Wordpress & an email-able Takeaway order

DizzyOC

Hi folks!

I have a question & I would dearly love some help on the issue.
I normally design/build only static websites - I'm not a programmer and won't pretend to be, but I have an issue with a wordpress website i'm doing for a local restaurant.

They want to have the menu online and want the functionality for a customer to place an order which will be sent to the restaurant by way of a generated email. This must include two parts:
1) selecting a number of items from the menu list and
2) allowing for a quantity of any one item to be selected (ie: 3 won-ton soups!)

Is this complicated in WP? I haven't found a handy installable plugin - but that doesn't mean there isn't one! Anyone know of one or could help with direction on how to approach the issue?

All advice appreciated and many thanks in advance

d.

Trojan

What you want to do is create a custom form that generates an email.

Some contact form plugins, e.g. Contact Form 7 (free) or Gravity Forms (paid) are highly customisable and allow much of what you're asking.

However, I suspect that given the specific requirements, you may need to build the form yourself from scratch. If you're not a coder you might need to bring in external help for this part.

seamus

Given that one of the key things people want from a takeaway is convenience, then it's very important that the information collected is accurate, otherwise you lose the "convenient" part and people are less inclined to go with you in future.

So while I'm sure customisable contact forms can be made to work "well enough", I would suspect that in order to get the process working exactly the way you need it to, you'll have to code from the ground up.

There are a couple of websites which already provide this exact functionality, one I know off the top of my head is just-eat.ie

I'm sure the website itself takes a small slice of every order, but from your client's point-of-view they don't have the big upfront cost of their own ordering system, and the thing is hosted and managed by someone else. From your point-of-view while you don't get to make much money from it, you can come out with an improved client relationship if the other site works well, which results in more work from them.

DizzyOC

Thank you both!
I've actually just come across the wp e-commerce plug-in which looks like it will do everything I need & more! Happy doors! getshopped.org
Thanks again