Menu Cycles
A menu cycle is a weekly ordering window for meal prep. You open a meal-prep menu for orders, customers order until a cutoff, and then you plan the week's cooking from exactly what was ordered. It lists the days you deliver or hand orders over, and each customer picks one of them.
What you need first
Cycles are part of Menus. Turn on Meal prep in Settings → Modules, and build a meal-prep menu. A menu can belong to one cycle at a time; for next week you copy the cycle, not the menu.
Setting up a cycle
- Open Menus and select Cycles, then New cycle.
- Name it ("Week of Oct 12"), choose the meal-prep menu it opens, and set when it opens and its cutoff (the last moment a customer can order). Times are in your business's time zone, which the form shows.
- Add the fulfilment days: the dates you deliver or hand over orders, and for each whether it is Delivery, Pickup, or both. A day can't be before the cutoff.
A new cycle is a draft. It opens by itself at its opening time and closes by itself at its cutoff.
Opening and the cutoff
Iraca checks every five minutes, so a cycle opens and closes within a few minutes of the times you set. The cutoff itself is exact: a customer who orders a minute after it is refused, even if the cycle hasn't been marked closed yet.
- Open now opens a draft immediately, or reopens a closed cycle whose cutoff hasn't passed. If the cutoff has passed, move it later first.
- Close now closes the cycle early. A cycle you closed by hand stays closed; it is never reopened for you.
What customers see and choose
While a cycle is open, your customers see its menu under Menus in the portal, with the cutoff ("Order by Mon, Oct 5, 12:37 PM") and the days on offer. A meal-prep menu with no open cycle isn't shown to customers at all.
In the cart a customer chooses:
- The day. Only your cycle's days are offered.
- Delivery or pickup, if the day offers both. A pickup-only day has no delivery section; a delivery-only day has no pickup.
- A delivery window, if you use delivery windows. Only that day's windows are offered, and the window is booked while the order is placed, so a window that fills up just before checkout is refused with the next one offered.
The delivery fee, the minimum order and everything else work exactly as for any portal order. If the cycle closes while a customer's cart is open, checkout says so and keeps the cart.
Pickup is recorded, not yet managed
Iraca doesn't yet have a pickup fulfilment type of its own. A pickup order is saved for the day the customer chose, with no delivery, and stays off your delivery routes. You hand it over and then press Fulfill on the order as usual.
After the cutoff
Customers can't place or change an order for a closed cycle. You can: add an order for a regular who forgot, or fix a draft. When you do it after the cutoff, the order's Activity records that it was added or edited after ordering closed, so the change is never silent. On New Order, pick the cycle's menu in From menu and choose the Cycle day.
The cycle page
Open a cycle to see its fulfilment days with how many orders and units are on each, what was ordered per item across the whole cycle, and every order. Not confirmed counts units on orders that are still drafts or waiting for approval. Portal orders arrive as drafts for you to confirm, like any other.
Plan production
Once a cycle is closed, Plan production makes a production plan for it: what to make, what's on the shelf, what's short and what to buy. It counts this cycle's confirmed orders only, on the days the customers chose. See Production Plans. Confirm the cycle's orders first; draft orders aren't counted. Press the button again and it opens the same plan.
The cycle then follows the kitchen: it reads In production once you commit the plan, and Completed when every run has finished or been cancelled and at least one finished. From the plan, Print labels makes the container labels; see Container Labels for a Production Plan.
Copy a cycle for next week
Duplicate for next week makes a new draft cycle with a new copy of the menu (every item available again) and every date moved forward a week: the opening, the cutoff and each fulfilment day. A cutoff of 6 pm Sunday stays 6 pm Sunday when the clocks change. Check the menu and the dates, and the copy opens by itself.
Your permanent order link
Every week's cycle has its own menu, so a link to one menu stops working once that week closes. Use this link in your emails, on your website and on social media instead. It never changes:
You don't have to type it. On a cycle's page, or on a meal-prep menu, press Copy customer link. The first link, This week's menu (always current), is the permanent one: copy it into emails and posts. Below it is a link to this menu only, for when you want to point at one week; it shows nothing to order once that cycle closes. Writing a campaign, use Insert menu link in the editor's toolbar to drop the same link into the message (see Sending a campaign).
The link looks like https://app.iraca.app/portal/your-business-id/order-ahead.
- A cycle is taking orders: the link opens that cycle's menu. If more than one is open, it opens the one that closes first, and the others are a tap away on the Menus page.
- Nothing is open yet: the customer sees when ordering opens next, in your time zone.
- Nothing is scheduled: the customer sees that no menu is open, with your business email.
Browsing before signing in
If you let customers create their own account, anyone who follows the link sees the menu straight away, without signing in: the dishes with their photos, dietary tags and allergen notes, your allergen disclaimer, when ordering closes, and the days you deliver or have orders ready to collect. Prices are your menu prices, the price a new customer pays.
They can choose what they want right there. When they press Order, they're asked to create an account (or sign in if they have one) with a code we email them, and then they're back on your menu with what they chose already in their cart. Their cart is checked and priced again at that point, so a dish that sold out in the meantime isn't added, and a trade customer sees their own price.
If customers can't create their own account, the link asks them to sign in first and then takes them straight to the menu. A public menu would be a dead end for someone who can't sign up.
If the copy box warns that the menu isn't offered in the customer portal, customers following the link won't see it: turn on Customer portal in the menu's details.
Growing your email list
With Marketing set up, the public menu ends with a short sign-up form, so someone who isn't ready to order can still hear about next week's menu. The same form has its own link, Email sign-up form, under Copy customer link: put it on your website or social profiles. People only start getting your emails once they confirm from the email the form sends them; see Your email sign-up form.
To email the people who order from your cycles, build a segment with Ordered in a menu cycle (for example, ordered last week but not this week) or Meal prep.
A reminder before the cutoff
A campaign that promotes a cycle can send a last-chance reminder a few hours before the cutoff, only to people it reached who haven't ordered yet. Set it up on the campaign: see Sending a campaign. Moving this cycle's cutoff moves the reminder; closing the cycle early or deleting it cancels it.
Things to know
- A cycle that has orders can't be deleted: close it instead. A fulfilment day that has orders can't be removed from it.
- A menu that belongs to a cycle can't be deleted until the cycle is.
- Sold-out items are handled on the menu, as always: turn Available off and the portal shows Sold out.
- Only owners and admins can create, edit, open, close, copy and plan a cycle. Everyone else on your team can read them.