Your first week on Hotplate

So, you signed up for Hotplate…Welcome, chef! Maybe you’re thinking “what’s next?”

We’ve helped thousands of chefs get started and grow their businesses, so we know a thing or two about what it takes. At a glance, these are the usual next steps after signing up - we get into detail for each of these below:

Planning for success with pre-orders

Many businesses using Hotplate operate on pre-order only model and use us exclusively for all their sales. Other chefs offer pre-orders in addition to selling at markets or physical stores. Your first step is to think about how often you want to offer pre-orders and what kind of quantities you will be able to offer. This could be a good time to look at a calendar and plan when you’ll do your first few drops. Our most successful chefs have a consistent weekly pick up day, usually on the weekends.

We’ve seen thousands of chefs build extremely successful food businesses by operating a pre-order only model, so we’ve focused on building features to help you make your drops as efficient as possible. We sometimes get requests for other features to support other aspects of your food business, and we hope to be able to bring those to you soon. If you’re looking for one of these features, we don’t have them yet:

Get familiar with the Hotplate portal and features

Now that you’ve thought about when you’ll offer pre-orders, it’s time to get familiar with your Hotplate portal. You’ll likely spend most of your time in the Store and Orders tabs.

Store - this is where you’ll create menu items, Events and discounts.

Orders - once customers place orders, this is where you’ll see your prep list of items and packings tickets for each individual order.

Our features are designed to be easy to use without any experience, so we won’t get into too much detail here. If you get stuck at any point, you can find quick guides for every feature in the portal in our  Help Center . These are some articles we recommend you read first:

Brand your Storefront

An unbranded storefront is like an unfrosted cupcake: still sweet, but pretty boring. The most successful Hotplate businesses start their journey by designing their storefronts to match their brand. You can do this in the Store tab, under Storefront. There’s a full guide on how to brand your store  here .

Be sure to add:

Just look at the difference a few colors, cover image, and a logo makes. Which would your customer rather see?

Spread your SMS sign up link

One of the reasons you probably joined Hotplate is our  automated SMS marketing , so it’s time to start building your customer list! Here’s what most successful chefs do:

Here’s a few examples of announcement posts our chefs have posted. You can keep it simple with a quick Instagram story or get creative with a detailed graphic. Sometimes even just a quick one sentence text or email will do as well!

Post your first Event

Now that you have some customers waiting to be notified, it’s time to set up and publish your first pre-order Event! We’d love to show you how to do it. Pick one of these:

Once your Event is posted, we’ll automatically send a text to everyone on your SMS list letting them know it’s time to order.

Prep, pack, and pickup!

As orders start to come in, you’ll see your Prep and Pack sheets (under Orders) fill up. We automatically tally up the orders for each item so you know exactly how much you need to make on pickup day. When it comes time to pack up orders, you can easily view or print each customer’s order ticket so there’s no confusion when packing or picking up.

Payout and celebrate!

Many chefs wait until all pick ups for an Event are done before they withdraw their earnings, but you can do so at any time. You’ll just need to  hook up your bank account  the first time you payout, then you’ll transfer money in just a click!

Made it this far? Congrats! You’re on your way to becoming a Hotplate super chef! If you need any help along the way, feel free to reach out to our team at  support@hotplate.com  and we’d love to help.