Food ordering: What is the difference between WooCommerce Product Table and WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering?
At Barn2, we have two popular plugins for creating a food order system: WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering and WooCommerce Product Table. This article will help you to choose which is best for your site.
Background
We built WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering because so many restaurants were using our WooCommerce Product Table plugin, and we felt they deserved a purpose-built solution.
When we analysed how restaurants were using WooCommerce Product Table, we saw that the table layout wasn't necessarily the best layout for a food order form. For example, a lot of our customers were hiding elements such as the table header and cell borders, and weren't using features such as the search box and filter dropdowns. We felt that they needed a solution that is more similar to platforms like Uber Eats and Grub Hub. ​
As a result, we built WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering to meet the needs of restaurants more closely.
Plugin comparison
As you can see from the screenshots above, WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering displays foods differently from WooCommerce Product Table. Which one you choose is largely a matter of personal preference. You can also compare the main features below:
| WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering | WooCommerce Product Table | |
|---|---|---|
| Layout | Grid layout - choice of 1, 2 or 3 columns | Table layout - 1 food item per row |
| Food information | Choose to display food images, short description, price, buy button, and category information | Huge choice of column options |
| Ease of use | Automatically creates a food order form structured by category on install. Use a shortcode to create further order forms | Add product tables using a Gutenberg block or shortcode |
| Food options | Customers can choose variations and extra options in a lightbox | Displays variations and extra options in the add to cart column |
| Lightbox | Built-in lightbox to display product information, variations, extra options and quantity boxes in a popup | Integrates with our WooCommerce Quick View Pro plugin |
| Search, sort & filter | Not included, as most restaurants don't require this | Search box, column sorting, filter dropdowns and widgets |
Related tutorial: Complete guide to creating a WooCommerce restaurant ordering system.