How to create a WooCommerce pizza builder (with custom toppings)
Who doesn’t enjoy pizza? Almost everyone has a personal preference for it, but with a standard WooCommerce installation, it’s not possible to allow customers to place custom pizza orders. This is why you need a pizza builder!
Allowing customers to choose the type of pizza they want is a sure-fire way to increase orders and retain customers.
In a restaurant or a pizzeria, anyone can simply walk in and place a custom pizza order by telling their preference for pizza topping, cheese or even design a half-and-half pizza. To give the same experience to online customers, you need to add a pizza builder like this:
View a working demo of the pizza builder.
Let's see how you can create a custom pizza builder with the WooCommerce Product Options plugin. This allows your customers to place custom pizza orders and customize pizzas.
Setting up a WooCommerce pizza store
In this section, we’ll go through a step-by-step guide on creating a pizza builder from scratch. If you already have a WooCommerce store up and running on your website, you can skip to the next step - Creating a WooCommerce pizza builder.
Step 1: Setting up a WooCommerce store
This tutorial assumes you have a WordPress website up and running. If you want to learn more about WordPress, here are some useful resources to help you get started.
WooCommerce is the best and easiest way to start selling online using WordPress. In this tutorial, we’ll use it to set up an online pizza store. Here’s how you can get started:
- Log into your website’s admin dashboard.
- Head over to Plugins → Add New.
- In the search bar, type ‘WooCommerce’ and click on the Install button. Once the installation is complete, click on the Activate button.
- Once you activate the plugin, you’ll be redirected to the setup wizard. Here you can enter your store-related information such as the address, industry, product types, etc.
- You can also select a WordPress theme for your store. I am going with the Storefront theme as it is free and comes with all the necessary features and compatibility with most plugins and services.
- Once the setup wizard is finished, go to WP dashboard → WooCommerce and complete additional steps such as adding tax rates, shipping methods, and payments.
Now that the pizza store is set up let’s add products (pizzas) to your store.
Step 2: Adding pizza products
Since we are creating a pizza builder with custom variation options, we’ll only need to add one product for each pizza type. All the customization options, such as types of bread, cheese, and toppings, will be added later as extra options with WooCommerce Product Options.
First, create categories for your online pizzeria
Before adding a pizza, let’s first add a product category. That's important because your pizza restaurant might offer varieties of items such as pizzas, sides, drinks, or desserts. Categories will help us easily add custom variable options later.
Here’s how you add a WooCommere product category:
- In your WP Dashboard, go to Products → Categories.
- In the ‘Add New Product Category’ section on the left, add a new category for each food item variety in your menu. Add the category name and the URL slug. You can also add a brief description of the category.
- Click on the Add new Category button.
You’ve successfully created a new category for your pizzeria. Repeat the same steps to add more to your restaurant’s menu categories.
Add the pizza products
Now that you have your categories in place, let’s start adding products to your store.
Here’s how you can add a pizza as a product.
- In your WP Dashboard, go to Products → Add New. We’ll add each pizza as a new product and later add extra options with WooCommerce Product Options.
- In the Add New Product page, enter the name of your pizza, such as margherita and veggie pizza.
- Enter product data, such as description, images, price, etc., in the respective fields. You don’t have to select any variable options at this step.
- Select the product category you created earlier, such as pizzas.
- Once you’ve added the details, click on the Publish button.
Repeat the steps above and add other products to your online pizzeria. Depending on your pizzeria's menu, you can add multiple products to your store. Just make sure not to add products for every variation. We’ll add the pizza builder or the customization options in the next step.
Step 3: Creating a WooCommerce pizza builder
For this section, we’ll use the WooCoommerce Product Options plugin. It is designed to help store owners give more customization freedom to their customers while placing orders. You can add various types of extra product options to your store and give your customers a more personalized shopping experience.
You can add multiple types of product variations and attributes, such as radio buttons, checkboxes, clickable images, dropdowns, etc. This will give your customers more freedom to create the type of pizza they want by making selections on the pizza/product page.
Here's why the WooCommerce Product Options plugin is perfect for you:
- WooCommerce Product Options come with multiple options types, such as radio buttons, checkboxes, dropdowns, clickable images, etc.
- It is easy to set up and integrates perfectly with any WooCommerce store.
