When a spreadsheet is still the right tool
If you have a short, fixed menu, one delivery day and customers you know by name, a sheet may be all you need. It's free, you understand it, and you can fix it yourself. Don't let anyone sell you software to solve a problem you don't have yet.
The signs you have outgrown it
- You have made the same mistake twice. A meal left out, a wrong count, a customer charged for the wrong thing. One is bad luck. Two means the process is the problem.
- Only you can run it. If you got sick on Thursday, could anyone else total the orders and print the labels? If the answer is no, your whole week depends on you staying well.
- You chase money. You spend time matching payments to orders and asking who has paid.
- You turn down good ideas. A second delivery day, a portion choice or a meal plan sounds good, and you say no because the sheet couldn't handle it.
- Your evenings have gone. Add up the hours you spend each week on totals, labels, messages and payments. That number is the real price of your free tools.
Work out what it costs you now
Take those hours and multiply them by what you would pay someone else to do them. Five hours a week at $20 an hour is $100 a week, or more than $400 a month. Add what you lost last month to mistakes: refunds, remade meals and free meals to say sorry. Then compare that number with the price of the tool. It may tell you to stay where you are, and that's a good answer too.
Try the cheap fixes first
Most of those signs have a fix that costs little or nothing. Try these before you shop for anything.
- The same mistake twice? Add one check at the weak spot. Compare the prep sheet's total with the order rows, or have a second person read the labels before you pack.
- Only you can run it? Write your week on one page, step by step. Then have someone follow that page once while you watch.
- Chasing money? Take payment when the order is placed, with a payment link, and cook only what is paid.
- Lost your evenings? Drop a meal or two from the menu, or move your cutoff so the totals happen in daylight.
If the week still doesn't fit after that, you have a real reason to move, and you know what a new tool has to solve.
What moving really takes
The work is smaller than most people fear, but it is real work. Here is the order we would do it in.
- Pick the menu you will switch on. Choose an ordinary week, not the week before a holiday. Run one system at a time: two order forms in one week is how orders get lost.
- Clean your lists. You need one row per customer, with one email address in one column, and one row per meal. Delete the customers who left years ago.
- Write down your rules. Your cutoff, delivery days, pickup spots, delivery fees and minimum order. These are the things only you know.
- On the new system, place a test order as a customer. Go all the way through, then print your reports and labels and check them against what you ordered.
- Tell your customers early. Say why, say what changes for them, and give them the date and the link. Keep it short, and send a reminder before the first cutoff.
- Keep your old sheet. You won't need it often, but you will want it the first time someone asks about an old order.
Expect some customers to need a hand at first. Plan for them to set a new password, and to add a card if they pay by card. If you ran on a form and payment links, you never held their cards, so you lose nothing there. Answer quickly that first week, and most of the questions go away by the second.
What to ask before you choose a tool
- Who moves my data, and what does that cost?
- Can I get my data back out, and in what form?
- What happens to my customers if I leave?
- Who answers when something breaks on a Sunday night?
- What will this tool not do? A good vendor can tell you without flinching.
The Eat Fresh Tech way
Here's how we would move you off your spreadsheet.
Most of our customers came from spreadsheets and office tools, so this is the move we know best.
- The site comes first. We set it up in about 48 hours. A new site starts with a sample menu and starter pages, so you aren't facing an empty screen.
- Your customers come next. How this goes depends on how many you have and where they are coming from. In most cases, we can help you bulk-import them from your old system, and a clean spreadsheet of customers or meals moves fastest. If you would rather hand it all over, we offer a paid setup service that does the whole move for you.
- They get a welcome from you. Passwords and cards are never copied. When you're ready, you or we send a welcome email to your imported customers. It explains the move, with a link to set their password and finish setting up their new account.
- You can look before you commit. For a one-time fee, you get 14 days with your own site. Payments are off, so you test the order flow with free-order discount codes. Pick a plan to take real orders. If you don't, nothing more is charged, and the site closes after the 14 days, along with anything you loaded.
- You own your data. Reports and lists download as CSV files.
- You talk to the person who builds it. Support is in-house, and replies usually come within 24 hours.
There is a lot you can customize on your site. If you want the full design freedom of WordPress or Shopify, keep your own site and use us for the ordering. And if your spreadsheet is still doing its job, keep it. We'll be here when it stops.