Optimising your Slerp delivery setup

1. Decide which channels you're running

Slerp supports several order channels. Before configuring anything, get clear on what you want to offer:

• Same-day delivery — customer orders now, it arrives within 30–60 minutes.
• Pre-orders — customer orders today for a future date. Higher average order value and more predictable to fulfill.
• Nationwide delivery — UK-wide shipping through your own 3PL (DPD, Royal Mail, etc).
• Click & collect and table ordering — in-venue options.

Each channel has separate settings. If you're only running same-day, consider enabling pre-orders too — they typically bring in larger orders and are easier to plan around.

2. Set your delivery zone

Controls Dashboard → Locations → Same Day Orders → Delivery → Delivery Zone

Your delivery zone controls which customers can place an order. Set it too small and you lose customers; too large and couriers reject jobs because journeys take too long — and your food arrives in poor condition.

Driving time vs distance: Use driving time. A 3-mile journey through central London at 6pm is very different from 3 miles in zone 4 at 11am.

After the zone is auto-drawn, edit the polygon manually. Trim around rivers, motorways, large parks, one-way systems, and any area with consistently difficult access. You know your area better than the map does.

Matching time slots to your zone: 30-minute slots only work for small zones (≤2.5 miles or ≤15 min drive). Use 60-minute slots for anything larger — traffic and courier pickup time eat into the window fast.

3. Configure vehicle assignment

Controls Dashboard → Settings → Delivery

Slerp assigns a vehicle type to each order based on basket value thresholds you set. Getting this right saves money and improves courier availability.

Set thresholds for same-day and pre-order independently — pre-order (especially catering) baskets are typically much larger.

4. Set delivery pricing and incentives

Controls Dashboard → Locations → Same Day Orders → Delivery

This section has the biggest impact on conversion. Customers compare your delivery fee against what they see on marketplaces — so your pricing needs to match that expectation.

Optimised vs Standard pricing: Optimised Delivery Pricing (recommended) shows customers a marketplace-comparable fee. You cover the gap between the courier cost and the fee shown. Standard pricing passes the full courier cost to the customer, which kills conversion.

Tiered delivery discounts — one of the most under-used features on Slerp. You can offer delivery discounts that scale with basket size. The cart shows a progress prompt during checkout ("Spend £X more to get 25% off delivery"), which naturally encourages customers to add items.

Minimum order value: You can set a minimum basket below which delivery isn't available. Don't set this on day one — wait until you have real order data. Setting it too early suppresses demand before you know what your typical basket looks like.

Delivery charge discount codes: Create codes that discount the delivery charge specifically, not the basket. Useful for first-order incentives, weekend campaigns, or loyalty rewards. This is unique to Slerp — most platforms can't target just the delivery fee.

5. Set up capacity and prep times

Controls Dashboard → Locations → Same Day Orders → Preparation Time

Slerp has three activity modes, each with its own prep time. You switch between them manually on the Slerp Partner App as your kitchen gets busier or quieter.

Additional prep time by basket value: Add extra time on top of the active mode for large orders. For example, orders over £500 automatically add 60 minutes. Essential for kitchens with limited production capacity (pizza ovens, butchery, anything with a finite rate).

Order limits per slot: You can cap how many orders are accepted per time slot. Use this carefully — your Slerp store is your highest-margin channel. If your kitchen is at capacity, throttle your marketplace listings first. Try Busy mode or additional prep times before capping direct orders.

Auto-accept — always turn this on. If auto-accept is off, every order sits as Pending until someone manually accepts it on the app. During a busy service, this gets missed. Every minute of delay means later prep and a later courier dispatch. Auto-accept off is the single most preventable cause of late deliveries.

6. Configure pre-order cut-offs

Controls Dashboard → Locations → Pre-Orders → Cut-off Times

Cut-off times control the latest point at which a customer can order for a given delivery date. You can set a different cut-off for each day of the week.

Keep cut-offs as short as your kitchen can realistically handle. Catering buyers — PAs, office managers, event planners — often plan only a few days ahead. Over-cautious cut-offs lose orders you could have fulfilled.

Holiday overrides: You can set special cut-offs for peak periods like Christmas and Easter. Plan ahead — capacity legitimately changes at these times and your standard cut-offs probably won't apply.

Pre-order time period: Controls how far ahead customers can book. Default is 1 month. If your menu changes frequently, shorten this window so customers can't book into a period where the menu has changed.

7. Fine-tune at the product and category level

The location-level settings above apply to your whole store. These tools let you override behaviour for specific products or categories without changing your defaults.

• Product-level prep times — set a fixed prep time on a single item. Useful for items that always take longer regardless of how busy the kitchen is (e.g. a celebration cake that needs 90 minutes).
• Category-level cut-offs — set a custom cut-off for one category. Useful when some items need more lead time than the rest of your menu (e.g. whole hams need 48 hours, but everything else is next-day).
• Special availability (time- and date-based menus) — show certain products only at specific times of day or on specific dates. Christmas hampers can appear automatically on 1 Dec and disappear on 24 Dec with no manual management needed.

8. A few features worth knowing about

Dispatch self-serve: Book a courier through Slerp Dispatch without a Slerp order attached. Useful for offline orders (phone or walk-in), stock transfers between sites, or one-off errands. Most partners don't realise this exists.

Nationwide delivery via Composer: If you ship UK-wide, your pre-orders flow into Slerp Composer. From there you can generate packing slips, production summaries, and a CSV export formatted for your 3PL (DPD, Royal Mail, UPS, etc.). You upload the CSV to your carrier — Slerp doesn't integrate directly with 3PLs, so you'll set up that relationship yourself.

Setting up nationwide delivery | National shipping with any carrier

❔ Need help?

The Slerp Support team is available 8 AM to 10 PM, every day. They can walkthrough your setup with you and recommend changes specific to your business.

• 🗨️ Live chat in Controls or the Slerp Partner App
• 📱 WhatsApp +447907213700
• 📨 Email: support@slerp.com