In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about how to set up WooCommerce shipping by user role on your WordPress website.

If you use WooCommerce to power your e-commerce store, you probably already know that the plugin offers lots of flexible shipping options out of the box. These include multiple shipping zones, the ability to let customers choose between different WooCommerce shipping methods, and the option to offer free shipping based on the amount spent. However, the free WooCommerce plugin doesn’t let you offer different shipping options to different customers based on their user role.

The solution is to use the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin to charge role-based shipping fees. Keep reading to learn how you can add WooCommerce shipping by user role to your e-commerce store in under 15 minutes 🚀.

Why offer WooCommerce role-based shipping?

Depending on the type of e-commerce store you’re running, you might consider offering different shipping methods to different customers based on their user role. Here are some use case scenarios where it makes sense to set up WooCommerce shipping by user role:

  • WholesaleLet’s say you sell to both retail customers and wholesale buyers. You could offer free shipping to your retail users only, or offer additional bulk shipping or table rate shipping options for logged-in wholesale users. Alternatively, you could offer free shipping to your top-tier wholesale user roles only. You would simply move wholesale users to the top-tier as a special benefit after they spend a certain amount at your store. Normal wholesale users would continue to pay for shipping i.e. they’ll only see flat rate shipping.
  • Members-only sitesIf you run a membership shop alongside your public-facing store, you could sell to regular customers and charge them for shipping while members get access to benefits such as discounted (or free) shipping options. This way, you don’t have to absorb shipping costs for all customers.
  • Logged-in customersYou can offer discounted shipping rates to customers who are logged into their user accounts. In this case, guest users (i.e. logged out users) would have to pay the full shipping rates. In other words, you can pass on shipping costs to guest users.

There are plenty of ways you can set up WooCommerce shipping by user role depending on the type of store you’re running and the different customers you sell to. And the easiest way to do this is by using the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin.

WooCommerce Wholesale Pro - the perfect way to restrict shipping by user role

WooCommerce Wholesale Pro makes it incredibly easy for e-commerce store owners to set up shipping by user role. The plugin lets you create an unlimited number of user roles and assign different shipping options to each one.

For example, you can decide which shipping options to make available for retail and wholesale customers. You might offer local pickup options and free shipping to your wholesale customers and free shipping to retail customers. This is a great way to personalize the customer experience your WooCommerce store delivers based on the customer’s user role.

In addition, you can use the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin to charge different prices per product and offer customers different payment gateways (i.e. payment methods) based on their user role. This is great for when you need to give wholesale customers the option to make payments via invoice or direct bank transfer, while retail customers can only pay using an online payment gateway such as credit card, Stripe, or PayPal.

How to add WooCommerce shipping by user role

For this tutorial, we’ll assume you already have the free WooCommerce plugin installed on your WordPress website.

Step #1: Get the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin

Get the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin and install and activate it on your WordPress website. You’ll receive the plugin files along with a license key in the confirmation email. Activate your license key in the setup wizard.

Step #2: Create user roles

WooCommerce itself comes with a basic 'customer' role, and WooCommerce Wholesale Pro creates your first 'wholesale' role when you first install it. You can create as many additional user roles as you’d like.

To do this, head to WooCommerceSettingsWholesaleRoles and click the Add new role button to create a new WooCommerce user role. For example, you might create an extra custom role for Wholesale Customers:

Wholesale customers user role

You can give each user role a display name, discount, and choose to enable product-specific pricing.

Once you’ve created the user role, click the Save changes button.

Step #3: Configure shipping zones in WooCommerce

Go to WooCommerceSettingsShippingShipping zones to set up regions and shipping methods from the shipping settings screen. You can create custom shipping zones based on your online store and the shipping service you’d like to offer. For example, you might create a Local Shipping Zone and offer customers local pickup and free shipping options. You can also add shipping zones for sales within your country, international orders, etc.

For each shipping zone, add as many shipping methods as you like:

Add shipping method in WooCommerce

To do this, click the Add shipping method button and use the dropdown menu to select the shipping method you want to add.

Shipping zones in WooCommerce

If you want to charge different shipping prices to different user roles, then enter each one as an additional shipping option. For example, if you're charging a flat rate of $9.99 to normal customers and $19.99 to wholesale users, then create two different flat rate options.

Once you’ve added all the shipping methods for that zone, click the Save changes button to continue. Repeat the process to add shipping options to your other zones.

Step #4: Assign user roles to available shipping methods

Now you’ve set up shipping zones and shipping methods, head over to WooCommerceSettingsShippingShipping roles in the WordPress admin.

You’ll see a list of all the different shipping methods, divided into separate sections for regular and wholesale users:

WooCommerce wholesale shipping options

Offer different shipping methods per user role

By default, wholesale roles will be assigned to the wholesale shipping options and other roles will be assigned to the regular shipping options. Feel free to change this as needed to control which user roles can see each shipping option. When you delete user roles from specific shipping methods, users with these roles will be unable to see the shipping method on the WooCommerce checkout page.

For example, you might offer local pickup options to Wholesale Customers and free shipping to the Customer role. To do this, simply remove all the roles that should not have access to each shipping method.

Pro tip: It’s a good idea to add the Administrator (or the Shop Manager) user role to each shipping method. This makes it easy for store owners to test out the different shipping options to make sure everything is working properly.

Preview

That’s it! When you add products to your shopping cart and proceed to the checkout page, you should see the correct shipping methods for your user role. More specifically, here’s what you’ll see if you’re a guest user, retail customer, and wholesale customer:

Bonus: Show shipping costs per user role on the product page

Before we finish, I'll give you a tip which will make it much easier for your users to see the shipping costs for their role.

Normally, WooCommerce is terrible at this because it only displays shipping costs on the checkout page. You can fix this by using the WooCommerce Shipping Calculator plugin to let customers enter their location and view the cost for their role directly on the product page.

WOOCOMMERCE PRODUCT PAGE SHIPPING CALCULATOR

This significantly improves on the default WooCommerce shipping calculator by making shipping information available when the customer needs it the most.

If the customer is logged into their account then they will see the correct shipping cost for their user role. Perfect!

Next steps

Although WooCommerce offers tons of shipping options out of the box, it doesn’t let you set up shipping by user role. The easiest way to do this is by using a WooCommerce shipping plugin with the extra features you need - and WooCommerce Wholesale Pro is perfect for this.

You can create as many user roles as you’d like, configure WooCommerce shipping zones, and assign user roles to the available shipping methods. It’s incredibly easy to set up and you don’t have to mess around with code.

You get:

  • Quick plug-and-play setup for the plugin.
  • In-depth documentation (there's absolutely no way to get it wrong).
  • Expert technical support if you need any help.
  • 30-day money-back guarantee. Love it or get a full refund!

Get the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin and add WooCommerce role-based shipping to your online store.

WooCommerce multiple prices per product

The WooCommerce plugin is designed to let e-commerce store owners sell each product at the same price to everyone – regardless of their status or user role. This means that you can’t set WooCommerce multiple prices per product for different types of customers. Keep reading to discover the solution!

In this tutorial, we’ll tell you about an easy way to charge different prices to different user roles. You can use this WooCommerce dynamic pricing solution to have as many user roles as you want – members, wholesale buyers, retail customers – with different pricing for each one.

The best part is that you can show different product prices to each user group without having to duplicate WooCommerce products. Having multiple versions of each product is fine if there are genuine differences between them. However, this can cost you a lot of time if the products you’re selling are 100% identical, and only the prices are different.

The easiest way to set WooCommerce multiple prices per product is by using the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin. It lets you create unlimited user roles and add multiple prices per product depending on the user role.

Why charge multiple prices per product?

As a WooCommerce store owner, you might consider selling products to different types of customers at different prices.

For example, you might want to sell products to wholesale customers at reduced prices since they typically buy in bulk and add a markup when reselling each item. Or, if you’re running a membership program, you might consider offering members-only discounts on certain products.

For this, you will need to set WooCommerce multiple prices per product. This way, customers will see the correct product prices on the front-end, depending on their user role. Charging multiple prices per product is a great way to encourage each type of customer to buy more.

WooCommerce Wholesale Pro: the perfect plugin to charge different pricing per user role

WooCommerce Wholesale Pro makes it easy to charge multiple prices for the same product. You can set WooCommerce multiple prices per product without having to duplicate the product.

