What is a Bottle fulfillment method?
A fulfillment method is how to dictate what delivery, pickup, and/or shipping options your customers will see and select at checkout. Bottle's fulfillment methods allow you to begin taking orders at a specific time, cutoff orders at a specific time, implement a grace period, and show customers what time(s) they should expect to pick up or receive their meals.

How to setup fulfillment methods:

https://www.loom.com/share/c894ce6ddaea4b978b6c40fb782fb81a?sid=f1cab41c-6b07-4d97-8eaa-f150418abcda

1. Once you click into the 'Fulfillment Methods' tab in the left hand side bar of your screen, you will then begin creating your fulfillment methods by clicking the blue "New" button in the right corner. 
2. Give your method a name and an optional description. 

   

3. Next, under the "Fulfillment Zones" section, enter the zip codes and/or states that you'd like to restrict this method to. If this is a pickup option, we typically recommend leaving this section blank. However, if this is a delivery option, adding in zip codes will make it so only customers within the allotted zip codes are able to select this method at checkout.

   

4. Now you can select the stores you'd like this method to be eligible for:

   

5. Select whether this method is a shipping, delivery, or pickup method:

   

6. Now, add in a price (or enter in $0 if this is free delivery/pickup/shipping) and decide if you'd like the price to be taxable or not.

   

7. Once you hit "Save," you will need to go back into this method to add your fulfillment slots. Once back inside, scroll to the bottom, where you'll see an extensive calendar view, and click the button that says "+  Slot."
   > Bottle Tip: A fulfillment slot is a way to a slot for a specific fulfillment day. Creating these is essential so the system knows when you'd like to begin taking orders, when the cutoff time is, and when the arrival beginning and end times are. 

   

8. Now you're looking inside of the fulfillment slot creator. Let's go through each of the options in front of you together:

   

   1. > Arrival window: This is the day and time customers can expect to receive their orders. You can also have an end date and time for this window which you can add by hitting the trigger button and adding an end date and time. 
   2. > Production Day: This is the day you produce the order. It also dictates on which day the order will show on the orders tab in the dashboard.
   3. > Order cutoff time: This restricts orders from coming in after a certain date and time for the week. The trigger button underneath allows you to put in a grace period (i.e. showing customers that the cutoff is every Tuesday at 8pm but allowing orders to come in for 2 more hours, etc).
   4. > Ordering Begins: This is the date and time customers can begin ordering for a slot. We strongly recommend utilizing this feature if you do not want to allow customers ordering 6 months ahead of time.
   5. > Repeat: This allows you to duplicate this slot weekly, monthly, etc. so you do not have to come in and set this up every week.
      1. Note: The schedule will duplicate slots 6 months out and will check each day to duplicate further out. We strongly recommend using the "ordering begins" feature if this is used.
   6. > Inventory and Availability: Here you can set the number of orders that each of your slots can accept in case you want to limit that.