On this page
Yes. Every delivery area you set up has its own delivery fee, its own order minimum, and an optional free delivery threshold, so a nearby neighborhood can cost less than one across town. You manage all of it on your Delivery Areas, Minimums, & Fees page, under Operations in the menu. The video above walks through the whole flow.
Setting a fee for each area
1. Go to your Delivery Areas, Minimums, & Fees page. The map shows your kitchen, and the panel beside it lists the ways you can set up delivery areas: pre-set zones, a radius around your kitchen, or zones you draw yourself. You can use more than one.
2. Click your kitchen on the map. This opens its delivery settings.
3. Click Add Pre-Set Zones to load the zones we’ve mapped around your kitchen. They show on the map in gray. Each one starts out switched off, so customers can’t order delivery there until you turn it on and price it.
4. Click Table at the top of the page to see every area in a list, then click the area you want to price.
5. Set Can Deliver to Yes.
6. Under Minimum Order Amount, choose the smallest order you’ll deliver to this area.
7. Under Delivery Fee Type, choose Flat Fee or Percentage of Order. For a flat fee, choose an amount under Delivery Fee.
8. To offer free delivery on larger orders, click Show More Options and choose an amount under Free Delivery Threshold. Once an order’s food subtotal reaches it, delivery to this area is free. Leave it on No free delivery to always charge the fee.
9. Click Save Changes. The area is open for delivery right away, at the pricing you set.
10. To draw an area of your own, click Map, then click + Custom Zone at the top right of the map. Click the map to place each corner, then click the first corner again (or Finish Zone) to close the shape.
11. Give the zone a name under Area Name, set its minimum and fee the same way, and click Save Changes.
12. Click Table to compare your areas. Both zones you priced now show as active, and each row shows that area’s flat fee, percentage fee, and minimum.
To change several areas at once, check the box on each row in the table, or hold Shift while you click zones on the map. Any field you leave on Keep Unchanged stays as it was in each area.
How area pricing works
- Customers pay the fee and minimum of the area their address falls in. If it falls in more than one, the closest area applies.
- A customer can’t place an order whose food subtotal is under that area’s minimum.
- Once the food subtotal reaches the free delivery threshold, the customer pays no delivery fee, whichever fee type you use.
- New pre-set zones start switched off. Customers can’t order delivery there until you set Can Deliver to Yes.
Flat or percentage fees
A Flat Fee charges the same delivery fee on every order in the area. A Percentage of Order fee charges a share of the order’s food total. You set the Delivery Fee Percentage, plus a Minimum Delivery Fee and Maximum Delivery Fee to keep it in range. Under Show More Options, you can also add a Surcharge Fee on top of the percentage.
When areas overlap
If an address falls inside more than one of your delivery areas — say, a pre-set zone and a radius — the order uses the area closest to that address for its fee, minimum, and kitchen. If you run more than one kitchen, you can reassign a pending order to a different location.
Radius vs. custom zones
When you’re first setting up delivery areas, you’ll choose how you think about your delivery range: a radius around your kitchen, or distinct areas of the city drawn as zones. If you pick the radius option, we’ll start you off with a 2-mile radius you can resize. If you pick zones, we’ll pre-populate your map with a set of common delivery areas near your kitchen so you’re not starting from a blank map — you can then enable, disable, price, or delete any of them, or draw your own custom zones on top. Newly pre-populated zones start out not deliverable until you price them.
To stop delivering to an area without deleting it, set its Can Deliver to No and save. For how minimums and lead time work together, see order minimums and lead time.
Sharing pricing across kitchen locations
If you run more than one kitchen and they’re organized into a kitchen group, a delivery area can be assigned to the whole group instead of a single kitchen — useful when you don’t know in advance which of your kitchens should fulfill orders in a given area. Turn on Manual Assign? for the area, then choose the group, and you’ll pick the kitchen for each order as it comes in. See managing multiple kitchens for more on locations.
Areas CaterCow manages for you
Some delivery areas use a courier that CaterCow sends, instead of your own drivers. This can apply to a single zone or to every zone one of your kitchens serves. These zones are marked in the table, and their pricing panel shows a note and can’t be edited. If you have questions about one of these zones, or want to make those deliveries yourself, email us at menus@catercow.com.