With the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin, you can create as many user roles as you’d like, each with their own pricing. For example, if you want to sell to retail customers, wholesale customers and members, you can offer different discounts to each user role. The plugin also lets you set global and category percentage discounts and different prices for specific products.

Although the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin was designed with wholesale stores in mind, you can use it for just about any type of store that needs user role pricing. It works with all sorts of products, including simple products and product variations. It also lets you hide product prices from logged out users.

In addition, the plugin makes it easy to set up front-end registration forms. You can also show and hide product categories, taxes, payment and shipping options - all based on user role.

How to set WooCommerce multiple prices per product

As you can see, WooCommerce Wholesale Pro lets you set and display different prices for the same product, depending on the user’s role. This way, you don’t have to duplicate the products you’d like to sell to different types of customers.

We’ll assume you already have the WooCommerce plugin set up on your WordPress website and some products added.

Step #1: Get the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin

Get the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin. Log in to the WordPress admin and install and activate the plugin. At the time of purchase, you’ll receive the plugin files along with a license key in a confirmation email. Copy this to your clipboard.

WooCommerce Wholesale Pro license key

Next, head over to WooCommerceSettingsWholesaleGeneral and paste the license key in the License key field. Click the Save changes button at the bottom of the screen to proceed.

Step #2: Create and set up new user roles

Go to the Roles tab and add as many user roles as you like. The first one has already been created for you. Create a separate role for each user group that you want to add separate pricing for.

Next, you can either add a global percentage discount on all products per user role, set category percentage discounts per role, or set exact prices for each WooCommerce product per role.

Global percentage discounts

Head over to WooCommerceSettingsWholesaleRoles and click the Add new role button. Enter the percentage discount you’d like to offer that user role.

Global percentage discount for WooCommerce multiple prices per product

For example, you can offer:

  • Members a 3% discount
  • Silver Wholesale Buyers a 5% discount
  • Gold Wholesale Buyers a 10% discount

Click the Save changes button to continue.

With WooCommerce Wholesale Pro, you don’t have to set up discount rules. This makes it easy to set up bulk pricing and offer wholesale customers bulk discounts.

Category percentage discounts

Go to Products Categories from the WordPress admin panel and edit the product category you’d like to set category percentage discounts for.

WooCommerce multiple prices per product category

Next, scroll down to the Wholesale % discount option and set the percentage discounts for each user role. The WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin makes it easy to set pricing rules.

Click the Update button to continue.

Exact prices for each product or variation

You can also set exact product prices (i.e. fixed prices) for individual products instead of offering a percentage discount. To do this, simply tick the checkbox next to the Product specific pricing option.

Product specific pricing option for WooCommerce multiple prices per product

So, if you’re selling a variable product such as t-shirts to retail customers for $18, you could price them differently for other user roles. You can do this from the Product data section. For example:

Set WooCommerce multiple prices per product for individual products
  • Members can purchase the t-shirt for $15.50
  • Silver Wholesale Buyers can purchase the t-shirt for $13.99
  • Gold Wholesale Buyers can purchase the t-shirt for $12.99

Click the Save changes button to continue.

Briefly mention other features such as wholesale registration and login, and the ability to hide prices from logged out users.

Preview

Here’s what a WooCommerce product page (the variable product t-shirt) will look like to users with different user roles – guest users, Members, Silver Wholesale Buyers, and Gold Wholesale Buyers – on the front-end:

This is the easiest way to set and display WooCommerce multiple prices per product. The best part is that you don’t have to duplicate products for each user role you want to sell to.

Guest users will see the regular price of the product on the single product page whereas Members, Silver Wholesale Buyers, and Gold Wholesale Buyers will see different prices for the t-shirt based on their user role. They can then click the add to cart button and proceed to the checkout page.

You can do all of this using the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin without having to use HTML/CSS code or adding code to the functions.php file via FTP.

Bonus: role-based shipping and payment options

The WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin also gives you granular control over shipping and payment options based on user roles. You can easily select which user roles can use each shipping method by heading over to WooCommerceSettingsShippingShipping roles.

Shipping options

Similarly, you can head over to WooCommerceSettingsShippingPayment roles to select which user roles can use each payment method.

Payment options

Bonus: show different layouts to different types of users

The WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin integrates seamlessly with the WooCommerce Product Table plugin. This means that you can show different layouts to different types of users.

wholesale ecommerce layout

For example, if you’re selling to retail customers and wholesale buyers, you might consider setting up:

  • A traditional shop page for your retail customers who might need to browse through your online product catalog with add to cart buttons.
  • Quick, one-page order forms with checkboxes for your wholesale buyers since they typically know what they want to buy and are likely to purchase in bulk.

You can buy the WooCommerce Product Table plugin in a bundle with the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin and show a different layout to logged-in users with a wholesale role.

Start charging multiple prices per product today!

Using the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin, you can create as many user roles as you’d like and set multiple prices per product on your online store. This is a great way to encourage customers to buy more from you and increase your bottom line.

In addition to this, you can pair it up with the WooCommerce Product Table plugin to enhance your store’s visual appeal and usability by showing different layouts to different types of users.

You get a:

  • Plug-and-play setup for the plugin.
  • In-depth documentation (absolutely no way to get it wrong).
  • Technical support is available if you need any help.
  • 30-day money-back guarantee. Love it or get a full refund, 0 risk!

Get the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin today and start charging WooCommerce multiple prices per product.

Online convenience store

By the time you're done reading this article, you'll know exactly how to start an online convenience store and sell groceries online.

Many people's lives now heavily rely on online purchasing and selling. People can buy at virtual stores in the convenience of their homes . Online markets offer a fresh and more practical setting for the exchange of almost all products and services.

Online sales have gained popularity among both companies and customers as a more affordable and practical method of shopping and  till date remains profitable model.

So, how can convenience stores and grocery stores stay in business in  uncertain times?

The solution

The online business model helps the suppliers and customers to remain in business unaffected during emergency situations. One way to continue selling products to customers is by switching up your business model to selling online. By setting up an online convenience store, you can continue providing essential supplies to the general public while keeping your business going and reach a larger audience beyond your local area.

The easiest way to do this is with a WordPress WooCommerce website, coupled with one of these plugins for displaying your products:

So, if you're looking for a way to sell convenience store products and grocery items, then don't worry! This in-depth guide will show you how to start an online convenience store. As well as making it quick and easy to find and buy groceries and other products, you'll learn how to offer local grocery collection and home delivery options.

And the best part? We'll show you step-by-step how you can set up your online convenience store and sell groceries online. It's quick and easy, and there's absolutely no technical knowledge required to follow this tutorial. You can set everything up and start selling in no time!

Choosing the right plugin for your online convenience store

Before you can start setting up your online convenience store, it's a good idea to take a step back and figure out what sort of layout would be best for the types of products you're selling.

For example:

  • If you sell a dozen grocery items or fresh produce, you'd be better off with a menu-style food order form. This makes online grocery shopping quick and easy.
  • However, if you plan on selling hundreds (or even thousands) of convenience store products, a searchable and sortable product table ordering form with filters would be better suited to your needs.

Take another look at the two options, and choose whichever layout is best for you:

The WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin is designed specifically for selling food products like flour, grains, fruits, and vegetables. The plugin also lets you display food items in a tiled layout on your site's front-end with 1, 2, or 3 columns.

On the other hand, the WooCommerce Product Table plugin is ideal for selling a large number of products, like convenience store products. It comes with searching, sorting, and filtering options out of the box to help people quickly and easily find what they need.

Next, I'll show you how to use each plugin to sell groceries or other convenience store products online.

Before you start

This tutorial assumes that you already have a WordPress website with the free WooCommerce installed, and some products added. If you haven't got that far yet, then checkout this ultimate guide to WooCommerce.

Once you're done, come back here and continue transforming your website into a fully fledged online grocery or convenience store.

Option 1 - How to start selling groceries online using the WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin

The easiest way to start selling groceries online is by using the WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin. All you have to do is create categories for your grocery food items, and the plugin will automatically list them in a food order form page for you.

Online grocery store

Here's what you need to do:

  1. Get the WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin and install and activate it to your WooCommerce site.
  2. Go to WooCommerce → Settings Restaurant and activate the plugin's license key.
  3. Choose which page you'd like to display the grocery order form on using the Restaurant order page dropdown.
  4. Select which Categories to include in your grocery order form using the dropdown.
  5. Choose what information you'd like to display about your groceries.
  6. Click the Save changes button at the bottom of the screen to proceed.

