be Thinking Cup Boston. Luckily they had a website with a very typical menu. This is a perfect example to see how easy you can turn a regular website into online food ordering website.

They have 4 categories:

Coffee
Tea & More
Breakfast
Sandwiches

1. Go to FW Food Menu -> Categories in WordPress admin.
2. Click Quick Categories button on top.
3. Copy & paste 4 categories from above into Quick Categories modal window. No need to select parent category as we want them to be top-level categories.
4. Click Process button.

Congratulations! You added 4 categories to your future online menu.

4. Add meals to the categories

Thinking Cup website has different types of meals in terms of data format, also there are meals with price layers. For a start we will ignore long descriptions and will only use first price to get meals imported into categories. All other details would be a good reason to write another post on how to make this menu perfect and add enhancements to make online menu really user friendly and intuitive.

After spending few minutes for copying meals into text file and edit them in a "meal name = price = meal description" format we have 4 blocks ready for import.

Please note that we removed $ dollar signs as a currency would be set in FW Food Menu Settings.

1. Go to WP Admin -> FW Food Menu -> Meals.
2. Click Quick Meals button in top toolbar.
3. In Quick Meals modal select Coffee category and paste 13 meals for this category. See below.
4. Click Process.

Repeat for 3 other categories. Paste items for a category you selected and insert into Quick Meals modal window.

Coffee (13 items)

Coffee = 1.50
Iced coffee = 2.75 = Brew.
Café Au Lait = 2.90 = Coffee with steamed milk.
Espresso = 2.75
Macchiato = 3.00 = Espresso with a dollop of milk.
Latte = 3.50 = Espresso with foamed milk.
Cappuccino = 3.50 = Espresso, steamed milk and milk foam.
Mocha = 2.50 = Espresso, premium home made chocolate sauce and foamed milk.
Americano = 2.75 = Espresso and hot water.
Pour over = 3.30 = Check Board for Single Origins
Hazelnut latte = 4.00 = With Freshly Roasted Hazelnut Paste
Vanilla Ginger latte = 3.90 = Our Original Home Made Syrup
Honey Cinnamon Latte = 3.90 = Our Original Home Made Syrup

Tea & More (5 items)

Hot Tea = 3.00 = Blue Flower Earl Grey, English Breakfast, Decaf English Breakfast
French Hot Chocolate = 3.95 = 64% Tainori Valhrona Drinking Chocolate
Chai Latte = 3.50
Iced Tea = 2.00 = Bergamot Black, Golden Green, Crimson Berry
Orange/Grapefruit Juice = 2.95 = Freshly Squeezed.

Breakfast (12 items)

Egg & cheese sandwich = 2.95
Breakfast Sandwich = 4.95 = Choice of Sausage, Bacon or Ham with Egg and Cheese on English Muffin
Smoked Salmon on Bagel = 7.50 = with cream cheese, tomato, and red onions
Cage-free Eggs = 6.95 = with potato, nitrate-free bacon, and gruyere or with Spinach, Roasted red peppers and mushroom.
Breakfast Burrito = 5.95 = Choice of Sausage, Bacon , Ham or Chorizo with Egg, Salsa, Black Beans, Pepper-jack Cheese on flour Tortilla
Bagels = 2.00 = Plain, Wheat, Everything, Cinnamon Raisin with Butter 2.25 with Jelly 2.50 with Cream Cheese 2.75
Croissant = 3.00
Chocolate croissant, almond croissant = 3.50
Scone = 3.25 = Cherry Ginger, Lemon Poppy Seed
Muffin = 3.00 = Blueberry, Morning Glory, Raspberry Yogurt (seasonal)
Oatmeal = 3.95
Toppings = 0.50 Almonds, Bananas, Raisins, Strawberries, Walnuts, Apples, Cranberries, Blueberries, Brown Sugar, Honey, Maple Syrp

Sandwiches (9 items)

