Order-Ahead by Clearline.
Customers order and pay ahead, pick a pickup time, and walk past the line.
A doughnut shop, a taqueria, a bakery with a Saturday rush — anywhere the line is the problem. Order-Ahead gives the shop its own ordering page, a pickup schedule it controls, and a counter screen that shows the kitchen exactly what to make next.
The line is where you lose people. Not the ones in it — the ones who see it from the parking lot and keep driving.
Phone orders that never got written down
Someone takes it between customers, the ticket goes on a nail, and at 7:40 a stranger is asking for two dozen you never made.
A rush the kitchen cannot pace
Every order arrives at once. Order-Ahead spreads them across pickup slots with a limit you set, so 6:30 gets twelve and not forty.
The counter as a payment queue
Half the wait is the card reader. When the order is paid before anyone walks in, pickup is a name and a bag.
Everything it does, in the order you will use it.
Order-Ahead does one job for one kind of business. Nothing here needs a manual, and nothing is bolted on for a feature list.
Your own ordering page
Menu sections, popular and sold-out badges, per-item limits, and your pickup address at the top. Customers order from a link — no app, no account, no password.
Pickup times you control
Set your windows and how many orders each slot can take, how much notice an order needs, and when a day’s orders close — the night before or that morning. Times too soon to make simply aren’t offered. Slots roll forward every night; change your hours and they regenerate.
The counter board
Every order on one screen, live, in pickup order: new, making, ready. Tap to advance. It keeps working on a $99 tablet by the register.
Pay ahead or pay at pickup
Turn card payments on with Stripe and orders are paid before the customer arrives. Leave it off and the same page reserves the pickup for payment at the counter.
Ready-text
When the kitchen marks an order ready, the customer gets a text. No shouting names across the room.
Prices and sold-out, changed from your phone
Sell out of fritters at 8:10, tap once, and the page stops taking them at 8:10 — not after the next three complaints.
One location, real customers, no IT department.
Order-Ahead is priced and built for a single business, and grows to a second location or a second chair when you do.
Businesses
Who uses it
The things we got right on purpose.
Small software still has to be correct. These are the rules the database enforces so the page never has to be trusted.
- A slot cannot be oversold. — The database refuses the order that would exceed a slot's cap, even if two customers tap at the same second. That is enforced in Postgres, not in the page.
- Money on an order never changes after it is placed. — Staff can move an order from new to ready; nobody — not even an owner in the admin screen — can edit its total. Refunds are a separate, recorded action.
- Held slots go back on sale. — An order that starts checkout and never pays releases its slot after fifteen minutes, automatically, every five minutes, all day.
- Order numbers never collide. — Each shop hands out its own sequence from a locked counter. Two orders at the same instant get two numbers.
Your name on it, and a poster for the wall.
Every Order-Ahead is set up as your business, not as ours. Two things come with it that you do not have to ask for.
A printable QR poster
A sheet for the counter or the door with a code your customers scan to order ahead from their phone. No app to install; it opens your ordering page.
- Customer code — large, so a phone reads it from across the shop. It opens your ordering page.
- Staff code — small, fenced off at the bottom, marked not for customers. Your people scan it to sign in, with the app already chosen.
- Prints on a normal sheet; save it as a PDF and email it if you would rather.
- The codes point at clearlineprotocol.com, never at a server address, so a sheet taped to a wall keeps working if we move anything.
Your logo, your colour, your details
Send us your logo and we put it on the app and on the poster. Pick a colour and the buttons, badges and highlights take it. Your name, address, hours and phone are what your customers see — ours is not on the screen anywhere.
- Your mark in the header, and beside every one of your staff in the back office
- One accent colour, checked so text stays readable against it
- No logo yet? Your initials on your colour, which looks deliberate rather than missing
Click through it before you talk to anyone.
A live copy of Order-Ahead with a sample business — Bayou Glaze Donut Co.. Everything works; nothing you do is saved.
One flat monthly price. No contract.
Priced per business, billed monthly, cancel by email. Card processing, where you turn it on, is Stripe’s standard rate and goes through your own Stripe account. Tell us about the shop and you will get a plain number, not a quote deck.
Four more apps, same idea.
Stockroom
Know what is on the shelf, on every truck, and on every job — without a clipboard.
03 · AppointmentsBookline
Clients book themselves. The book never double-fills, and reminders go out on their own.
04 · RetailShopline
A small online store for a shop that sells real things — sizes, colours, shipping and all.
05 · Real estateTourline
Drop in the listing photos, take three of yourself, and get back a narrated walkthrough — script written from your own pictures, you presenting it, your licence on the end card.
Run Order-Ahead by next week.
Tell us the business, the hours, and what goes wrong today. We set it up, hand you the key, and you are taking orders the same day.
Get set upor email sales@clearlineprotocol.com