It’s 6 pm on a Saturday night. What’s the state of your restaurant’s kitchen?

If you offer order delivery, your workers are probably busy. Maybe a little too busy – nobody likes that slammed feeling.

On the flip side, customers who place a delivery request during peak order times don’t like a long wait for their food. How can you meet customer expectations without pushing your kitchen and delivery staff beyond their limits?

How about order throttling?

What is order throttling?

If you’re using a mobile app or third-party delivery service, you know that customers can choose order items and then select a time slot for order delivery. However, you also know that you can’t have too many customers placing orders for the same time period; your kitchen has a limit to how many items it can prepare at a given time.

Imagine you’re pouring water from a pot. If you take the lid completely off, a lot of water comes out. If you put the lid on and just leave a crack open, you can control how fast the water pours out of the pot. Order throttling essentially works the same way; it limits how many orders can be placed over a defined time.

With order throttling, you set a limit on how many orders you will accept in a timeframe. This timeframe can be 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or whatever you choose. But how do you determine how many orders to accept during a timeframe?

How order throttling works

There are several ways you can determine how orders are limited. The method you choose will depend on the type of restaurant you have and the type of orders you commonly receive during peak times. Here are some popular order throttling methods:

By preparation time. This allows you to set a total number of minutes within your order window. For simplicity’s sake, let’s say you limit your orders to 100 prep-minutes between 6:30 and 7:00pm. All the prep time for all the items ordered in that timeframe will be about 100 minutes. (Your system may allow orders that will take the total prep-minutes over 100 if the cap isn’t reached yet.)
By total dollar value. This allows you to receive orders up to a total dollar amount. It works like the preparation time method described above; the only difference is you’d set a limit of, say, $300 instead of 100 prep-minutes on that half-hour window.
By the number of orders. As you’d guess, this lets you set the number of orders you’ll accept in a given timeframe. However, it doesn’t impose any limits on order size, so it’s not as precise as the other two methods.

These methods of order throttling limit the flow of incoming requests to your kitchen and delivery staff. If a customer wants to place an order for a time slot that’s already hit its limit, they’re simply given the next available time slot.

Why order throttling benefits restaurant delivery operations

As you can imagine, order throttling provides many benefits during rush times. If your restaurant is accepting orders from a third party like DoorDash, order throttling keeps the number of orders received within what your kitchen can reasonably fulfill within a given timeframe. It regulates the number of delivery orders in the queue, which reduces stress and possible errors for employees. This also results in better item quality.

By setting realistic expectations for customers, order throttling helps create a better overall experience. Walk-in and drive-thru customers also indirectly benefit from order throttling; controlling order flow results in a less harried and more attentive group of restaurant staff.

Delivery operations are also beneficial when you choose your delivery menu carefully. You can do this by using data to identify popular menu items and craft a better delivery menu. Order throttling helps you match supply and demand, so it’s vital to understand what customers are likely to order and when.

Implementing order throttling

If your restaurant has regular, predictable peaks in delivery order demand, order throttling can help you manage them. So, how do you start order throttling? And what challenges are associated with it?

First, talk with your restaurant manager(s) and look at your data. This will give you a good idea of when rush times occur and what items will most likely be ordered. It will also help you understand the optimal order amount that your kitchen can handle.

The exact steps to setting up order throttling will depend on your restaurant software. As a general rule, though, you can expect to do something like the following:

Access your ordering system and your scheduling program.
Set the timeframe when you want to throttle orders (e.g. Fridays and Saturdays between 5 PM and 9 PM).
Define a window of time that you want to use to limit orders (e.g. if you want to limit incoming orders to 10 orders every 15 minutes, you’d set this window to “15”).
Select how you want to measure orders – e.g. by number, value, or prep time. Not all systems will support all of these methods.

Optionally, you may also choose a message that delivery customers will see if their preferred time slot is not available. Again, your setup and experience may vary based on your software and/or any third-party ordering platforms you use.

The downside to order throttling is similar to the downside of having long lines in your restaurant: some customers won’t want to wait. In some cases, this may be a major issue; in others, simply acknowledging the wait may be enough to keep customers happy. So craft that message with care!

Will you profit from order throttling?

There are nights when orders seem to pour into your restaurant like water from a garden hose. At other times, it’s more like a fire hose. Order throttling helps you balance out that flow. It allows your kitchen staff to work at a safer and more reasonable pace, which means fewer errors and better food quality. And it contributes to the happiness of all customers – delivery, dine-in, and carry-out.

If you’re regularly turning down delivery orders (or turning them out late), then consider order throttling. It can make the most of your menu and your workforce while still allowing you to offer what customers really want: the convenience of delivered food.