Christmas Day Catering: Sell Your Christmas Boxes Through an Online Order Form

Customers start planning their Christmas Day lunch well before December, and the caterers who are ready to take orders early get the bookings. The easiest way to take them is online: customers order and pay in a couple of minutes, and every box lands on the kitchen docket without a phone call. If you are on the Professional plan you already have an online order form, and with two small bits of setup it becomes a Christmas shop: a bundle for each box you sell, and a form of its own that only takes orders for the day you are open.

Step 1: Make each Christmas box a bundle

The most popular Christmas product is a box full of everything the customer needs for the day. In Puree that is a bundle: one item the customer buys, made up of other items your kitchen makes.

In the video there are two: Christmas Day Lunch for Four and a vegetarian version. Each one has:

• A name and a bundle name — here the bundle is called a box, so it reads naturally on the form.
• Its contents — existing items from your catalogue, each with a quantity. Buy one Christmas Day Lunch for Four box and you get one Christmas ham and four of each of the sides and desserts.
• A price — $350 in the example — plus your costings and a photo, because the photo is what sells it on the form.

The contents have to be items that already exist, so create any you are missing first. That is deliberate: the contents go through to the kitchen reports as separate items, which is where bundles earn their keep (more on that in step 4).

Full detail on setting bundles up is in Bundles and Options, Includes, Bundles and Packages: Which One Do You Mean?.

Step 2: Give Christmas its own order form

You could add the boxes to your everyday form, but a separate Christmas Day catering form is cleaner: its own dates, its own collection times, its own hero image and nothing else on the menu to distract from the boxes.

Go to Online → Order Forms, create a new form and give it a name. Then work down the settings.

Delivery or collection

Most caterers don’t deliver Christmas boxes — customers pick them up on the 23rd or 24th of December. In the example, delivery is turned off and collection is turned on. You can leave delivery on if you do deliver.

For collection:

• Collection address — set it up if you haven’t already, so customers know where to come.
• Collection time frame — the example uses 8am to 10am.
• Time increments — how far apart the pickup slots are. At 60 minutes, an 8–10am window gives customers three slots: 8, 9 and 10. Shorter increments spread the pickups more evenly if you expect a queue.

Only the dates you are open

Choose to only take orders on available dates, then pick them. The example takes orders for the 24th of December only; if you run pickups over two days, select both. Every other date on the form’s calendar is locked, and when there is only one date it is filled in for the customer.

Payment

Take payment up front. With Stripe connected, turn on card payment and turn the other methods off: the customer pays when they order, the button at checkout reads Pay now, and the order is done and dusted. For Christmas orders there is very little reason to chase an invoice in January. (The video leaves invoiced on only so the demo doesn’t need a card.)

GST or VAT can be shown or hidden at checkout as usual.

Hero image and items

Add a festive hero image for the top of the form, then add your Christmas boxes to the form’s items — the example puts both into Favourites. Save the form.

More on each of these settings: Online Order Form, Online Order Form Payment Methods and Online Order Collection: Let Customers Choose Between Delivery and Collection.

Step 3: What your customer sees

Open the form’s link and walk through it as a customer would:

1. The hero image, and the collection date already filled in. Trying another date does nothing — the 24th is the only one available.
2. They pick a collection time from the slots you set.
3. They click a box and see its photo, its price and everything that is in it, then add it to the order and check out.
4. At checkout they enter their details. For a collection order the address is only for your records.
5. With card-only payment they pay and they are done. With invoicing on, they confirm the order instead.

Step 4: The order arrives, and the kitchen sees every item

Back in Puree, refresh and the new online order is waiting. Process it: an existing customer is linked automatically, or you create them, and the items are already there — click Create and you have the quote. A card-paid order comes in already accepted; an invoiced one you accept yourself.

Now open the chef’s docket. Every item inside the box is listed individually, and the chef can see it belongs to the Christmas Day Lunch for Four bundle.

That is the point of using bundles rather than a single “Christmas box” item. If the mince pies go into both boxes, or you also sell them on their own, the kitchen reports add them all together — so on the morning of the 24th the chef knows exactly how many to make in total, rather than adding it up across fifty orders. See Dockets and Processing Online Orders.

Checklist

• Every item that goes in a box exists in your catalogue.
• One bundle per box, with a photo, a price and default options chosen.
• A separate Christmas order form with only your pickup (or delivery) dates available.
• Collection address, time frame and increments set.
• Card payment through Stripe, other methods off.
• Boxes added to the form, and the form link shared on your website, socials and newsletter.