Once that's done, go to the main list of Pages in the WordPress admin and find a new page called 'Restaurant Ordering'. Change the name to something more appropriate, and you'll see that this page lists all your grocery products.

Alternatively, you can use the [restaurant_ordering] shortcode to list each grocery category on a separate page or in a tabbed layout or on multiple pages on your website.

You can now start accepting online orders. Customers can view your 'Buy groceries' page and add products to the cart. If you've added variations of your groceries (for example, to provide different size options for the same product) then these will appear in a lightbox. Perfect!

Option 2 - How to set up an online convenience store using the WooCommerce Product Table plugin

Convenience store form preview

The WooCommerce Product Table plugin makes it easy to set up an online convenience store in WooCommerce in a few simple steps. The first thing you need to do is create categories for your online convenience store items. Do this under Products → Categories.

Once that's done, follow these steps to display your products on the front-end:

  1. Get the WooCommerce Product Table plugin and install and activate it on your website.
  2. Go to WooCommerce → Settings Products Product tables and activate the plugin's license key.
  3. To display the product table on the front-end, either:
    1. Use the [product_table] shortcode to list all the products in a table with a Categories or Tags filter above.
    2. Tick the Table display boxes on the plugin settings page to enable the product table layout throughout your online convenience store. This way, people will see the tables on the shop and individual category pages and can browse the store as needed.
  4. Tick the checkbox next to the Lazy load option under the Loading products section if you plan on selling hundreds of products.
  5. If you have lots of products, then you'll also want to enable the Search and Filter options.
  6. Set the Add to cart button dropdown to either Checkbox only or Button and checkbox. This way, customers can quickly choose quantities, variations, and tick multiple products before adding them all to the cart.
  7. Click the Save changes button at the bottom of the screen to proceed.

Set up local collection and home delivery options

The WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering and WooCommerce Product Table plugins are the perfect way to list grocery and convenience store products in a one-page order form. Once customers add products to their cart, they can proceed to the checkout page.

The WooCommerce plugin handles the entire checkout process. This means that you can give customers the option to collect the grocery items and convenience store products from your physical store, or have them delivered straight to their doorstep like Amazon. You can offer free delivery or charge a delivery fee.

In addition, online grocery and convenience stores can choose to either restrict their customers to a specific local area. Or, they can open up their usual market by offering nationwide (or even international) delivery options.

To take things to the next level, you can let customers choose their collection or delivery time slot. You can easily do this with the WooCommerce Opening Hours & Chosen Times plugin. This way, you can let people choose an exact time slot for their local grocery store delivery or collection.

The delivery slots plugin works seamlessly with WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering and WooCommerce Product Table. Offering delivery services is a great way to enhance the customer's shopping experience.

Set up your online convenience store today!

The WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin makes it easy for customers to purchase grocery items from your e-commerce store. And the WooCommerce Product Table plugin lets you set up an online convenience store and start selling hundreds (or even thousands) of products in no time.

Plus, you can offer grocery delivery services. This gives customers the option to collect their orders from your store or have it delivered to their home the way Amazon does it.

Both plugins come with everything you need to get up and running quickly:

  • Quick plug-and-play setup.
  • In-depth documentation (absolutely no way to get it wrong).
  • Technical support is available if you need any help.
  • 30-day money-back guarantee. Love it or get a full refund - zero risk!

Get the WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin and sell groceries online today through your online grocery store. Or, use the WooCommerce Product Table plugin to set up an online convenience store. Choose the right plugin for your needs, and set it up today!

Order food PayPal

By the time you’ve read this article, you’ll know exactly how to set up PayPal for food orders. Your customers will be able to order food using PayPal, just like with hosted services such as Grubhub, Just Eat and UberEats - but with you in control.

Over the past few years, mobile payments have been very popular, and this trend is anticipated to continue as more businesses use this technology. This implies that more restaurants have started accepting cash-less food orders in coming years. Restaurants that set up online food ordering systems have seen a huge increase in takeaway orders! Restaurants are now having to make permanent changes to stay in business longer-term. Online food orders are an important part of this.

Of course, customers LOVE PayPal because it's so easy and they can pay for food orders from their mobiles.

So, how can a restaurant like yours set up online ordering with easy PayPal payments?

By the end of this FREE guide, you’ll walk away knowing EXACTLY:

  • What you need to set up online orders for your restaurant with PayPal payments just like Grubhub, Just Eat or Uber Eats.
  • How to set up all of the components without any technical knowledge or experience.
  • How to do all of this EVEN if you don’t have a website yet!

And the best part? We’ll show you how to automate the whole process.

Why PayPal alone is a terrible way to sell food online

If you’ve used PayPal to accept payments for your products or services, you probably already know that it’s not the best way to sell food online.

The problem with using PayPal for food orders is that you have to log into your PayPal account to create each PayPal payment button individually. After creating the buttons, you paste them on your website. This doesn’t look professional and makes for a terrible user experience.

Further, PayPal doesn't provide a shopping cart system that lets customers order multiple food items at once. This is a major problem since most people need to order more than one food item at a time!

From a back-end perspective, you won’t receive any sort of ‘new order’ notification or customer emails if you use PayPal alone for food orders. You will only receive basic payment notifications from PayPal which may get mixed up with other PayPal emails.

You also miss out on analytics and sales reporting features (like Google Analytics) as well as the ability to integrate with other systems, such as opening hours, delivery slots or the printer in your restaurant’s kitchen.

But what if you could set up PayPal for food orders just like Grubhub - without any of these problems?

The solution – Build a WordPress WooCommerce website for selling food online

WooCommerce restaurant plugin

A WordPress website with the free WooCommerce plugin is a far better way to sell food online and accept payments via PayPal. The best part is that you can enhance your site’s core functionality using specialized plugins, like WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering. This makes it even easier to showcase your food items and allow customers to place orders.

The WooCommerce plugin offers seamless integration with PayPal as standard, in a much better way than if you were to use PayPal alone to let customers place orders as we described earlier.

It’s incredibly easy to set up. As a result, you can start letting customers order food with PayPal today!

Plus, this is mobile-responsive, which means it will work seamlessly on iOS and Android devices without requiring customers to download a mobile app first.

Setting up PayPal payments for food orders

If you don’t already have a WordPress website set up with the WooCommerce plugin installed, check out this complete guide on how to get started.

Once you’ve set it up and added some food items as WooCommerce products, come back to this tutorial to learn how to set up PayPal payment options for food orders.

Step #1: Get the WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin

Purchase the WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin and install and activate it on your WordPress website. You'll receive a license key with the plugin files.

WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering license key

Go to WooCommerceSettingsRestaurant and enter the license key in the License key field.

Click the Save changes button at the bottom of the screen to continue.

Step #2: Customize your restaurant food order form

The WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin automatically creates a front-end food order form for you once you activate the license key. However, you can customize the food ordering page in a variety of different ways.

For example, you can set the restaurant order page, select which product categories to showcase in the food ordering form, set the number of columns, choose an order method, and much more. You can also add your opening hours and prevent PayPal food orders from coming in while you're closed.

Check out the plugin's documentation for step-by-step instructions.

Based on your configuration settings, your food order form might look something like this:

WooCommerce food order form preview

Customers can click the (+) icon to add food items to their shopping cart and proceed to checkout.

Step #3: Set up PayPal payments

Now that your restaurant food ordering form is set up, the final step is to start accepting payments for food orders via PayPal. For this, head over to WooCommerceSettingsRestaurant from the admin area.

Enable PayPal payment method

Next, enable the PayPal payment method option and click the Set up button to start setting it up. Enter your PayPal email address in the PayPal email field. You can also configure other settings on the same screen based on your preferences.

Click the Save changes button to proceed.

When customers proceed to checkout, they'll be able to make pay for food orders with PayPal:

Order food using PayPal

That's it! Now, you can let customers place food orders and accept payments through PayPal.

Adding extra features to your PayPal-powered food ordering system

The great thing about using WordPress and WooCommerce to set up your PayPal-powered food ordering system is that you can add extra features to it using plugins. For example, you can set up food delivery slots and printing solutions that print orders straight to your restaurant’s kitchen.

