Catering, food labels, messaging, clearer payouts
Catering, rebuilt
Catering now has its own hub: Orders → Catering. A number next to it in the sidebar shows how many requests are waiting for you. It’s available to restaurants and shops, but not farms.The hub has six tabs: Requests, Calendar, Awaiting payment, Past, Menu and Settings. Requests and bookings that need your answer come first. A Next 7 days strip shows what’s coming up. Tap a day to see its plan and prep list.Calendar and prep lists
- Views: Month, Week, Day or List. Requests and quotes are marked separately from confirmed bookings, with guest counts for each day.
- Prep list: from a day, open Production for the day and Print prep list.
- Block a day: Block this day stops new bookings for that date. If the day already has events, you’re asked first, and existing bookings stay.
- Download: Calendar file (.ics) for Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook, or Spreadsheet (.csv) for Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets. Calendar files leave out customers’ phone numbers and emails, since calendars are often shared.
Quotes, in one payment or with a deposit
Reply to a request with a real quote: open it and press Build quote.- What goes in: items from your catering menu, with their sizes and options, plus custom lines for food, a service or a rental. Add a discount, a delivery fee, a message, what’s included and your terms.
- How it’s paid: one invoice for the full amount, or a deposit and a balance. Set your usual deposit in the hub’s Settings tab, under Payments → Deposits on your quotes.
- What you’ll get: before you send, the bottom bar shows what the customer pays, the Local Pass fee and its tax, estimated card processing, and about how much reaches your balance.
- Preview as customer shows the quote the way they’ll see it.
- After the deposit is paid, you can still revise the quote. The deposit stays, and a new balance replaces the old one.
One page per catering order
Each catering order opens on its own page. The event is at the top, one line says what happens next, and you only see the buttons that fit:- Confirm booking for a paid booking, or Can’t do it to refund the customer in full and cancel.
- Decline a request, with a reason that’s sent to the customer. Nothing was charged.
- Cancel order: say who’s cancelling, and the refund follows your cancellation policy.
- Refund one payment, with a reason.
- Start preparing, Mark ready for pickup or Mark out for delivery, then Mark completed. The customer is emailed at each step.
The Local Pass fee on catering is 5% of the order before tax, at most $25, plus tax on that fee. Card processing is deducted from each payment before it reaches your balance, and isn’t returned when a payment is refunded.
Your catering menu and settings
- Catering menu: build it once and reach it from Catering → Menu, from Menu → Catering (restaurants) or from Inventory → Catering (shops). Farms don’t offer catering. Organise items into sections, search and filter, and edit each item in a side panel.
- Allergens: before an item can go on your catering menu, confirm its allergens with I’ve checked the allergens for this item. Event guests rely on it.
- Card processing: in the hub’s Settings tab, under Payments → Card processing, choose Customers cover it (built into the prices customers see, with no separate fee) or I’ll cover it. Each quote has its own Include card processing in prices switch.
- Daily capacity: set a number of guests or events per day. Your calendar shows how full each day is, and quotes warn you when you’d go over. Customers aren’t stopped.
- Group discount now lives in the hub’s Settings tab, under Group discount.
Food labels and Nutrition Facts
Shops and farms can now make labels for the food they package: go to Products → Labels, or open a product and use Make or print the label.- Ten steps with a checklist: pick what you’re labelling, and the tool walks you through the name, ingredients, allergens, net quantity, Nutrition Facts, best before, your address and the look. The checklist shows what’s done and what’s left.
- Ingredient library: save your ingredients once, including what a ready-made ingredient is made of and where you buy it. A change carries over to every label that uses it.
- Nutrition Facts: the tool tells you whether your package needs a table. It builds one from your recipe, as an estimate from Canada’s average food values, or from your lab numbers. It also tells you whether your front panel needs a “High in” symbol, and which one.
- Print batches: print on letter label sheets or a label printer. Each batch gets its own batch code and best-before date, and goes into a Batch log you can download as CSV. Keep it for two years.
- Ordering from a print shop? Choose Download print file (PDF) for a print-ready file with bleed and crop marks.
The label tool lays out your label and checks it against the rules it knows. Local Pass doesn’t review labels, and nobody in Canada approves them in advance: what your label says is your responsibility.
Allergens from Canada’s list
In the product, menu item and catering editors, allergens are now tick-boxes from Canada’s list of priority allergens, with each tree nut listed separately. Customers see the same names on your listing, such as Milk, Eggs or Almonds. Older entries that don’t match the list show in amber, with a note on what to do.Message customers from their order
Shops and farms can now message a customer straight from an order: open the order and press Message in the customer card. The chat opens in a window over the order, so you can keep working while you talk.The customer gets a notification in the Local Pass app (“New message from your store”), and the conversation shows in their messages. Their replies appear in the chat window and in your Inbox.The Inbox also got better:- The sidebar shows how many conversations have an unread message.
- Conversations open on the newest message.
- Scroll up, or press Earlier messages, to load older ones.
A wallet that adds up
Under Settings → Payments → View Wallet, your next payout is now one amount, followed by a line-by-line Payment breakdown that adds up to it:- Sales credited
- Your promotions
- GST collected
- Commission
- Tax on commission
- Driver subsidy
- Card processing & refund fees
Store performance
The performance pages (Grow → Store Performance) have been rebuilt.- What “Sales” means: what you sold after your own promotions and refunds. It doesn’t include tax, delivery and service fees, or tips, and Local Pass coupons and Local Coins don’t reduce it. The old “Total Sales” included tax, fees and tips, so your numbers will look lower. Nothing you earn has changed.
- New tiles: Net earnings, Visitors (signed-in shoppers; guests aren’t counted), cancellations and refunds.
- Restaurants get prep and acceptance times, and Peak Times by hour or by day.
- Shops and farms get weight and items sold, the savings you gave customers, fulfillment speed, shipping, sales by category, where your orders went and your top products.
- Dashboard: the performance card now tracks Visitors and Visitors who ordered, and has a Refresh button.
- Sales & Tax report: the CSV and PDF now list gross sales, refunds, your promotions, GST, commission and the tax on it, driver subsidy and card processing & refund fees, on Vancouver dates.
Hours past midnight
Closing times can now go up to 4:00 AM (next day), in half-hour steps. This works everywhere you set hours: your store address, pickup, delivery, store setup and new locations. Opening the pickup or delivery page no longer resets late hours. Midnight is shown as 12:00 AM (midnight).Customers on localpass.ca see your late hours now. The Local Pass app shows them correctly after midnight from its next update.
Smaller changes
- Sidebar: it’s now grouped into Orders, Menu or Products, and Grow, with your settings in one row that expands. Help & Support and a link to the Food business guide are at the bottom.
- Service areas (Fulfillment Settings): a region you pick is added straight away, your pickup region is labelled, and you’re asked before removing it. A bar shows unsaved changes, and the page warns you before you leave without saving.
- Pay-at-pickup orders now show as Unpaid, and the Refund button is hidden on them, since nothing was charged by card.
- Dashboard: the new orders button counts orders waiting for you again.
- Digital Menu / Price List: it shows only your published items, the same as your live list. Download PDF now uses as many pages as your list needs instead of cutting it off.
- Contract: your own delivery fee shows correctly when you deliver your own orders.
- Phone number: you now change it under Settings → Account.