Welcome

This is your guide to running your restaurant on Auani: applying, managing your menu, taking orders, getting paid, and using the extra tools available to you like delivery pricing, a loyalty punch card, and your own embeddable ordering widget.

A few things worth knowing up front

Applying

Submit your application through the vendor apply page on the marketplace's site. You'll be asked for:

• A business category (Pizzeria, Bakery, Food Truck, Restaurant & Bar, and so on) - pick carefully, since this is locked after you submit. If you ever need it changed later, that has to be done by the platform admin, not from your own dashboard.
• A cuisine (Mexican, Peruvian, Salvadoran, ...) - unlike business category, you can change this any time from your dashboard's Profile Settings.
• Your address, verified against Google's own address suggestions as you type, so what actually gets saved matches a real, deliverable location.

You can also sign up using your Google account instead of typing a password - it verifies your identity and email automatically and skips the separate email-confirmation step.

Your First Login

Once approved, log in and go to your Vendor Dashboard - ask the platform admin for the exact page URL if you're not sure where it lives. The Overview tab is your landing page; every other tab (Products, Orders, Earnings, Payouts, Messages, Analytics, Locations, Profile Settings) is one click away in the same dashboard. See Your Dashboard below for a full tour.

Your Dashboard

Overview is your landing tab - a snapshot of recent activity, your plan, and quick links into everything else below.

Products (Menu Items)

You manage menu items using the normal WordPress product editor - the same Products screen and Add New button you'd use for any WooCommerce product, not a separate custom form. Your wp-admin access is trimmed to exactly this: your Products list, Add New, and editing your own items - nothing else.

Each item gets an extra "Menu Item Details" box where you set:

• Modifier groups ("Choose your protein," "Extras") or an attached shared modifier library - see Modifier Libraries below.
• Spice level and prep time (used to show guests a live "ready in about N minutes" estimate).
• Per-channel availability - pickup, dine-in, delivery. Uncheck any a specific dish shouldn't offer (a delicate dish might not travel well via delivery, for example).
• "86'd today" - mark it unavailable for the rest of the day only. It's automatically orderable again tomorrow with no action from you.
• Loyalty Reward - only shown if the platform has loyalty enabled (see Loyalty & Rewards). Off by default for every item, even after you turn loyalty on, so your priciest dish never becomes a free reward by accident.

Modifier Libraries

If the same set of options - proteins, sizes, add-ons - genuinely applies across a dozen dishes, build it once here instead of retyping it into every dish's own modifier group. Create a named group (e.g. "Proteins") with its own options and price add-ons, then attach it to any dish from that dish's own product editor.

Each dish can override the shared library - turn an option off for a dish that doesn't offer it, or price it differently there. Because a dish only stores what's different from the library, adding a new option to the library later reaches every dish already using it automatically - no need to go back and update each one by hand.

For a genuine one-off case that doesn't belong in a shared library, you can still build a modifier group directly on a single dish's own product editor - see Modifier Groups & 86'd Items.

Orders

Every order containing your items, with a detail view per order: fulfillment type and timing the guest chose, delivery status if applicable, and order notes. Once you accept an order, a Kitchen Status card appears with a single button to advance it through received → preparing → ready → completed, so the guest's own tracker (see Fulfillment & Order Tracking) reflects real kitchen progress. Using it is optional - you can still complete an order the normal way without touching this card.

Earnings

Your commission ledger: gross sale, commission rate, channel (marketplace or direct - see Commission: What You Pay), platform fee, and net earnings per order, with refunds/reversals shown distinctly.

Payouts

Your Stripe Connect account status, available balance, the platform's minimum payout threshold, and your payout history. You won't be able to request a payout below the minimum threshold - that's a platform-wide setting to keep Stripe's own transfer fees from eating too much of a very small balance.

Messages

Guest-to-restaurant messages, if the platform has this turned on, with an unread-count badge on the tab so you don't miss one.

Analytics

Your own performance view - orders and revenue trends for your shop specifically, separate from platform-wide numbers the admin sees.

Locations

You log in once and hold one Stripe/payout account and one plan, but can register more than one physical location if your plan allows it (see your Profile Settings or ask the platform admin what your plan's location limit is). Each location has its own address and its own menu - which published items belong to it. Your branding (bio, photos, socials, policies, reviews) stays shared across every location.

You still get exactly one public page even with multiple locations - see Your Public Menu Page - with an in-page picker for a guest to switch between them. Add, edit, or remove a location from this tab (you always keep at least one - the last one can't be removed).

