Pre-orders for table reservations are coming soon to Easy Eatery.

If you've ever had to manage pre-orders for your Christmas bookings, then you know how busy it can get chasing guests.

Spreadsheets, endless email chains, last-minute changes, forgotten allergies – it all adds up. It's one of those jobs that eats up a substantial amount of time and energy, right when your team needs to be focused on guests and service.

At Easy Eatery, we're all about finding ways to make restaurant operations simpler. Our booking system already takes care of the essentials, letting your guests reserve a table directly through your site, and pre-orders are a natural addition to our table booking system.

Right now, we're developing a new pre-order feature for Easy Eatery that will make collecting and managing guest orders effortless. We'll be testing it with a small group of venues soon before making it available to everyone. Here's a closer look at what's coming and why it's such a game-changer for pubs, cafés and restaurants.

Why pre-orders matter

For many venues, pre-orders are both a blessing and a burden. They help the kitchen plan, reduce waste and speed up service on the day, but getting those pre-orders in and keeping them organised can be a chore.

Maybe you're chasing guests for menu choices, trying to update spreadsheets when someone changes their mind, or double-checking allergy details at the last minute. It's not the kind of admin anyone looks forward to.

That's where Easy Eatery will be able to help very soon. By integrating pre-orders directly into your online booking system, you take a manual process that is prone to errors and turn it into something smooth, structured and reliable.

When guests can choose their meals ahead of time, everyone wins: your kitchen, your staff and your customers. It's faster, more precise and gives your team the information they need well before service begins.

How pre-orders will work in Easy Eatery

We've designed this feature with both guests and venue owners in mind, keeping it flexible, simple and built around the real flow of restaurant bookings.

Setting it up

Each booking in Easy Eatery is tied to a session, such as Main Menu, Sunday Lunch or Festive Menu. If pre-orders are enabled for that session, guests will automatically be invited to submit their choices.

You'll choose which menu the pre-order items come from and set up the courses you'd like to collect choices for – starters, mains, desserts or however your dining plan is structured.

You decide how strict or flexible this is: make a course optional, required or limit the number of menu items that can be selected. Everything is configurable.

The available items for each course are drawn from the menu sections you specify, so guests can't accidentally order a starter for dessert.

The guest experience

Once a booking is made for a session that has pre-orders enabled, the primary guest automatically receives an email inviting them to submit their order. The link in that email takes them straight to your website, to a branded, easy-to-use page where they can enter details for each guest in their party.

For each person, they can add:

• Their name (optional)
• Any allergies
• Selections for each course you've set up
• Extra notes (optional)

This will all happen on your own site, keeping the experience consistent with your brand.

When the pre-order is submitted, both the venue and the guest receive confirmations. Guests can also revisit their order and make changes up until a set cut-off date, which you choose when configuring pre-orders for each session.

As a site owner, you'll be able to edit pre-orders at any time, even after the cut-off date.

Managing pre-orders in the control panel

On your side, the My Easy Eatery control panel adds a new area, a dedicated Pre-Orders view within the daily view section of table reservations.

You can see:

• All pre-orders for a given date
• Their status (pending, submitted or locked)
• Full details of what's been ordered

This view is customisable too. You can group orders by booking to see what each party has chosen, or view a simple item summary to help with kitchen prep.

You can also print daily reports, detailed (showing who ordered what, along with notes and allergies) or simplified (just total item counts for the day). It's all designed to save you time and reduce the back-and-forth between the front and back of house.

You can also jump directly into a booking and if it has a pre-order, you'll be able to view, print or edit it there too.

The benefits for your venue

This new pre-order system is designed to make life easier for everyone involved: guests, managers, chefs and front-of-house teams alike.

Here's what you'll notice:

• Less admin: No more chasing guests or manually copying orders into spreadsheets.
• Better planning: Your kitchen knows exactly what's needed, when and how much.
• Fewer mistakes: Allergies and notes are captured clearly and stored in one place.
• Smoother service: On the day, everything's ready to go, with no surprises or confusion.
• Happier guests: People love knowing their preferences are handled with care.

We've heard from our customers loud and clear that pre-orders are one of the biggest time-sinks before events or seasonal periods.

This feature is built to give you that time back and make the process consistent, predictable and far less stressful.

Built the Easy Eatery way, iterative and feedback-driven

At Easy Eatery, we don't just launch a feature and call it a day. Every part of our platform evolves through an iterative process. We always start with a simple version of a feature, test it, listen to real feedback from venues and then refine it.

The best software grows alongside the people who use it, which is why the first version of pre-orders will focus on doing the fundamentals really well: handling orders, managing guest information and giving you valuable daily insights.

Once it's in the hands of real venues, we'll expand and improve it based on their feedback. By being open about how we develop features, we make sure Easy Eatery continues to deliver tools that genuinely fit how UK venues operate day to day.

What's next

We're currently testing the pre-order system internally and will be rolling it out to a small number of venues for initial feedback soon. After that, we'll refine it, polish the experience and make it available to all Easy Eatery customers.

If you'd like to be among the first to see how this works, or if you're new to Easy Eatery and want to simplify your bookings, we'd love to show you around.

About Easy Eatery

Easy Eatery is a website builder designed for UK restaurants, pubs and cafés. It helps you take control of your bookings, manage your menus and deliver smoother guest experiences — all from one place. Explore our features here, you can request a demo here.