Ticketor is not only a great solution for all your ticketing and box-office needs, but also it is great for your giftshop, restaurant, bar, concessions, souvenir store or selling any merchandise, service, food and beverage. It allows for online sale as well as POS (point of sale), so your staff can sell face to face.
It can create a fully integrated system with seamless user experience and unified reporting and accounting.
The main goal of selling food and drink through your Ticketor site is to increase the sales by eliminating the line and wait time and reducing friction.
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❝How much more you could sell by eliminating the line at your concession, bar, or food trucks?
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Here are some of the highlights of the Ticketor's store:
- Create different pages for giftshop, restaurant, bar, gift cards, etc.
- Buyers can order food or drink and have it delivered to them in certain location inside the venue, such as their seat in the theater, their table in the restaurant or to the lounge, conference room, jacuzzi, pool, their booth, their room, tennis court, etc.
- Buyers can pre-order food / drink along with their tickets and set the order date for a later date/time so, they can pick them up as they arrive at the venue or at certain time.
- Buyers can order merchandise or food online and have it delivered or shipped to their home or pick up from your store at the time of the event or any other time
- A preparation page for your bar or kitchen staff so they can receive and track the orders as soon as they are placed
- Buyers can order and pay for their drink or food from the comfort of their seat within the event and receive it at their seat. Or they can order food or drink while they are on the way to the venue and pick it up as they arrive
- Merchandise, food and drink can be purchased along with tickets all in a single transaction
- Merchandise can be added to the pre-checkout page so as the buyers are buying tickets, the system will suggest that they should also consider buying the related or recommended merchandise.
- QR codes can be posted as signs in different locations of the venue or on the restaurant tables that take the buyer directly to the store page
See a store page on our demo site by clicking on each link:
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❝How much more you could sell by allowing people to order food or drink without leaving their seat and the event?
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Setting Up Store Pages and Merchandise
1- Add Store Pages
To start selling merchandise or food, you need to add one or more pages of type 'Store'. Go to Control Panel > Account & Settings > Pages & Navigations and add one or more pages of type 'Store'
Pages may or may not be added in the top nav or they can be added as a sub-menu.
Then click on the link to the Store page to navigate to the page.
The gear icon at the top of the page allows you to customize the page and select the categories of items that are shown on the page. When a page is created, a private category is automatically created for the page and so any item that is part of that category will show up on the page. However, you can edit the page and change the categories that the page will use.
You can also set the design and style of the page and how the items are shown. Items can be shown as cards in a gallery or a list with or without pictures. If you choose the gallery view, the card items may all have the same size or they may have different sizes. If you intend all the cards to have the same size, make sure to select that option and also make sure the primary image uploaded for items on the page all have the same aspect ratio or same size.
Note that making all cards the same size may result in longer text and titles to be trimmed but allowing the cards to have different flexible sizes will show the full text and titles.
You can use the 'pencil' icon to add content to the page or use the 'image' icon to add a slideshow or banner to the page.
2- Add Categories
Next step, is to add some categories. Categories can be public or private.
Private categories are only visible to you and your staff to categorize items for your operation purpose. While the public categories are visible to the buyer for filtering and categorizing items.
One item can be in multiple categories. Categories themselves can be part of other categories to create sub-categories.
Categories have multiple purposes:
- Each store page is set to show one or more categories. This is how you control what items to show up on what pages.
- Categories may show up on the store page as filters so the buyer can easily filter items by category. This option can be set on the store page settings. If a store page is set to list multiple categories, all the public categories will show on the store as filters.
- Sub-pages: If a page is set to show a certain category, all the sub-categories in that category will show up as sub-pages. For example, in the demo restaurant page, 'Entrées' and 'Desserts' are sub-categories that are displayed as sub-pages.