Hours, mobile/rotating locations, and seasonal pauses

Each location's edit form includes:

• A weekly hours table - open/close time or closed, per day.
• A "mobile / rotating location" checkbox - if you're a food truck with a known weekly rotation, any day can carry its own address and label ("Farmers Market," "Riverside lot") instead of your main address.
• A season status (Active / Paused) with an optional note guests see, e.g. "Closed until March" - for a location that's fully set up but not currently taking orders, separate from daily hours.

Profile Settings

Your display name, bio, cuisine, location, social links, Stripe connection status, catering availability toggle and price-per-head, and your own refund policy notes (these only ever add to the platform's default refund policy, shown to guests in full alongside yours - they can't override it). Your business category (Pizzeria, Bakery, ...) is not here - see Applying for why it's locked after you apply.

This is also where you'll find, if delivery is available to you: your Delivery Fee Split slider and the advanced order-size tier editor (see Delivery Minimum & Fee Split), your Loyalty Program settings if enabled (see Loyalty & Rewards), and a POS connect card if the platform offers Square/Clover integration (see Connecting Your POS).

Your Public Menu Page

You get exactly one public page for your business, at a URL like /business/your-restaurant-name/. If you have more than one location, that same page carries an in-page picker for a guest to switch between them - you don't get a separate page per address.

Your menu shows every published item assigned to whichever location is currently selected, grouped by category exactly as you organized them in your Products screen. An item without a category lands in a trailing "Other" group rather than being dropped silently.

Each item card shows its photo, price, a short description, dietary/spice badges, and a note if it isn't available on every fulfillment channel. Items you've 86'd or that are out of stock show a disabled state and can't be added to cart. Items with modifier groups open a "Choose Options" picker before adding to cart; the add-to-cart step always re-checks 86 status, stock, and modifier selections with the server, so what a guest sees never gets stale mid-order.

Modifier Groups & 86'd Items

Modifier groups are how "choose your protein" or "extra guac, no onions" work - configured per dish as a set of option groups (single-choice or multi-choice, each option with its own price adjustment). A modifier selection travels with the item all the way through checkout, the order confirmation, and your own order view, exactly like any other part of the order.

86'd today means unavailable until service resets - not permanently discontinued. Mark an item 86'd and it's automatically available again the next day; you don't have to remember to switch it back, and nothing runs at midnight to do it for you - it just resolves correctly the next time anyone checks.

Bulk Menu Import (CSV)

If you already have a menu of 60-100 items, you shouldn't have to hand-type every one. Look for an "Import your menu from a spreadsheet" panel directly on your Products screen, with a file upload and a "Download sample CSV" link that always matches the exact columns the importer accepts.

Required columns: name, price, category (must match one of the platform's fixed menu categories). Optional columns: description, dietary_tags (comma- or pipe-separated: Vegetarian, Vegan, Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Nut-Free, Halal), spice_level (None/Mild/Medium/Hot or 0-3), prep_minutes, allergy_note, channel_pickup / channel_dine_in / channel_delivery (Yes/No, default Yes), image_url, and location (matched by name, if you have more than one address).

A row is matched to an existing item by name (case-insensitive), so re-uploading a corrected file updates the same items instead of creating duplicates - your first pass at a CSV rarely has to be perfect. After import, a results summary shows exactly how many items were created, updated, and skipped, with a reason for every skipped row (missing price, unrecognized category, and so on) - never a silent partial import.

Fulfillment & Order Tracking

Guests choose pickup, dine-in, or delivery at checkout, along with ASAP or a scheduled time (ASAP is the default). An ASAP order shows the guest a live "ready in about N minutes" estimate, computed from whichever item in their cart has the longest prep time you've set. Delivery only shows up as an option if every item in the cart supports it and a courier provider is actually available to you - see Delivery Minimum & Fee Split.

Kitchen-stage tracking

Once you accept an order, you can advance it through received → preparing → ready → completed from the Kitchen Status card on your Orders tab (see Orders). Labels adapt to the fulfillment type ("Ready for pickup" vs. "Ready to serve" vs. "Out for delivery"). The guest sees a matching tracker with a live countdown (ASAP) or their scheduled time, right on their order confirmation and account page.

Commission: What You Pay

This is the core economic idea behind the platform, and it's separate from fulfillment (pickup/dine-in/delivery):

Whichever rate applies is locked in the moment an order is placed and never changes retroactively, even if rates change later - so an order you already fulfilled never gets recalculated against a new rate.

Delivery Minimum & Fee Split

When a guest chooses delivery, the fee they see is always a real, live courier quote for that exact order - never a flat or estimated number, and never hidden by raising your menu prices. Your menu costs the same online as in person no matter what you set below; only the separate delivery-fee line reflects the split.