- You can also assign additional prices to pizza or product add-ons. For example, if the customer selects extra cheese as an add-on to their pizza, the final price of the pizza will be increased with the predefined value automatically.
- You can create conditional options, which will only be displayed when a user selects other variable options.
- A single option group can be applied to any number of pizzas or products in seconds. You don’t need to add or update extra product options individually.
- You can easily make all the customizations and changes from the plugin settings page.
If you want to add custom pizza options to your online Pizzeria store, using WooCommerce Product Options is a no-brainer. If you do not have the plugin, you can get it here.
Let's see how you can create a WooCommerce pizza builder!
Installing the WooCommerce Product Options plugin
To install the plugin, follow these steps.
- Log into your website’s admin dashboard and go to Plugins → Add New.
- Upload the plugin zip file. If you do not have the plugin zip file, you can download it from the My Account page.
- Once the installation is complete, click on the Activate button. You’ll be redirected to the setup wizard.
- Enter the license key in the field and activate the plugin.
Add custom pizza options
Now we can start adding product or pizza options.
- For this, go to Products → Product Options.
- Click on the Add Group button to create a new group for your pizza options.
- Give the group a proper name and assign it to the respective products or product categories. I am adding it to the 'Pizza' category I created earlier. This way, the options will be visible for all products (pizzas) in that category.
- Click on the Save button.
Now let’s add individual options for the pizza builder.
For this, open the Option Group you created and click on the Add Option button.
Here, I am adding the following options:
- A radio button for a pizza crust/Bread with no additional charges.
- Checkboxes for toppings (charged additionally).
- A checkbox for an extra cheese option.
- Create a Meal option for large orders with conditional sub-options such as cola and fries.
Here’s how this can be done:
- Give your option a name. You can choose whether you want to display the name.
- Select the option type from the Grid. For the crust option, I am choosing the radio button (as there can be only one crust per pizza).
- Add your choices in the fields with the price type you want to add. I am not assigning any price to bread options.
- Further, you can display the option name and description and make the field mandatory (if needed).
- Click on the Add option button to add a single option to the group.
You have successfully added an option. You can repeat the steps to add more options to the group.
Adding conditional product options
For the last option (Create a meal), I want to add a conditional display option where the cola and fries option should only be displayed when the user ticks the ‘Create a Meal’ checkbox.
Here’s how this can be done.
After adding the details related to the checkbox, enable the Advanced settings option. In the conditional logic section, set the option to show the options.
You need to have your sub-options saved earlier. If you do not have that, you can create a new option for the same (checkboxes for Cola and Fries) and later select them in the option you are currently setting up (Create a meal).
Once you select them, they will only show up on the product page when the customer selects the parent checkbox. This saves page space and makes the product options look cleaner and aesthetically neat.
Once you are done making all the changes, click on the Save changes button.
Voila! You’ve successfully created an options group for your ecommerce pizza store products. Now you can start accepting custom pizza food delivery orders for your store.
You can check the pages of products you have customized and find the product options under the product title section.
If you want to make changes to the options or the whole option group, you can click on the edit button for the option group or click on the Manage Options button. Just make sure you click on the Save changes button after making the changes.
This is what your pizza builder should look like after making all those changes.
Build your own WooCommerce pizza builder with product variations
With the WooCommerce Product Options plugin, it's super-simple to set up and manage a pizza builder interface for your online pizzeria. Even if you are unfamiliar with WooCommerce and would prefer to focus on your pizzeria, WooCommerce Product Options will help you easily manage your pizza addons and customizations.
Here’s why the WooCommerce Product Option is the best plugin for this:
- Easily add custom responsive options to your online pizza restaurant.
- The plugin comes with nearly a dozen custom fields to choose from.
- You can assign additional prices for each option. Choose from quantity-based fee, flat fee, percentage increase/decrease, or even character count.
- You can also add conditional options to make some options appear once the user selects specific options.
- Easily make all the changes from the plugin's settings page, and no need to update each product individually. There is no need to add any shortcode to display custom options.
- Receive exceptional support from the Barn2 support team and access to detailed documentation and tutorials.
- You are always covered by the no-questions-asked money-back guarantee.
To give WooCommerce Products Options a try, get it here.
Let me know if you have any questions related to creating a pizza builder or the WooCommerce Product Options plugin in the comments. Also - if you found this guide useful, please do share it!
What's next? Learn how to allow customers to create engraved products in WooCommerce.