In short
Hot food takes longer to cook and comes out on trays, so size your pickup spaces for a tray and give each order a little more pickup time.
Set max items per order to what one tray-sized space holds; bigger tables split into separate orders that each take their own space.
Build the menu so the same dish cooks together — and turn on counting queued orders in prep so you can batch the grill ahead.
What a hot-food stall looks like on Slipp
Hot food works on a different clock to drinks. A dish might take eight to fifteen minutes, it comes out on a tray or plate, and you cook far more efficiently in batches than to order. Your pickup counter and your settings should give you room to cook ahead and stage finished orders.
The Slipp model is unchanged — uniform numbered spaces, a capacity, a pickup time, a max items per order — but for hot food you scale the spaces up and the pace down a little. Treat the numbers below as a starting point and adjust to your kit and your menu.
A starting point for your settings
Set these in Operations, then tune once you have cooked through a real service:
Roughly what fits on one tray. A larger group splits into a second order — and a second tray-sized space — instead of one unmanageable pile.
Each space is sized for a full tray. Because cooking takes longer than collecting, you want enough spaces to stage a batch of finished orders without stalling the grill.
Food can rest briefly under a lamp without spoiling, and customers wandering a festival need a moment to get back. A slightly longer window suits hot food better than drinks.
Shape a menu that batches on the grill
The efficiency of a hot-food stall comes from cooking the same thing several times at once. A focused menu — a few dishes you can fire in batches — beats a long one where every order is a different cook. Express variety through sides and sauces rather than entirely separate dishes.
Keep customisation manageable at peak: a handful of modifiers (spice level, a side, hold an ingredient) is fine; a build-your-own with twenty toggles will jam your grill when the queue is long.
- Offer a few core dishes you can cook in batches, not a sprawling menu.
- Use modifiers for sides and sauces instead of listing every combination.
- If a dish is much slower than the rest, price the wait in — or pause it at peak.
Cook ahead of the queue
Hot food benefits from a feature the live-board guide covers: counting queued orders in your prep view. Turn it on so you can see what is coming and fire a batch on the grill before a space frees up, instead of starting each order only once it reaches the front.
When every space is full, new orders queue rather than crowd your pass. Work the board in batches — group the same dish, plate them as spaces open, and call each tray by its number. If trays sit past their pickup time, add a space or simplify the menu before you speed up the cook.
Hot-food stall checklist
- 1 Size your pickup spaces for a full tray.
- 2 Set max items per order to about one tray (6–8).
- 3 Lay out 6–10 identical, numbered tray-sized spaces.
- 4 Set a slightly longer pickup time (around 10 minutes).
- 5 Turn on counting queued orders so you can batch the grill ahead.
- 6 Keep the menu to a few dishes that cook well in batches.