Popup cart and checkout

WooCommerce restaurant floating cart

The WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin lets customers add their food items to the cart from one page. However, WooCommerce itself still takes customers through multiple pages in order to complete their order.

To speed up the cart and checkout, install WooCommerce Fast Cart. This adds an instant floating cart to the page as soon as the customer adds products to their cart. They can then review their selections, enter their details and pay from directly in the popup.

WooCommerce Fast Cart is fully compatible with the WooCommerce PayPal Checkout Payment Gateway. This lets you add PayPal Checkout buttons to the popup cart, making it even easier for customers to 'Buy Now' and place a PayPal food order.

Delivery time slots

The WooCommerce Delivery Slots plugin lets customers choose a delivery time slot for their food delivery orders similar to Eat24 Food Delivery. This makes it easy to manage food orders, especially on high-traffic days.

For example, the WooCommerce delivery slots plugin gives you the option to restrict the number of food order bookings in each time slot. In addition to this, you can set how far in advance customers should place their food orders before their delivery or takeout time slot. You can also decide how many food orders to accept within each food delivery time slot so that the kitchen doesn’t exceed capacity.

The plugin also lets customers book a delivery time slot before they add food items to their cart in order to avoid disappointment at the checkout page. This is especially useful for local restaurants that want to let customers order online and offer food delivery services.

Print orders to the kitchen

There are a variety of WordPress plugins available that let you send new food orders straight to the kitchen and print them for staff. This is possible with the WooCommerce Automatic Order Printing plugin.

Want to set up online ordering for your restaurant with PayPal payments in 30 minutes?

This plug-and-play solution was specially designed to help stop restaurants from going out of business during the Coronavirus pandemic. PayPal food orders are now essential as part of the ongoing order management of any restaurant.

You can use the WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin to set up your online food ordering system and accept payments via PayPal, credit card, or debit card just like Grubhub or Dominos. No technical knowledge is required:

  • Plug-&-play setup for the plugin.
  • FREE tutorial showing you every step and every click you need to do (absolutely no way to get it wrong).
  • Technical support is available if you need any help
  • 30-day money-back guarantee. Love it or get a full refund, 0 risks.

Get the WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin here and start getting orders TODAY!

WooCommerce hide price until login

By the end of this article, you’ll walk away knowing exactly how to use a WooCommerce hide price until login plugin. This allows everyone to browse your WooCommerce products, while only displaying prices and buy buttons to logged in users.

Some e-commerce store owners – particularly wholesale-only shops – must display prices only on their public-facing websites. In other words, they hide prices until login so that only logged-in users or wholesalers can see the product's prices and make purchases.

By default, WooCommerce doesn't offer the option to display prices exclusively to logged-in users, which means you need to enable the WooCommerce show price after login functionality to achieve this.

If you’re in a similar situation, then there’s no need to worry! The good news is that there’s an easy solution to hide prices until login. In this tutorial, we’ll explain how to set up a WooCommerce hide price until login plugin - WooCommerce Wholesale Pro - in a few simple steps.

And the best part? We’ll show you step-by-step how to use WooCommerce to hide prices until login. It’s super quick and easy and there’s absolutely no technical knowledge required to follow this tutorial. This means that you can easily use the WooCommerce hide price if not logged in feature to conceal prices from users who are not logged in on your own WooCommerce shop or a wholesale store.

Why hide price until login?

There are many different types of stores that want to let everyone browse their online store and view their product catalog while hiding prices. Many times, these online store owners want to show prices, product options, and purchasing options to logged-in users only. To ensure that only registered users can view product prices and access the add to cart feature, it's crucial to implement the login to see add to cart and prices in WooCommerce functionality, which will hide prices and 'add to cart' buttons for guest users.

Use Cases for a WooCommerce Hide Price Until Login Plugin

  • Wholesale stores that don’t sell directly to the general public and only want to show prices to wholesale customers. A WooCommerce hide price until login plugin enabled everyone to browse your inventory, while only allowing pre-approved wholesale users to register, see prices or purchases.
  • Manufacturers publish details of their products on their websites but only allow approved resellers to purchase from them.
  • WooCommerce members-only stores where people have to join a club or buy a membership before making a purchase. Letting prospective customers browse products without prices encourages them to create an account. This allows store owners to build an email list and retarget customers more effectively. In addition, it allows them to let visitors browse their products and increases their store’s online visibility.

Displaying your products publicly, while hiding prices and buy buttons from logged out users, is the perfect solution. You get the SEO benefits of having this important information available to all, and the business benefits of only allowing pre-approved customers to see prices or purchases.

Even though WooCommerce Wholesale Pro is primarily aimed at wholesale stores, it can be an ideal solution for any online store that wants to utilize the WooCommerce show price after login feature to hide prices and disable purchasing options for logged-out users and guests.

How to use WooCommerce Wholesale Pro to hide prices until login

With the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin, you can easily hide prices until login for your store’s visitors and customers. You can either hide prices completely or display alternate content in their place. For example, you could add a 'Login to view prices and place an order message, linking to your login page.

For this tutorial, we’ll assume you already have the WooCommerce plugin set up on your WordPress website and some products added to your store.

Step #1: Get the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin

The first step is to get the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin and install and activate it on your WordPress website. You’ll receive the plugin files along with a license key. Copy this to your clipboard.

WooCommerce Wholesale Pro license key

Log into your WordPress dashboard and head over to WooCommerce → Settings Wholesale General. Paste the license key in the License key field and click the Save changes button.

Step #2: Configure the plugin’s settings

From the same screen (i.e. WooCommerce → Settings Wholesale General), tick the checkbox next to the Hide prices until login option as shown in the screenshot below:

Hide price until login

This will automatically hide product prices and any information in the add to cart area (including the add to cart button, variations, product add-ons, and booking calendars).

More specifically:

  • Logged out users (non-logged-in users) will be able to browse products and view product pages as usual. However, if a user is not logged in and has not used the login to see add to cart and prices in WooCommerce feature, they will not have access to price information or the add to cart option. This also applies to other user roles such as Subscribers. Put simply; they will only be allowed to browse the store in catalog mode.
  • Logged in users with a non-wholesale role (e.g. Customers) will see the normal price for each product.
  • Logged in users with a wholesale role will see the correct wholesale price for their role.

Add alternate content for when prices are hidden

When you enable the WooCommerce 'Hide price until login' option, an 'Alternate content' field will appear underneath. You can use this to add a message which will appear for guest users when prices are hidden.

The alternative content will display as plain text by default. However, you can customize this field by incorporating shortcodes and other formatting options, which can be especially useful when implementing the WooCommerce show price after login feature. For example, in the screenshot below, we put the message in a box to make it more prominent.

WooCommerce hide price until login alternate content
Optionally display alternate content on the single product page

Next, we’ll show you how to create WooCommerce wholesale user roles with wholesale pricing. If you're only utilizing WooCommerce's hide price if not logged in feature to conceal prices from visitors and not creating a wholesale store, you can proceed to the following steps without any additional actions.

Step #3: Add wholesale user roles and prices (optional)

Go to WooCommerce → Settings Wholesale Roles from the WordPress admin panel and click the Add new role button. You can either add a global percentage discount to the default wholesale role, or create extra roles - each with their own discounts.

Add new wholesale user

If you want all new wholesale registrations to be assigned this user role automatically, tick the checkbox next to the Default role option. In addition, if you want to set exact wholesale WooCommerce prices for specific products instead of offering a percentage discount, tick the checkbox next to the Product specific pricing option.

Click the Save changes button to proceed.

You can create as many wholesale user roles as possible by following the steps outlined above.

Create user roles

For example, if you want to create a members-only WooCommerce store, you would simply create user roles for the different memberships you offer. You might have user roles for Bronze Members, Silver Members, and Gold Members.

Preview

Let’s take a look at what the online store will look like to guest users, logged in customers, and logged in wholesale users on the front end:

And here’s what the single product page will look like:

It hides prices until login for visitors and guests. On the WooCommerce main shop page, guest users will only be able to see some product detail, including the product image, ratings, sales banners, and a Read More button redirecting them to the single product page. And, on the single product page, you’ll notice that both the product’s price and add to cart options are hidden.

In order to view product prices and purchasing options, customers will have to log into their accounts.