The simple version: one slider

On your Profile Settings, under Delivery Fee Split, a single slider decides how much of that real fee the guest pays: 0% means you cover delivery entirely as a built-in service, 100% (the default until you change it) means the guest pays the full fee, and anywhere in between splits it.

The advanced version: reward bigger orders

Underneath the slider, open "Advanced: reward bigger orders with a lower delivery fee" to set up your own ladder of order-size tiers instead of one flat percentage. The idea: give guests a real reason to add a bit more to their cart by making delivery cheaper for them the bigger their order gets, while you cover more of the fee at that larger order size (which you can afford to, since a bigger order carries more margin).

The lowest tier you set becomes your delivery minimum - below that order size, delivery isn't offered as a checkout option at all, and the guest sees a note telling them how much more to add to unlock it, instead of the option just disappearing with no explanation.

For example, a restaurant might set it up like this (these are illustrative numbers, not a default - you choose your own thresholds and percentages entirely):

This is only a sandbox to help you think through your own numbers - it doesn't save anything. When you're ready, build your real tiers from Profile Settings → Delivery Fee Split → Advanced on your dashboard, where the same live "Guest pays $X / You cover $Y" preview appears next to each row as you set it up for real.

Your Own Ordering Widget

Paste one script tag onto your own website - any platform, not just WordPress - and get a floating "Order online" button that opens your live menu and hands off to checkout. There's no menu to keep in sync: it always renders live from the same menu you manage on your dashboard.

Replace your-restaurant-slug with your own - ask the platform admin if you're not sure what yours is. Paste it anywhere on your site; it doesn't need a particular spot on the page.

If you're closed or outside your hours, guests see your real reopen time instead of a live orderable menu. If an item goes unavailable between when a guest adds it to cart and when they check out, the widget re-checks with the server before submitting and adjusts the order automatically - nothing silently breaks.

Connecting Your POS

If the platform offers it, you can connect Square or Clover from your Profile Settings so an accepted order is pushed straight to your in-store system automatically, the moment you accept it - on top of (never instead of) the dashboard, email, and order-acknowledgment notifications you already get.

Loyalty & Rewards

A punch card, not a coupon: a guest who orders from you a set number of times earns one free item, chosen from a short list you've explicitly approved as safe to give away. There's no discount-code or percentage-off system anywhere on the platform - food and drink margins are thin enough already, and this avoids opening the door to coupon abuse.

Setting it up

From your Profile Settings' Loyalty Program card: turn it on, choose how many completed orders earn a reward (5 is a common starting point), and optionally set a minimum number of days between redemptions so a burst of same-day orders can't unlock more than one free item faster than you're comfortable with. Then, on any menu item's edit screen, check "Loyalty Reward" to make that specific item redeemable - this is off by default for every item, so your most expensive dish never becomes a free reward just because the feature exists.

What guests see

A logged-in guest sees their progress toward the next reward right on your public menu page - a small progress bar until they qualify, then a "Redeem" option listing whichever items you've approved. Redeeming adds the chosen item to their cart at $0.00 and resets their progress once the order is placed and completed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why don't I see Delivery as a checkout option for my customers?

Three common reasons: no delivery provider is currently available to you, the specific item(s) in the cart aren't marked delivery-available (check each item's Menu Item Details), or the cart is under your own delivery minimum if you've set order-size tiers - see Delivery Minimum & Fee Split. If none of those explain it, ask the platform admin to check the delivery provider's configuration.

Why can't I change my business category?

It's locked the moment you apply, on purpose - see Applying. Contact the platform admin if it genuinely needs to change; your cuisine, on the other hand, is always editable from your own Profile Settings.

My payout hasn't shown up yet - what's going on?

Check your Payouts tab for your Stripe Connect status and current balance first. Money only becomes payable after a holding period (a few days, set by the platform) and only once your balance clears the platform's minimum payout threshold.

A customer says their order was missing an item, or arrived wrong.

Use your Messages tab to sort it out directly with the guest if messaging is enabled. There's no built-in refund tool on your own dashboard - for a refund or an order-level dispute, contact the platform admin.

Can I offer a discount code or coupon?

Not on this platform - see Loyalty & Rewards for the punch-card alternative, which is the intentional design here instead of discount codes.

How do I get more locations, or a lower commission rate?

Both are tied to your plan tier. Ask the platform admin about upgrading if you need more locations than your current plan allows, or a better marketplace rate.

Still Need Help?

This page covers the day-to-day of running your shop. For anything account-specific - billing questions, a technical issue this page doesn't explain, or something that looks broken - contact the platform admin directly rather than guessing at a fix yourself.