- POS page: POS pages can be set to show items from certain categories so for example the bartenders can only place bar orders and giftshop staff can only order giftshop items
- Preparation, shipping and handling and operation: Items may be placed in categories for the purposes of operation and preparation. For example, you may want all the food orders that require a stove oven to show up on the preparation page of the 'stove section of the kitchen' while all other food orders go to another section of the kitchen and all the beverage orders to go to the bar. For this purpose, you can put items in private categories that are only visible to you and your staff, such as 'oven foods' and you can have a computer or tablet in each section of the kitchen that shows the orders in certain categories as they are placed.
- Reporting: Reports can also be filtered by categories
Categories can be created or edited from the Control Panel > Events & Venues > Merchandise / Donation page. Give the category a name and you can optionally make it sub-category to other categories. Optionally add some description and pictures for the category.
When you create a store page, a private category is automatically created for that page to make it easy for you to add items to that page. However, you may choose to ignore or delete that category.
3- Add Delivery Methods
Before adding merchandise to your store, it is best to add some delivery methods so when we create merchandise, we can select what delivery methods are available for that item. However, you can always come back to add new delivery methods or update the existing ones.
Use Control Panel > Account and Settings > Delivery methods to create and manage your delivery methods and associated fees.
On this page, you can create, edit and manage delivery methods that can be used by events or merchandise. The system allows delivery methods to be shared between events and merchandise, however, in practice, it is usually best to have different sets of delivery methods for tickets and merchandise.
Add a 'pick-up' Delivery Methods
So, let's add a delivery method for 'Pick up at the bar' or restaurant or giftshop so the buyers have the option to pick up their items.
Give the delivery method a name and optionally a description. Set the delivery fee to zero as we are not going to charge for pick-up method. Since this method is not used in events, you can skip the 'For tickets' tab and go to 'For merchandise' tab.
I enter a large number, 1000, in the 'Delivery fee is for' box and check the box that 'Multiple shopping cart items can share the cost of delivery'. Then save the delivery method.
Combining Delivery Methods Between Different Items:
Normally, the buyer needs to select the delivery method for each item in their shopping cart. For example, if a buyer is ordering a shirt and a CD, they can select the shirt to be shipped and the CD to be picked up.
While this functionality may be desirable in the case of shirt and CD, it may not be expected in some other cases. For example, if a buyer is ordering a Pizza and a Burger and a Pepsi, they do not want to select the delivery method 3 times for each item. The same delivery method should apply to all 3 items. In other words, all 3 items should bundle together so the buyer can pick the delivery method only once.
To achieve this, you should:
- Tick the box that 'Multiple shopping cart items can share the cost of delivery'
- All the items (Pizza, burger and Pepsi) must have the exact same set of delivery methods. Meaning that if one item supports 'Delivery method A' and 'Delivery method B', all items must support the same delivery methods.
- All the delivery methods supported for all the bundled items must have the box 'Multiple shopping cart items can share the cost of delivery' ticked.
If all the above conditions are met, then the items in the shopping cart get bundled together and the buyer will select only one delivery method that applied to the bundle.
Delivery Method Fees and Fee Sharing
Delivery methods may have a fee associated with them. For example, the fee to ship a toy car may be $10 and it ships in an individual box. Obviously, the cost of shipping 2 toy cars would be $20. This usually applies to items that ship individually using a mail (post) system.
However, there are cases that the delivery cost is the same no matter how many items you order. For example, the cost of local pizza or food delivery is the same flat fee no matter if you order 1 pizza or 5 , or if you also order some drinks.
Or in some cases you may want to combine the delivery fees to encourage the buyer to purchase more. For example, the delivery cost of 1 CD may be $5. However, you can fit up to 10 CDs in the same package and ship all of them at the same cost.
To achieve this goal set the 'Delivery fee is for X items'. If you set it to 1, it will be suitable for the toy car scenario. If you order 5 toy cars, you pay 5 times the delivery fee.
However, if you set it to a large number, like 1000, it means the fee is the same, no matter how many items you order, which makes it suitable for a scenario like local food delivery.
For the CDs example, you can set it to 10. So, if the buyer orders 1 to 10 CDs, they pay 1 time the delivery fee. If they order 11 to 20 CDs, they will pay twice the delivery fee.