Grilled Cheese = 6.95 = Choice of bread, cheese and plenty of add-ons
The Italian = 8.95 = A mixture of sweet and spicy Italian cold cuts, sharp provolone cheese, red wine vinaigrette and arugula on house baked bell pepper focaccia bread
Jittery Hen = 8.95 = Stumptown coffee braised chicken, house-made BBQ sauce, pickles and smoked gruyere cheese on sourdough bread
B.A.L.T = 8.95 = Applewood Smoked Bacon, Hass Avocado, romaine lettuce, vine-ripe tomato and house made aioli on sourdough bread
Classic Turkey = 8.95 = Maple turkey, swiss cheese, dijon mustard, romaine lettuce, vine ripe tomato pressed on multigrain bread
Smoking Jamaican = 8.95 = Jerk-spiced turkey, roasted red'n yellow peppers, havarti cheese, mango chutney,pickled jalapenos, pressed on toasted multigrain bread
Roasted Chicken = 8.95 = Buttermilk marinated chicken tenders, havarti cheese, roasted wild mushrooms, vine-ripe tomato, romaine lettuce, sweet'n'spicy mustard pressed on multigrain bread
Jimmy the Greek = 8.95 = Red bell pepper hummus, artichoke hearts, kalamata olives, vine ripe tomato, roasted wild mushrooms and goat cheese on multigrain bread
Barcelona Bliss = 8.95 = Spanish cured dry chorizo, Aged manchego cheese, roasted garlic aioli and green olive spread on a crusty french roll

After we add meals for all categories let's go to Order page and check the results.

Well done! Now we have 4 categories with real meals on our order page.

5. Adjust order page layout

If we compare the original menu page and what we currently have we will notice that our version is 1 column menu while source has 4 columns which looks much nicer and occupies less space on a screen. Let's do the same.

We need to set global columns rows to 4 while number of columns inside categories should be 1. Since all categories inherit global/parent settings we will have to change number of columns in categories to avoid funky layout.

1. Go to Admin -> FW Food Menu -> Dashboard.
2. Find Add-ons section and click Install button for FWFM Columns add-on.

We can install FWFM Colums right from add-ons section because it is a free add-on. Purchased add-ons will only appear if plugin was verified (see step 1).

When installation is complete, do the following:

1. Go to Admin -> FW Food Menu -> Settings -> Design & Layout tab.
2. Find Columns in a row parameter and set it to 4.
3. Allow category break parameter must be set to Deny.
4. Let's also set Align meal content and Category alignment to Center.
5. Go to Admin -> FW Food Menu -> Categories.
6. Select all categories.
7. Click Batch Operations button in a tool bar.
8. Set 1 column and click Process.

Congratulations! Now you have 4 columns menu. Refresh Order page and check results.

6. Configure payment

Before we go to configuration and have Online ordering configured we need a paid FWFM Online Order add-on. To get add-on right from your website you need to:

1. Go to WP Admin -> FW Food Menu -> Add-ons.
2. Find FWFM Order Online add-on and click Add-on details button.
3. In a pop-up window you should select 30 days or 12 months subscription. Let's go for 30 days for a test, but we definitely recommend get a 12 months subscription.
4. When you click 30 days button your cart will be updated.
5. Close add-on window and click Checkout button on top of Add-ons page.
6. Make the payment and get back to your Wordpress Admin.
7. Go to Admin -> FW Food Menu -> Dashboard -> Add-ons section and find FWFM Order Online with Install button next to it.
8. Install FWFM Order Online and go to  Admin -> FW Food Menu -> Settings -> Add-ons tab.
9. Let's add notification email where we will receive all orders.
10. Set order shift for 2 hours to make sure it can be ready in time.
11. Add a local tax of 7% for all meals which will not be included in meals prices.
12. Enable Show Cash parameter, considering we will have Takeaways for now.
13. Thinking cup has 3 locations. Let's add Takeaway deliveries with 0 cost and without Show Address and Show in total options and call them "BOSTON COMMON", "NORTH END" and "BACK BAY" to allow customers where to pick their orders.
14. Add an order message "We will call you back in 5 mins after order is made." to let customers know what will happen after order is made.

Done! Now we are ready to take the first order!

7. Take your first order

Go to an Order Page and add some items to an order. Try to edit order and add/delete items forth and back. When you are done click Checkout button and fill in Checkout form. After all fields are filled a confirmation will appear on a page and emails will be sent to a recepient we set in point 6.9 and a customer will receive a copy. Also order record will appear in Admin -> FW Food Menu -> Orders section.

Please contact us, if you have questions or need any assistance via Client Section. We would be glad to hear your feedback if setup process is easy enough. We plan to release a video soon on how to do it all and add to this post. Stay tuned.