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A kitchen takes orders only after it finishes its setup checklist. Until then, it sits under Inactive Kitchens on your Kitchens page, and its row lists the steps it’s missing. The video above walks through fixing two missing steps.
Your kitchen’s two order channels
A kitchen can take orders in two places. The top of each kitchen’s page shows a status for each one.
- In-House is your own ordering page. It shows Accepting Orders once the setup checklist is done.
- Marketplace is your listing on CaterCow, where customers search for restaurants. On top of the checklist, it needs a menu that CaterCow has approved for the marketplace and a bank account verified with Stripe. Once it has both, it shows Ready to List.
A kitchen moves to Active Kitchens as soon as either channel is ready. So a kitchen can take orders from your own ordering page while it still doesn’t show up in marketplace search.
What each step checks
Each step has to be set up and confirmed. Saving a step confirms it.
- Kitchen Information: the address, lead times, pickup, and which order channels the kitchen uses. Nothing on this tab holds a kitchen back.
- Business Hours: at least one day open. See how to set your business hours.
- Menu: at least one active menu offered at this kitchen. For the marketplace, one of them has to be approved by CaterCow.
- Delivery Settings: the areas the kitchen delivers to. A kitchen with no delivery areas can still take pickup orders, but it won’t appear when customers search for delivery. Check the pickup-only box to confirm that’s what you want. See delivery areas and fees.
- Team: a team admin, someone who gets order notifications, and someone who gets financial notifications. Only teammates who have accepted their invite count.
- Legal & Bank Account: a bank account for payouts. For the marketplace, the account’s legal entity has to be verified with Stripe. See verifying your identity with Stripe.
How to find and fix a missing step
1. Open your Kitchens page from Operations in the menu. Find the kitchen under Inactive Kitchens. Its row lists what’s missing. Here, Midtown East Kitchen is missing Business Hours & Days Off, Menu, and Team.
2. Click Finish Kitchen. The checklist opens on the first missing step. The top of the page shows the Marketplace and In-House statuses, which both read Setup Incomplete for now.
3. Fix the step. Here, every day was closed, so we opened Monday from 9 AM to 7 PM and clicked Apply To All to copy those hours to every day. Then click Save & Continue.
4. Click the tab for the next missing step. Here, Menu is missing only for the marketplace, so we skipped it and opened Team. Each role already has someone assigned but still needs your confirmation, so click Confirm on each one, then Save & Continue. If a role has nobody, click Edit Kitchen Team Settings to assign someone (see managing your team).
5. Click Kitchens at the top of the page to go back to your Kitchens page. Once a channel has every step it needs, the kitchen moves to Active Kitchens.
6. To check the kitchen’s status, click Edit Kitchen on its row. Here, In-House now shows Accepting Orders. Marketplace still shows Setup Incomplete, because none of this kitchen’s active menus is approved by CaterCow for the marketplace.
How a kitchen’s status changes
- We re-run the checks regularly and each time you open a kitchen’s page. If a step stops passing, the kitchen goes back to Inactive Kitchens, and its row lists what’s missing. For example, this happens when the only teammate who got order notifications leaves your team, or when every day is closed in Business Hours. Finish Kitchen takes you to the fix.
- If you don’t want one of the channels, turn it off under Order Channels on the kitchen’s Kitchen Information tab. Its status then reads Turned Off, and the checklist stops asking for that channel’s requirements. For example, a kitchen that takes in-house orders only doesn’t need a marketplace menu or a Stripe-verified bank account.
- To stop a kitchen from taking any orders, deactivate it instead. Its page then shows Deactivated: Not Receiving Orders. See how to manage multiple kitchen locations.