When a user with the Customer user role logs into their account, they’ll see regular product prices (i.e. without discounts). In addition to this, they’ll also see the product prices, purchasing options (including variations), and the add to cart button on the single product pages.

When wholesale user logs into their user account, they’ll be able to see the product prices with the percentage discount applied to it (or the exact wholesale price you’ve set for the individual product). They’ll see the same wholesale rates on the single product page along with product purchasing options.

This way, they can add products to their shopping cart and proceed to the checkout page. All of this is possible without messing around with HTML/CSS code or adding code to the functions.php file via FTP.

How to hide prices for specific product categories for logged-out users

If you want to hide the price of certain product categories only for users who are not logged in, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to the Products → Categories section and select the category you wish to edit.
  2. Look for the 'Hide price until login' option, which offers three settings:
    • Use the global or parent category setting (the default) - this means the global setting (as described earlier) will be applied.
    • Hide prices from logged-out users - this means users who are not logged in will never see the price of products in this category, regardless of the global setting.
    • Show prices to logged-out users - this means users who are not logged in will always see the price of products in this category, regardless of the global setting.
  3. To control what shows up in place of the price for all hidden price categories, use the global 'Alternate content' field. Note that subcategories will inherit the parent category's setting unless you specifically hide the price for the subcategory.

In cases where a product belongs to multiple categories with different WooCommerce hide until price if not lo settings, WooCommerce Wholesale Pro will prioritize the most secure approach and hide the price from users who are not logged in.

List products without prices in quick order forms

If you have implemented the WooCommerce different price for logged in users feature to hide prices from non-registered guests and visitors, it's likely that your customers are already familiar with your products and services. As a result, they need a quicker way to select multiple products, choose variations, and add to the cart.

You can do this by using WooCommerce Wholesale Pro with the WooCommerce Product Table plugin, which comes bundled with it. It displays any or all of your products in a quick order form layout like this:

wholesale ecommerce layout

You can choose whether to enable the order form layout for guests and/or logged in wholesale users. It's an excellent way to speed up shopping, and therefore to increase your sales and conversions.

WooCommerce hide price until login

The WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin lets you hide the price on log out so that only customers who are logged in can see product prices and purchasing options. Wholesale users will be able to see wholesale prices in the wholesale store. As well as single product pages whereas users with the Customer user role will see regular prices. They can then add products to their cart and proceed to the checkout page.

By offering exclusive pricing for logged-in users, you can incentivize guest users to sign up and become members. This will expand your email list and bolster your online store's visibility in the process with the WooCommerce different price for logged in users feature. Try it out for yourself!

You get a:

  • Plug-and-play setup for the plugin.
  • In-depth documentation (absolutely no way to get it wrong).
  • Technical support is available if you need any help.
  • 30-day money-back guarantee. Love it or get a full refund, 0 risks!

Get the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin today to hide prices until login!

Restaurant mobile ordering to table

The complete guide to dine-in restaurant ordering - let customers use their phones to order food straight from their table.

As restaurants adapt to the new requirements around social distancing, it's essential to minimize direct contact with customers. An increasingly common way is to allow customers to order food from their mobile phones from their table while they dine-in. This is safer and more convenient than taking orders in person.

This tutorial will teach you how to set up food ordering for dining-in at your restaurant. The system can be hosted on any WordPress website. You can use it to allow customers to order food for dinging in from the table and have their orders sent straight to the kitchen. Staff can also use it to take online POS orders on behalf of your customers.

What you need

WooCommerce restaurant order food to table

For this tutorial you will need:

  • A website powered by WordPress. If your restaurant already uses WordPress for your main website, then you can add the mobile food ordering system to your existing site.
  • The free WooCommerce plugin to add e-commerce features to your website. This includes the ability to add your food menu, and for customers to place their orders.
  • The WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin. This plugin lists your food products on a page for customers to order from. It looks similar to your traditional printed menu, making it easy for customers to select their foods while they dine-in.
  • The Checkout Field Editor plugin. This allows you to simplify the WooCommerce checkout, removing irrelevant fields such as the food delivery address, and adding extra fields for table number and dietary requirements or allergies.

Before you start, make sure you have the WooCommerce, WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering, and Checkout Field Editor plugins installed and activated.

How it works

Once you've set up the food ordering system in this tutorial, customers can use their cellphones to order food from the table like this:

  1. Your customers arrive at the restaurant and sit at the table.
  2. One member of the party uses their phone or tablet to order food for the table. They do this by viewing the dining in food ordering page on your website. They select their food and drink from a quick one-page order form, and then proceed to the checkout.
  3. They enter some basic information on the checkout and choose whether to pay online or at the end of their meal. Finally, they enter any extra information such as their table number or allergies.
  4. The order is sent to the kitchen via email or you can add a plugin to automatically print to the kitchen.
  5. Once the food is ready, the waiting staff bring it to the table or leave it in a safe place for the customer to pick up.
  6. At the end of the meal, if the customer hasn't paid online then you can give them a bill in the usual way.

1. Add products to WooCommerce

The first step is to add each food item from your printed menu as a WooCommerce product. To do this, go to Products → Add New and add all the required information. This would typically include the product name, a short description, a price, and possibly an image.

If you offer a choice of options for particular items, you can add these as product variations or product add-ons:

  • Use variations for dishes that come with a fixed set of options, such as Small, Medium, Large.
  • Use the Product Options extension for dishes where the customer can select from a list of several options. This might include pizza toppings where the customer can add multiple options, each of which will add to the price.
WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin integration
Customers can choose extra options from a lightbox

Structure your menu into categories

Go to Products → Categories and create the categories that you'd like to structure the mobile food order form into. This should generally be the same as the categories on your printed menu - e.g. Starters, Main Courses, Desserts, etc. Then add each food product to the correct category.

2. Create a one-page food order form

To create your order form page:

  • Go to Pages -> Add New in the WordPress admin dashboard. Give your page a title, then click Publish.
  • Next, go to WooCommerce → Settings → Restaurant. Under the Restaurant order page option, select the page you just created.
  • Under Categories, select the product categories to show on your restaurant order page.

restaurant ordering settings page

You can drag and drop the categories to change the order. The settings page also includes options to show or hide certain information in the menu, select the number of columns to display, etc.

  • Save the settings, then open your Restaurant Ordering page on your website to se if everything looks correct. It should look something like the following:
Compare WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering with WooCommerce Product Table
An example of a food order form

3. Customize the WooCommerce checkout

The WooCommerce checkout is generic and not designed specifically for taking food orders. To make it perfect for ordering restaurant food at the table, I recommend adding some extra fields and hiding others. You can easily do this with the Checkout Field Editor plugin.

Install the plugin and use it to hide any fields that aren't needed. I'd recommend hiding fields such as the customer address. Since customers are ordering from their cellphones, make the checkout as simple as possible.

You may also want to add some extra fields. The most important ones for ordering food to be delivered to the table are:

  • Table number or location (e.g. inside or outside).
  • Any dietary requirements or allergies.

WooCommerce mobile restaurant checkout

Payment methods

You also need to choose how customers who order food on cellphone will pay for their order. There are two main options:

  • Pay online when they place their orderYou can use any of the payment gateways supported by WooCommerce to let customers pay when they place their order. This is good for social distancing, while saving you time taking payment at the end of the meal. The easiest payment option to set up is PayPal - it's great for customers as there's less information to enter. For credit card payments, I recommend Stripe which supports all major credit cards, debit cards, Apple Pay, etc. Set up your payment gateway under WooCommerce → Settings → Payments.
  • Pay at the end of the mealYou can keep it simple and give customers a printed bill at the end of their meal. They can then pay using your restaurant's existing payment methods (e.g. cash or using your credit card machine). Alternatively, if you want the payment to go through to the website ordering system then you can use a card reader that links with the website. There are 2 main options for this:

Let your customers know

Finally, you need to communicate how to order food from the table to your customers.

There are various options here. One way is to print an instructions sheet and put it on each table, telling customers how to order. This should include the URL (web address) of the food ordering page, for example www.myrestaurant.com/dine-in.

QR code
An example QR code

You could also include a QR code which customers scan from their phone. The QR code links directly to your order page, so gives access without having to type in URLs.

You can easily generate a QR code using QR Code Monkey.