However, fee sharing is usually useful when used along with the 'Combining delivery methods between different items', explained in the previous section.
It is unlikely that a buyer would buy 5 of the same CD. They would probably want to buy different titles. So if all different CDs are created with the same set of shareable delivery methods, a buyer can buy 5 different titles and combine delivery methods to pay 1 time the delivery fee.
Similarly, all bar or restaurant options should be created to share delivery methods and so the delivery fee applies to all items.
Add a 'Deliver Within Venue' Delivery Method
I am going to add a second delivery method. Choose 'deliver within the venue', name it 'Deliver to my seat in the theater', add some description, set the fee to zero and switch to the 'For merchandise' tab. To make this delivery method sharable with all food and beverage inside the buyer's shopping cart, I am ticking the box for 'Multiple shopping cart items can share the cost of delivery'
Then I switch to the questions tab. This delivery method should ask where exactly is the user seating. Which in the context of a theater the seats are usually identified with 3 values for 'Section', 'Row' and 'Seat number'.
So, I am opening the question manager page to create 3 questions.
'What section are you sitting at?', 'What row are you sitting at?', and 'What is your seat number?'
I create the first 2 questions of type Dropdown with certain items that the buyer can choose from. I will set the default value to blank and I add a blank option as the first option so by default, no section is selected. Then I add the list of sections as the next options. I marked the question as 'Answer required' so the buyer cannot leave the question blank.
For the seat number I create the question as a textbox with a maximum answer length of 3 so the buyer can enter a 1 to 3 digit seat number.
Then I switch back to the tab where I was creating the delivery methods and by typing a few letters of the question, I add the question to the delivery method and I save the delivery method.
Add a 'Local Delivery' Delivery Method
We are adding a local food delivery. So, I am choosing 'Mail / Post / Delivery' as the delivery type. This method automatically collects the shipping or delivery address.
Name it 'Deliver to my location', set some description like 'Deliver within 10 Miles of the venue' and let's set the delivery fee to $10. This fee is fixed regardless of how many items such as how many pizza or food or drink they order.
So, in the 'For Merchandise' tab, I set the 'Delivery fee is for' to a large number and I tick the box that 'Multiple shopping cart items can share the cost of delivery'. Then save the delivery method.
Add a Shipping Delivery Method for Larger Items
We are now adding a ship by mail / post service delivery method for larger / heavier items that ship individually in individual packages.
So, I am going to choose the 'Mail / Post / Delivery' method, name it '2 day air shipping', add some description and set the fee to the fee for that specific merchandise weight or box size. You may need to create multiple delivery methods with different fees for bigger and smaller or heavier and lighter items. When you create the merchandise, you can select what delivery method applies to that specific merchandise.
I am setting the fee to $10 for this one.
In the 'For merchandise' tab, I set that the fee is only for 1 item. So, if the buyer orders 2 items, they should pay double the delivery fee. I am also un-ticking the 'Multiple shopping cart items can share the cost of delivery' so each item will ask for the delivery method.
Add a Shipping Delivery Method for Small Items
We are now adding a ship by mail / post service delivery method for small / light items such as CDs that we can fit multiple into a single package.
So, I am going to choose the 'Mail / Post / Delivery' method, name it '2-day air shipping', add some description and set the fee to the fee for that specific merchandise weight or box size.
I am setting the fee to $10 for this one however, I can fit up to 5 CD's in the same package and ship them all at the same $10 shipping fee. So I am taking this opportunity to encourage the buyers to order more items. I add in the description that the fee is good for up to 5 CD or DVDs.
In the 'For merchandise' tab, I set that the fee is for 5 item. So, if the buyer orders up to 5 items, they get charged $10. But if they order 6 to 10 CDs, they will pay $20. I am also ticking the 'Multiple shopping cart items can share the cost of delivery' the buyer can combine different CDs and DVDs or any merchandise that use this delivery method.
Add More Delivery Methods
You can add as many delivery methods as needed, with different charges.
