Whitfield Service Station Online Ordering

Challenge

Three food brands on one forecourt now sell online for delivery and collection, and every order prints automatically in the kitchen. Whitfield Service Station is a forecourt in Dover that runs a Budgens store, a Fireaway pizza outlet and a doner and gyros kitchen. The owner wanted all three selling online without three separate systems. The catch was operational. Delivery had to stop at a sensible radius, fees had to reflect distance, orders had to reach the kitchen without staff watching a screen, and the store needed to switch ordering off when it closed.

Approach

The point-of-sale link is the piece that makes it work day to day. Orders print automatically to an Epson receipt printer through PrintNode, with order alerts in the WooCommerce mobile app, so the kitchen never has to check a dashboard. Writing the delivery logic as my own plugin rather than configuring a shipping extension was deliberate. The geocoding, radius and fee rules were specific enough that a bespoke plugin was smaller and easier to change than a general product, as the later switch to a flat fee showed. Bricks keeps the theme light, WP Rocket handles caching, and All in One SEO covers search. A W3C validation and performance report closed phase one in August 2025, with staff documentation covering price changes, reports, reprinting receipts, cancelling orders and hours.

Solution

I built it on WordPress with Bricks Builder and WooCommerce. The shop has a three-brand landing with cards, per-brand category pages with a vertical category sidebar, a Budgens offers grid, combos, a My Account dashboard and a login and signup popup. Checkout is a multi-step Fluid Checkout with Stripe, Apple Pay and Google Pay. After the May 2025 feedback round I made the homepage e-commerce first, with dynamic featured, promotion and bestseller sections and brand cards with real product photography and Order Now buttons. I also audited the Fireaway and doner catalogues against their Just Eat menus. My custom Delivery Restriction Checker plugin geocodes the customer's address with the Google Maps API, hides delivery beyond 10 miles, charges a distance-based fee and falls back to pickup or dine-in. The delivery fee later became a flat fee, and cash on delivery was disabled. WooCommerce Product Add-Ons handle toppings and variations. A CSV import template with tutorial videos lets staff manage the menu. An 18+ confirmation covers alcohol and vapes, an opening-hours popup and WhatsApp float sit on the front end, and the owner can close the store or set hours from the admin. Food hygiene ratings and GDPR, privacy and terms pages round it out.

Results

The platform is live at whitfieldservicestation.co.uk. The three outlets take online orders through one checkout, and staff manage the menu and the printer without a developer. The project confirmed that in food ordering the printer integration is the feature that decides whether the system gets used.

This is the kind of build I take on as part of my WooCommerce stores and online ordering work.

Planning a similar online ordering store for a takeaway or forecourt? Send me your next project and I will reply with a plan.