Making Settings:
Throttling settings need to be done under Zenpepper Admin. For this, you should login to Back Office and click ‘Web Order’ on the left menu, follow the path Stores -> Change Settings -> Throttling Settings.
• Delivery Preparation Time: Average Delivery Order Preparation time.
• Pickup Preparation Time: Average Pickup Order Preparation time.
• Start Time: The time that Throttling settings will start to be applied
• End Time: End of the time that Throttling settings will be applied
• Pickup/Curbside Enabled: Whether Throttling is active for Pickup/Curbside service or not
• Delivery Enabled: Whether Throttling is active for delivery service or not
• Load Balancing Period: The time period specified in which the maximum number of orders accepted and expected to be prepared in the time specified for Pickup/Curbside or Delivery.
• Maximum Orders: The maximum number of orders that can be prepared within the specified time.
• Additional Wait Time: Additional time to be added to the order preparation time for each order that will be queued at the specified time.
Store’s Time Zone Settings
In order to avoid any confusion related to time zone, make sure that the time zone setting in the Store Time tab is set correctly set as the store’s location’s time zone.
Online Order Throttling Information
Estimated preparation time set in the Throttling Settings in the Zenpepper Admin page can be seen under the address section on the Zenpepper page.
Once an Order is placed for delivery, customer will be redirected to check out page where the estimated delivery is displayed.
In this example, it is set by the admin that only 1 order can be processed within 45 minutes, and 30 minutes of additional waiting time should be added for each subsequent delivery order. Therefore, in the screenshot above, the average preparation time of the order is 45 minutes.
If the number of received orders exceeds the number of orders set by admin in the Load Balancing Period, then the ‘Additional Wait Time’ will be added to the estimated time, hence, the ‘Estimated Delivery Time’ will be 45 + 30 = 75 minutes.
For pickup orders, it’s working in a similar way. Let’s suppose that the Pickup Preparation Time is 30 minutes, Load Balancing Period is 20 minutes, maximum orders is 2 and Additional Wait Time is 5 minutes.
If 2 orders are placed by customers within 20 minutes, for the 3rd (and for each successive orders), 5 minutes will be added to the preparation time for each order as it is set in the admin panel.