4- Add Merchandise
Next, we are going to add merchandise for sale. It includes all giftshop items, food, drink and gift cards.
Merchandise can get added, edited or managed from the Control Panel > Events & Venues > Merchandise / Donation page. However, there are other places and shortcuts that allow you to add or manage merchandise, such as the 'Actions' menu on the Store page or the merchandise page.
Click on Add a new merchandise.
Then set the name.
The code is optional and can be the barcode of the merchandise or a code that your sales staff can easily remember to find and sell the merchandise.
Keywords are hidden to the user and are only used for search engine optimization.
You can mark the product as Active. Inactive products do not show in the store and are not sellable.
Featured products show at the top of the list of items in the store page.
If a product is marked as 'Sold out', it will not be available for sale.
Private items are only visible and sellable by you and your staff and buyers cannot buy or order them online.
Set the item price.
If the item is on sale, you can set a sale price. It will show the original price as well as the sales price to the buyer.
Set the currency for the item.
Optionally set the sort order. Items with higher sort order show first in the store page.
Set the event organizer for the merchandise. In most cases, the event organizer is you, the admin. However, if this product is sold by a 3rd party, by adding that 3rd party as the event organizer, it allows them to receive emails when their merchandise sell and they can report that merchandise.
Also, if the event organizer is using a different payment processor and bank account, the sales money for the item will go to the event organizer's payment processor.
If the item is taxable, set the tax percentage to be collected. The tax amount will get added to the buyer's invoice and you will receive the tax amount along with the item price and your accountant can later file the tax and pay any due amount.
Items can be eligible for Tip or not. If an item is eligible for tip, the system will ask the user to consider tipping and will offer different tip amounts or percentages in accordance to your settings in your site settings.
In the categories tab, select all categories that this item belongs to. Check out the categories section above to learn what categories are used for and why they are important. The item should be in a category for it to be shown on the store page.
In the delivery tab, select all delivery methods that apply to this item.
In the Availability tab, you can select when this item is available to be ordered. While giftshop items are usually always available, food and drink may be limited to certain schedule. For example, if you are a venue, your bar or concession may only work during events hours and start working 30 minutes before the event and up to 30 minutes after the event. If you are a restaurant, food is only available during the kitchen hours and some items may be restricted to certain hours like 'Lunch Hours'. You can set the schedule and limit the ordering time to those hours. Also, you can specify if the item may be pre-ordered for certain date and time. For example, as the buyer is purchasing movie tickets for next week, they can also order popcorns and drinks to be ready 10 minutes before the movie so, they can pick them up as they arrive to the theater without any line or wait time.
Your Schedules can either be tied to all or certain events and automatically get updated as you add events, or they can be on a fix daily / weekly or monthly schedule.
Remember that as mentioned before in the 'Combining delivery methods between different items', section, if you want all or certain products in the shopping cart to get bundle together and ask for delivery method only once, as opposed to once per item, all the items should have the exact same set of delivery methods and all the selected delivery methods should have the box ticked to be sharable.
This is probably the expected behavior for all food and beverage items. So make sure all the food and beverage items have the exact same set of delivery methods.
The easiest way to achieve this is by creating an item as template with all the shared data fields and then replicate the template item to create other items.
Then switch to the pictures and videos tab and add pictures and videos for the item. You can use drag and drop to re-order the pictures. The first picture is considered the primary picture and that is the one that shows in the store page.
Note: If you want all cards in the store to have the exact same size, you should make sure all the primary pictures for all items in the store have the same aspect ratio or are the same size.
Then you can go to the details tab and fill out the rest of the item's details including the item description.
Then save the merchandise. And you can create as many merchandise, food or drink using the same method.
5- Duplicating Merchandise
To replicate an item to create a new one, simply edit the item and from the actions menu, duplicate it.
6- Adding Gift Cards
Adding gift cards are very similar to adding merchandise.
You can add as many gift cards, in different amounts and for different occasions, with different pictures.
To get more information and to view the buyer and admin experience please check out this article
