Catering

Take catering orders from your own catering page: instant bookings paid up front, or requests you answer with a quote.

Any business on Local Pass except a farm can take catering: restaurants, bakeries, grocers, butchers and caterers. Customers order from your catering page at localpass.ca/<your store>/catering. They either book and pay right away, or send you a request and you reply with a quote.

You run catering from your dashboard at business.localpass.ca, under Catering in the sidebar.

Farms don’t have catering. Farms sell to businesses with order sheets and to members with CSA boxes. A business that was set up as a Catering business sees the catering sections as its whole sidebar.

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Two ways customers order

	Pay now	Request a quote
When it’s offered	The order meets all your rules: notice, catering hours, minimum order, group size and delivery towns.	Always, while you take requests. A request outside your rules still reaches you, marked.
What the customer does	Picks items, fills in the event details and pays by card.	Describes the event, picks items or asks you to suggest a menu, and sends it. Nothing is charged.
What you do	Press Confirm booking, or Can’t do it to refund them in full.	Build a quote and send it.
When the customer pays	When they book.	When they pay the quote, as one invoice or a deposit and a balance. Paying is how they accept it.

You choose which of the two you offer in Catering settings → Payments. See Catering settings.

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What it costs

Customers pay no Local Pass fee, and never see a fee line. They pay your prices for the food, any extras and delivery, plus tax. Your catering page tells them: “Local Pass adds no fee.”

You pay Local Pass 5% of the order before tax, at most $25, plus tax on that fee (GST and PST, 12% of the fee). The order before tax is the food, extras and delivery, after any discount.

Order before tax	Local Pass fee	Tax on the fee
$400	$20.00	$2.40
$500 or more	$25.00	$3.00

Every payment also has a card processing cost. You choose who covers it:

• Customers cover it (recommended): customers see each of your catering prices 3.5% higher, with no separate fee. You type your own prices.
• I’ll cover it: customers see your prices exactly. Card processing comes out of each payment.

Either way, the actual card cost of each payment comes out of that payment before it reaches your balance. If you refund a customer, the card cost isn’t returned.

Paid catering money goes to your Local Pass balance and is paid out with your other sales. See Automated payouts.

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Set up catering

If you haven’t taken catering yet, the Catering page shows a Set up catering card with three steps:

1. The basics: the notice you need, pickup and delivery (the towns you deliver to and your delivery fee), and who covers card processing.
2. First items: pick dishes from your menu or products from your shop, or start a buffet. Add a price and tick I’ve checked the allergens for each one.
3. Preview and turn on: Preview your page to see your items and prices as customers will. While catering is off, only you can see it. Then turn catering on and copy your link.

Your catering page stays off until you turn it on in step 3. Catering won’t turn on until your payout account is set up. See Payment setup.

Set up later hides the card in this browser. You can bring it back from the empty Requests list.

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The Catering page

Catering has these sections. Each is a tab at the top of the page and a link in the sidebar.

Section	What’s in it
Requests	New bookings to confirm and requests waiting for a quote. The sidebar shows how many are waiting.
Calendar	Every event on a month, week, day or list, and the prep list. See Calendar and prep list.
Awaiting payment	Quotes you’ve sent and balances still to be paid.
Past events	Finished, cancelled and earlier events. Cancelled shows only the cancelled ones.
Catering menu	The items customers can order. See Catering menu.
Catering settings	How and when you cater, your page, payments and policies. See Catering settings.
Add to your website	A button, link and QR code for your catering page.

Above the tabs, Next 7 days shows what’s booked for the coming week. Tap a day for its plan and prep list.

Each order opens on its own page. See Requests, quotes and payments.

Catering orders don’t go to your tablet or your Live orders screen. You see and answer them here.

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How customers find you

• A Catering button under your storefront’s header on localpass.ca opens your catering page.
• Your store is listed on localpass.ca/catering.
• Catering settings → Status has your page link with Copy link. Share it on your website, social media, email signature or flyers.
• Add to your website gives you a button to paste into your own website, such as “Book catering” or “Request a catering quote”, in the size and style you pick, plus the link and a QR code “for social media, emails, menus and flyers”. Under Link to, choose Your whole catering page or one of your buffets, so the button opens that buffet straight away.

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What the customer sees

Your catering page shows your cover photo, a short intro, a facts strip (notice, group size, pickup and delivery, and “Book online” or your minimum order), your gallery, your catering menu by section, How it works, what’s Included with every order, and Good to know answers about cancelling, deposits and changes. Under the header there’s Request a quote and, if you have a phone number on file, a button to call you.

Customers sign in to order. They choose the guest count, pickup or delivery, the date and the time. Times are in Victoria time and only fit your rules. A booking ends in “You’re booked” with what they were charged; a request ends in “Request sent”. Their order then has its own page on localpass.ca, where they follow it, pay their quote or decline it.