The easy way to take food and drink orders from the table

WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering cropped

As you can see, it's surprisingly easy to set up your own online food ordering system so that customers can use their cellphone to send food orders straight to the kitchen. It promotes social distancing by minimizing direct contact between waiting staff and hungry customers.

The WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin is perfect for creating a one-page food order form.

  • Quick 10-minute setup
  • Flexible display options
  • Works on any mobile or tablet
  • 30-day money back guarantee

Sell food online from home

By the end of this article, you’ll walk away knowing exactly how to sell food online from home.

It’s no secret that the online food industry is booming. You might be thinking of starting your own food business to sell food online from home. For this, you’ll need a website that lets customers browse your menu and place their orders.

If you’re in a similar situation, then don’t worry! This in-depth guide will teach you how to sell food online from home in a few simple steps:

  • Set up your small startup food business website using WordPress and WooCommerce.
  • Use the WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin to sell food online.
  • Offer your customers home delivery options.

And the best part? We’ll show you step-by-step how to sell food online from home. It’s incredibly quick and easy and there is absolutely no technical knowledge required to follow this tutorial. This means that you can set everything up and start selling food online from home today!

Introducing WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering

WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering is a WordPress plugin that makes it easy for small food businesses and mom and pop style shops to start selling food online from home. The plugin lets you create an intuitive, front-end food order system complete with a food order form. It’s the easiest way to start selling food online from home.

Products from two categories restaurant ordering

You can add simple food products or add variations and extra product options to your food ordering system. For example, if you sell pizzas, you might want to give customers the option to select the size or extra toppings. You can also add text boxes for dietary requirements or allergens, or for letting customers add notes like Hold the pickles!.

In addition to this, you can add a sidebar to your food ordering page that contains information about the customer’s cart. This is a great way to give patrons and customers a quick overview of their order before they proceed to the checkout page.

Selling food online from home

The WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin is designed to help small food businesses deliver an exceptional user experience through their website and better manage customer orders in WooCommerce.

How to sell food online from home using WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering

Here, we’ll walk you through a step-by-step tutorial on how to sell food online from home. You might also like to sign up to our free online course, which has even more advice and tips:

Step #1: Set up WordPress and WooCommerce

If you’re just getting started then chances are you don’t already have a website set up. So, the first step is to choose a hosting provider for your food business website. Our best advice is to go with Kinsta, but you can use any hosting provider.

Next, you’ll need to install WordPress and WooCommerce (an e-commerce platform to set up your online store) on your website. If you choose to go with Kinsta, the team will install the WordPress content management system for you. However, if you’d like to take the DIY approach, we recommend checking out these helpful articles:

Once you’ve set up your basic WooCommerce-powered food business website, you can set up your basic food ordering website by installing a WordPress theme. And once your basic website is set up, come back to this tutorial for details on how to start selling food online from home.

Step #2: Add food items as WooCommerce products

Now that your WordPress site is set up, it’s time to add food items to it as WooCommerce products. To do this, head over to Products → All Products from the WordPress admin panel and click the Add New button.

Next, enter the following information for each food item you want to sell through your food business website:

Add food items as WooCommerce products
  • Name of the food item
  • A product image
  • Brief description
  • Product categories (e.g. desserts, cupcakes, snack bars, sweets)
  • Price

Click the Publish button to proceed. Add all of the food items to your food website in the same way. You can also add food variations and extra options.

Step #3: Get the WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin

Get the WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin and install and activate it on your WordPress website. You’ll receive the plugin’s license key in an order confirmation email.

WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering license key

From the WordPress dashboard, head over to WooCommerce Settings Restaurant and enter the license key in the License key field. Click the Save changes button at the bottom of the screen to continue.

Once you activate the license key, the WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin automatically creates a Restaurant Order page for you. You can access this by going to Pages All Pages from the WordPress dashboard.

If you preview the page on the front-end of your website, it should look something like this:

One-page food order form

Next, we’ll show you how you can configure the plugin’s settings to customize the food ordering page.

Step #4: Configure the plugin’s settings

To configure the WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin’s settings, head over to WooCommerce Settings Restaurant from the admin area.

Food order page

The Restaurant order page dropdown lets you choose the page to display the food order form on.

Food order page settings

You can leave it as is or select a new page if required. The WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin adds the shortcode [restaurant_ordering] to whichever page you select.

Categories

By default, the food ordering plugin lists products from all of your product categories on the food ordering form. You can use the Categories option to add the product categories you’d like to include in your food order form.

You can organize different types of food under a separate category. If you have multiple product categories selected, you can drag and drop them to change the order in which they’re listed on the front-end.

The Order form options setting lets you select the information you’d like to display in your food order forms. You can choose to display:

  • Category titles
  • Category descriptions
  • Product images
  • Product descriptions
  • Buy button

Order form options

If you’re selling products from a single category (e.g. only Cakes), you can untick the checkbox next to the Show category titles and Show category descriptions option.

Food order form display options

However, if you’re selling products from multiple product categories, we recommend leaving all of the checkboxes ticked.

Number of columns

The Number of columns option lets you choose how many columns to display food items in on the front-end. This is particularly useful for online food businesses that sell a variety of food items.

Number of columns settings

It’s also a great way to enhance the look and feel of your food order form and make it more like a real-world menu.

Order method

We recommend going with the Quick order method option to let customers quickly add food items to their cart and place their order.

Order method settings

If you’re selling food items with variations or extra product options, the WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin will automatically display a lightbox to let customers select options.

Lightbox options

Ideally, you want to display both the product image and full product description in the lightbox. We recommend leaving both checkboxes ticked.

Step #5: Preview the food ordering system

Once you’ve configured the WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin’s settings, you can preview the food ordering system on the front-end. It should look something like this:

Food order form to sell food online from home

To further enhance the customer’s shopping experience, we’ve added the WooCommerce cart widget to the sidebar. This way, customers can preview their orders before proceeding to the checkout page.

Step #6: Set up home delivery options (optional)

The WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin lets you list products in a quick, one-page food ordering form. The rest of the checkout process is provided by WooCommerce. This means that you can use WooCommerce’s built-in options to let customers order food for home delivery.

We recommend setting up WooCommerce delivery zones to offer food delivery options within a specific area only. This is much easier to manage (especially when you’re just getting started) than offering country-wide shipping options.

To take things further, you can set up a free delivery area and multiple paid delivery areas. All of this is possible with WooCommerce Shipping Zones.

Selling food gifts

Lots of small food businesses sell foods that are also perfect as gifts. Some examples of food gifts include chocolate brownies, food hampers, or gourmet marshmallows.

These are equally perfect for special occasions like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, and birthdays as well as for situations where you’re looking for a gift that isn’t too personal, for example, for a coworker.

To sell food gifts through your small food business website, you can use the WooCommerce Opening Hours & Chosen Times plugin to allow customers to choose an exact delivery date. This helps them rest assured that the food gift arrives at the exact right time!

You can also use the Checkout Field Editor plugin to add a Gift message field to the WooCommerce checkout. To take things further, you can create any additional fields such as a checkbox to let customers mark the order as a gift so that you don’t include any price information with their order.

Bonus tips

As a new food business owner, there are many things you’ll need to think about before you can start selling food from home.

For example, it’s a good idea to check out your local legislation (e.g. the FDA) and cottage food laws to see whether you need to apply for a business license, food licensing, or a food hygiene certificate. Food safety and kitchen inspection laws vary from state to state. You should be able to find out most of this information through Google.

In addition, we recommend checking out shipping rules (e.g. labeling requirements) for perishable items. For example, let’s say you’re based in New York, United States, and want to accept cross-border orders. You might want to check to see if you’re allowed to send gourmet marshmallows to your patrons and customers in Toronto, Canada.

Sell food online from home in less than 30 minutes!

Selling food online from your home kitchen or commercial kitchen is a great way to launch a small business and generate income through food sales. All you have to do is set up your small food business website, create a menu, and start accepting orders!

The WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin can help you sell food online from home by creating a one-page food order form. You can then promote your food store on social media to spread the word. We encourage you to try it out for yourself!

You get a:

  • Plug-and-play setup for the plugin.
  • In-depth documentation (absolutely no way to get it wrong).
  • Technical support is available if you need any help.
  • 30-day money-back guarantee. Love it or get a full refund, 0 risk!

Get the WooCommerce Restaurant Ordering plugin today to start selling food online!

