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Ask a questionRestaurant owners, comparing notes
Questions about running a restaurant on Get Menu, answered by the team and kept public so the next person finds them. Also see the help centre.
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We are closing for two days for renovation. Can I tell all my customers on WhatsApp?Yes, with a campaign. Open Marketing → Campaigns, press New campaign, write the message or start from a template, and choose the audience Everyone who has ordered. Pick WhatsApp as the channel and sen AnsweredIs there email marketing software for restaurants built in?No. Email here goes one way, from us to you: billing notices, security alerts and the QR pack you ask us to send, all listed under Reports → Sent email. Your customers are reached on WhatsApp from you AnsweredHow do I test my WhatsApp messages without bothering real customers?Order from yourself. Open your own page, add a small item, and check out with your own name and WhatsApp number. The confirmation arrives on your phone, the ticket lands in your managers group and the AnsweredDo my automatic messages send on Fridays and public holidays?Order messages send at any hour on any day: a confirmation, a ticket, a dispatch or a delivery update goes out the moment it is due. Marketing waits for the daytime window, ten in the morning to nine AnsweredIf I set a message type to 'always', does the customer get two messages?Yes, genuinely two — one on WhatsApp and one as a text. That is what always means and it is worth being deliberate about it. Most restaurants use it for the order confirmation, where a second copy is AnsweredI changed the restaurant's phone. What do I have to redo?Three things, all under Settings → WhatsApp. Link the new phone: press the link button, open WhatsApp on the new phone, go to Linked devices and scan the QR, then wait for the badge to say Connected. AnsweredCan you read the texts on the phone I pair?No. The phone is handed messages to send; it does not send us your inbox and there is no screen anywhere showing your personal messages. What we record is what we asked it to send and what it reported AnsweredMy message history says 'transport not recorded' on older rows. Is something broken?No — we only started stamping which gateway carried each message from a certain point onward, and we deliberately did not go back and fill in the older rows with a good guess. A guess and a fact in th AnsweredCan I pair two phones so one is a backup?One phone per restaurant. Pairing a second replaces the first and the old one stops sending. Two phones sharing one queue would either duplicate every text or race each other for them, and neither is AnsweredThe low stock WhatsApp woke my manager at one in the morning. Can I stop it at night?Not by time. The low stock warning goes to your managers group the moment a dish's count drops past its alert level, whatever the hour, because it is an order message and not marketing. It is sent onc AnsweredWhy do my texts go out slowly instead of all at once?Mobile operators block SIM cards that fire off bursts of texts, so there is a deliberate pause between each one. The default suits most restaurants; raise it if you ever start seeing failures. Losing AnsweredSomeone left the riders group — do dispatches fail now?No, messages go to the GROUP, not to members — membership changes don't break sending. If the group itself is deleted, sends to it fail visibly in the Message centre. AnsweredThe rider ticket has a link on it — what does tapping it do?It marks that one order delivered and sends the customer their delivered message, without anyone opening the admin panel. Single-use, short-lived, tied to that one order. If sending is paused, the rid AnsweredMy messages show a 'forwarded' label — why?They don't when sent through the platform link. If you see it, the message was manually forwarded by someone from a group — check where the customer actually got it from. AnsweredCan I send a promo right now, at 11pm?Marketing waits for the 10:00–21:00 window at the moment of sending — a promo queued at 11pm goes out after 10am. Order messages are exempt and send at any hour. AnsweredNothing has sent at all and my WhatsApp has never been connected. Is that the problem?Almost certainly. Until a WhatsApp connection is actually live, order messages have nowhere to go — the system records them rather than pretending they went, and the message history shows them with no AnsweredCan I send a promotion by text message rather than WhatsApp?Yes. Text message now sits beside WhatsApp and the wallet card on Promotions → Channels, so you can pick it per promotion. It obeys exactly the same rules as the other two: your weekly cap, the hold t AnsweredCan I pause marketing but keep order messages?Yes — 'Pause all marketing' on the Marketing review screen (Marketing → Review queue & weekly cap) is your own switch. It stops your whole marketing lane at once — WhatsApp and wallet, including alrea AnsweredCan my order messages go out as normal text messages as well?Yes. SMS is a second lane for the messages that go to your CUSTOMER, included in every plan, and it sends from a spare Android phone with your own SIM rather than through us. Your mobile operator bill AnsweredIs there a template for Ramadan / Eid greetings?Yes — the campaign composer ships seasonal template packs (Ramadan, both Eids, National Day). Fill the bracketed blanks; the composer refuses to send while a bracket is unfilled. AnsweredWhich message tells the customer the rider's name?The out-for-delivery message — it carries the rider's name and phone when you assigned one, so the customer knows who is arriving. AnsweredThere are two gateways mentioned on my screens. Which one am I on?New restaurants are on our own gateway, which we run and monitor. The other is an external one, used by restaurants that already had it before joining. You do not choose between them yourself — it is AnsweredWhat is the "Marketing review" tab next to my message history?It holds marketing that needs a human decision — chiefly one customer matched by several campaigns at once — with Approve all / Discard all or one at a time. The same tab carries your weekly per-custo AnsweredCan I use my personal number?You can, but a dedicated restaurant number is cleaner — customers message it expecting the restaurant, staff can hold it, and your personal chats stay yours. AnsweredThe QR page keeps refreshing — is that normal?Yes, QR codes rotate while unlinked; scan any current one. The page stops polling by itself after a while — reopen it to resume. Answered
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