Back in stock notification WooCommerce

If a product isn't in stock, then customers want to know the back in stock date. By the end of this article, you’ll walk away armed with the knowledge of how to set up back in stock notifications in WooCommerce and provide clear information to customers.

As an online store owner, it’s important to let your customers know when WooCommerce out of stock products will be available again, and give them an opportunity to buy from you when the product becomes available. If you don’t do this, customers will be more likely to buy from your competitors and you could miss out on sales.

For example, if you’re facing stock issues on some products due to the Coronavirus lockdown, you’ll want to let customers know when the new stock is expected to be available again.

Don’t worry, by the end of this FREE guide you’ll walk away knowing EXACTLY how to:

  • Enable backorders in WooCommerce so customers can still place orders.
  • Clearly display the WooCommerce back in stock date on product pages.
  • Allow customers to enter their email address and join a waitlist to be sent a notification email when the product is back in stock.
  • Take a hybrid approach which involves enabling backorders and setting up a waitlist.

And the best part? At the end of this article, we’ll show you how to automate the whole process so that customers can either (1) order out of stock products immediately after making an informed decision on whether to wait or (2) allow them to receive a product back in stock email when the product is available.

2 ways to deal with out of stock products

If you sell products through your e-commerce store, you’ll probably run into scenarios where some products are temporarily out of stock. The good news is that there are two ways to handle out of stock products in WooCommerce while delivering a good user experience:

  • Enable backordersYou can enable backorders on your WooCommerce store so that customers can still place orders for out of stock products. In addition, you can display the WooCommerce back in stock date when the product (for a simple product or variable product) directly on the single product page.
  • Join a WooCommerce waiting listAllow customers to enter their email addresses directly on the single product page to join a waitlist. This way, they can be notified when the product is back in stock.

Advice on setting up back in stock notifications in WooCommerce

Now, you might be wondering how you should deal with out of stock items. We explored two different implementations earlier and now we'll help you choose the best solution for your e-commerce store.

Enabling backorders in WooCommerce is generally best because the customer places the order and pays straight away. So, there’s no risk that you’ll lose the sale to a competitor. This also works for variable products i.e. WooCommerce product variations.

The second option – using an “email when back in stock” plugin – means that the customer doesn’t know how long they’ll be waiting. In this scenario, they could be more likely to buy elsewhere while they’re waiting to receive a stock alert i.e. a back in stock notification from your WooCommerce store.

That said, the 'joining a waitlist' option is best if you have major stock problems. For example, if you can’t display reliable information about when the product will be back in stock. In this sort of scenario, you’re better off taking the customer’s email address and hoping that it’s not too late to secure the sale when you do receive stock again.

How to set up back in stock notifications in WooCommerce (in 2 different ways)

Here, we’ll explain how you can set up back in stock notifications in WooCommerce in two different ways.

Method #1: Enable backorders

The easiest way to add more information to WooCommerce backorder notices on your online store is by using the WooCommerce Lead Time plugin. Its Notify customer option lets you display a backorder notice or WooCommerce back in stock date on the single product page as soon as a product goes out of stock. However, customers can still place their orders.

Here’s how you can set this up in WooCommerce:

  1. Get the WooCommerce Lead Time plugin and install and activate it to your WordPress site.
  2. Go to the product you’d like to enable backorders on and scroll down to the Product data section.
  3. Click on the Inventory tab.
    1. Set the product Stock status to On backorder using the dropdown.
    2. Use the Lead time option to let customers know when the product is expected to be back in stock. You can use this option to set a separate lead time message for specific products, for example by adding the WooCommerce back in stock date. There's no need to use a shortcode.
  4. Click the Publish button to continue.

The single product page should look something like this on the front-end:

WooCommerce Lead Time preview on the front-end

You can modify the lead time text that appears before the product-specific message for all of your products on the plugin settings page i.e. WooCommerceSettingsProducts → Lead time from the WordPress backend. All you have to do is enter the text you’d like to have displayed on the front-end in the Lead time prefix field.

WooCommerce Lead Time settings page

With backorders, customers can add the product to their cart and proceed to the checkout page - even if the product is out of stock. The clearly displayed WooCommerce back in stock date tells the customer what to expect, while still capturing the sale for you.

Method #2: Set up a waitlist

The WooCommerce Waiting List add-on lets you automatically notify customers when a product becomes available for purchase again. It replaces the add to cart button on single product pages and the shop page with a waiting list button.

All you have to do is install the WooCommerce Waitlist add-on on your WordPress website and activate it. It will automatically replace the add to cart buttons with Join waitlist buttons on the front-end for products that are out of stock.

Preview of WooCommerce Waitlist on the front-end

Customers can then enter their email address to be notified whenever the product is back in stock. On the backend, you can see the email addresses of everyone that has joined the waitlist for a product. To do this, head over to the Product data section and click on the Waitlists tab.

WooCommerce waiting list on the back-end

From here, you can send a product back in stock email notification (i.e. a stock alert) to all users on the waitlist to let them know the product is back in stock. You can also manually add or remove people from the waitlist. In addition to this, you can use the export waitlist option to get a CSV file of everyone on the email subscription list.

Can I use both solutions together?

Yes, both plugins work nicely together! So, you can use both the enable backorder and waitlist solution together on your WooCommerce store to handle out of stock products.

From a technical standpoint, you can enable the “email when back in stock” feature from the WooCommerce Waitlist plugin and display expected times for products to be back in stock using the WooCommerce Lead Time plugin.

The add to cart button is replaced with a Join waitlist button on the front-end and the lead time text appears after the Out of stock - Join the waitlist to be emailed when this product becomes available text that’s added by the WooCommerce Waitlist plugin.

Once you’re done setting this up, it’ll look something like this on the front-end:

Preview of lead time and waiting list on the front-end

Want to set up back in stock notifications in WooCommerce in less than 5 minutes?

As an online store owner, you should have a solution in case you run into an out of stock product scenario. The way we see it, there are two easy ways of handling this:

  • You can enable backorders in WooCommerce so customers can still place orders and you don’t miss out on their sale. When you do this, it's essential to use WooCommerce Lead Time to display a clear WooCommerce back in stock date.
  • Alternatively, you can give customers the option to enter their email address and join a waitlist to be sent a stock alert when the product is back in stock.

Whichever option you ultimately decide to go with will prevent you from losing sales due to stock issues. The best part is that there’s absolutely no technical knowledge required and you don’t have to mess around with custom PHP or HTML code on your store.

Instead, you get a:

  • Plug-and-play setup for the plugin.
  • In-depth documentation (absolutely no way to get it wrong).
  • Technical support is available if you need any help.
  • 30-day money-back guarantee. Love it or get a full refund, 0 risk!

Get the WooCommerce Lead Time plugin today to start getting orders today!

Display new products and arrivals in WooCommerce

Listing WooCommerce new products in a prominent location immediately draws the attention of existing customers who shop with you regularly and are interested in your latest products. A WooCommerce new products page is a great way to boost product visibility. It ensures that visitors see your latest products when they land on your online store.

And the easiest way to list WooCommerce new products anywhere on your WordPress site is by using the WooCommerce Product Table plugin.

WooCommerce new products preview
An example of a WooCommerce new products page

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at why you should list WooCommerce new arrivals in your store and the best places to list new products. You can either create a dedicated WooCommerce latest products page, or list newly released products anywhere else in your store. We’ll also walk you through a step-by-step tutorial explaining how to list WooCommerce new products using a product table.

You'll also learn how to give exclusive early access to new products to specific customers only.

Why list WooCommerce new products separately in your store?

One of the main motivations to list WooCommerce new products on a WooCommerce new products page is to make them easy to find.

It makes it easy for your regular customers to find the latest products that they haven't seen before. And new customers can easily differentiate between your WooCommerce new arrivals and older stock.

In addition to this, you don’t have to add a New! Badge to the product images of your WooCommerce new products. This saves you from a lot of manual work. Plus, this might be visually similar to the products you have on sale.

Instead, you can simply have a dedicated WooCommerce new products page that lists new products separately from older stock. This can also help you improve rankings on search engines like Google. The easiest way to display new products is in a user-friendly table layout.

Where is the best place to list WooCommerce latest products?

Unlike featured products, you have full control over where you list your WooCommerce new products.

The best place to list your new WooCommerce products is on a separate New Products (or New Arrivals) product page. This way, customers will know exactly where to go to see the latest products you have in stock.

If you prefer, you can also list new products somewhere prominent such as a 'New arrivals' section on your homepage.

Both options work well for all sorts of e-commerce stores including those that sell:

  • Apparel
  • Gift items
  • Furniture and home decor
  • Cookware
  • Arts and crafts supplies
  • Tech products
  • Toys

If you sell lots of products, you can create a WooCommerce new products page for the different categories of products you sell. Take a look at this example from Crate and Barrel:

Crate and Barrel products page

For example, if you sell furniture, home decor goods, and lighting, you could create three different product pages to showcase your WooCommerce new products. These would be New Furniture, New Home Decor, and New Lighting.

You can also list WooCommerce new products on the same page as your older stock. This can help you boost product visibility in your store and potentially encourage customers to buy more from you.

Case study: how The Games Den lists new arrivals on their website

The Games Den is a UK-based company that sells a wide range of board games, tabletop games, and card games as well as accessories, miniatures, and paints. They used our WooCommerce Product Table plugin to list new products in a neat table layout on their New Arrivals page.

List new arrivals

The table is configured to show 30 of the latest products in an organized way by default. Each product has an image, name, description, price, and buy button. The Games Den also uses TI's Wishlist plugin to add wishlist links to the table. They’ve chosen to show the wishlist links in the Buy column.

Customers can narrow down their search using the filter dropdown above the table. It lets them choose which category of products to show on the page such as Accessories, Miniatures, or Tabletop Games. In addition to this, they can sort the columns in the table alphabetically or by price (low-to-high or high-to-low).

Customers can click the product’s name to go to the single product page and learn more about it before adding it to their shopping cart.

How to list WooCommerce new products using WooCommerce Product Table

To list WooCommerce new products in your store, you’ll need to get the WooCommerce Product Table plugin.

Once you have the WooCommerce plugin and WooCommerce Product Table installed and activated on your WordPress website, here’s what you need to do:

Step #1: Configure WooCommerce Product Table settings

Head over to WooCommerce → SettingsProductsProduct tables to configure the WooCommerce Product Table settings.

WooCommerce Product Table settings table content

Set the Columns option to image,name,summary,price,buy. This will display the product image, name, product description, and price in the table along with purchasing options. With WooCommerce Product Table, you can choose which columns to show or hide on the front-end based on your preferences.

Set the product limit

Next, under the Loading products section, use the Rows per page option to control the number of products that appear in the table. For example, if you set it to 5 then the table will list the 5 most recently added products in your store.

WooCommerce Product Table settings sorting options

Under the Sorting section, use dropdown menus next to the Sort by and Sort direction options to sort the products in the table by Date added in Descending order. This way, the product table will display the most recent products first.

WooCommerce Product Table settings table controls

Finally, under the Table controls section, hide the search box, product totals, filters, and the reset button. This is because, generally speaking, you’ll only have a handful of WooCommerce products to showcase at a time.

Click the Save changes button to proceed.

Step #2: Create a WooCommerce new products page to showcase the new arrivals

The final step is to create a new page to showcase the WooCommerce new products and new arrivals. Here’s what you need to do:

Go to PagesAdd New from the WordPress admin and give your WooCommerce new products page a title. For example, it could be something like New Arrivals.

Shortcode block in Gutenberg

Next, insert a shortcode block in the text editor and add [product_table] to it. Preview the WooCommerce new products page. It should look something like this:

WooCommerce new products preview

We’ve used the Storefront WordPress theme for this tutorial although WooCommerce Product Table works with most WooCommerce-compatible themes.

If you use WooCommerce Product Table to list products in a table layout elsewhere on your site, you might need an easy way to limit the number of new products to showcase on the front-end. For this, you can use the product_limit option. This lets you choose how many products to include in each table. For example, you can choose to list the newest ten products using the shortcode [product_table product_limit="10"].

Bonus: Give exclusive early access to certain customers

So far, you've learned how to list new arrivals in WooCommerce so that everyone can see them. That's fine for after they are officially released. But what if you want to give early access to new products to specific customers only?

For example, one store owner told us:

Whenever we do a new launch we protect the "new arrivals" category so our VIPs can have 1 hour of private shopping before public access. It's great for items that will sell out.

You can do this by installing our other plugin, WooCommerce Protected Categories. Put the new products in a specific category and restrict it using one of these methods:

  • Password protect the category and send a link to your early access customers, along with the password. When they click on the link, they will have to enter the password before they can view or buy the new arrivals. This is a good option if your customers don't already have accounts on your website.
  • Restrict the category to specific logged in users or roles. This is a good option if your VIP customers already have accounts on your website because they simply log into their account and can automatically see the new products.

Either way, simply change the category visibility back to 'Public' when your new arrivals are ready to be launched to the wider public.

Display 'Coming soon' products in your store

So far, we've only talked about how to display newly available products. But what about building interest before a new product is released? That's important too.

It's a great idea to display upcoming products in your WooCommerce store, even though they're not available yet:

  • You can start gathering interest (e.g. email addresses) from customers.
  • The new product page will start ranking in search engines, giving your SEO a head start.
  • Customers can see what's on the way, making them more likely to re-visit your website soon.

While there aren't any dedicated 'WooCommerce coming soon' plugins, you can easily achieve this by installing the WooCommerce Discontinued Products plugin. While its name is a bit confusing, it's actually perfect for this use case!

When you mark a product as discontinued, the plugin will stop it from being purchasable - ideal for products that aren't yet released. You can choose whether to display upcoming products in your store - either way, the product pages can immediately be crawled by search engines.

The plugin lets you add a text message to the product page. This gives you an opportunity to notify customers that the product is coming soon.

As soon as the product becomes available for sale, simply change the stock to 'In stock'. Customers can start placing orders immediately.

How to send email alerts for WooCommerce new arrivals

MailOptin lets you automatically email your customers and email subscribers whenever you add a new product to your WooCommerce shop. Check out our in-depth tutorial on sending email alerts for new arrivals.

You can also send an automated daily, weekly and monthly summary or email digests of all new arrivals with MailOptin. Below is how to set it up.

Setting Up MailOptin

  1. Go to MailOptin → Email automation and click the 'Add New' button.
  2. Enter a name or title for the automation and then select 'Posts Email Digest'.
  3. Select a template and you will be redirected to the email builder. You can bring in your own custom email template.
    Send WooCommerce email new products
  4. Set up the look and feel of the email to your heart's content.
  5. Click on 'Settings', then scroll down to 'Select Post Type' and select 'Product'.
Mail Optin WooCommerce new products

You can further filter the kind of product that will trigger the email. There are lots of factors to choose from including product categories, tags, variations, and other taxonomies.

Email new products to specific subscribers

Defining Email Recipients

Select subscribers new WooCommerce products email
Scroll down to the 'Recipient' section to define who receives the newsletter which could be your WordPress users further filtered or restricted to specific roles such as Author, Contributor, Subscriber, Editor or a combination of roles depending on who you’re trying to reach.

If you want the recipient of the email to be all WooCommerce customers, select 'Registered Users' as the connection and 'Customer' as the user role.

To send the email notification to your list subscribers, select your email marketing service (eg. Mailchimp) as the connection and then your email list.

Please note that you need to have MailOptin connected to your email service provider before it can show up in the 'Connection' dropdown.

Scheduling setup

Select the interval or frequency and time when the newsletter will be sent. This can be daily, weekly, or monthly.

Note that the time is based on the Timezone you’ve set in WordPress. MailOptin also recognizes the day you’ve selected as the start of a week in WordPress.

Finally, save the changes and activate the automation using the toggle switch at the top.
Setup is now complete and your subscribers will receive email notification of new WooCommerce products.

List WooCommerce new arrivals in a table

Listing your latest WooCommerce products in a front-end table layout is a great way to boost product visibility, draw in your customer’s attention, and boost sales.

Using the WooCommerce Product Table plugin, you can set up your own Latest Products page in a few simple steps, or list new products on other pages such as the homepage. And, when you’re ready to take things to the next level, you can send email alerts to your mailing list whenever you add a new product to your WooCommerce store.

And if you want to give exclusive early access to your most important VIP customers, install the WooCommerce Protected Categories plugin and set it up in minutes.

Looking for an easy way to display WooCommerce new products in your online store? Get WooCommerce Product Table today!