How it works
- What is FoodCommerce?
- Designing your store
- Adding products
- Defining your delivery options
- Marketing your store
- Charge for the weight you supply
- Receiving payments
- Processing orders
- No technical skills required
- Free help and support
FoodCommerce is an Internet application designed for selling food and groceries online. It is based around the methods supermarkets use to sell groceries online along with additional features to support the smaller retailer.
FoodCommerce is provided to you as a service in return for a monthly fee. We look after the technical things like hosting, data backups, security certificates, domain name registration and the on-going development of the FoodCommerce application. This leaves you to concentrate on making a success of your online business.
Once we receive your application we immediately create your FoodCommerce account. You can then log into the control panel and begin loading your products. The control panel is the place where you run your online business from, including the processing of your customer orders and managing the look and content of your online shop.
- Everything you need, a complete solution
- No technical skills required
- Take credit and debit card payments
- Your own brand on your own domain
- Free help and support
- No hidden charges or set up fees
We help you get your online shop launched as part of our inclusive help and support. This means we will style your online shop to your current business identity or to a design that you have had created.
Once your shop is up and running you have full control over the content of every page, so you, or your web developer, can access and change everything to suit your needs.
- Full control over every page in your store
- Fully compliant to the latest standards
- We’ll help you set up your store
- Easy to use control panel to manage all your content

Adding products to your store is done quickly and easily using the control panel. You can load a product from our library or create one of your own from scratch. Products can be priced per item, per kilogram or per litre.
There are several thousand product images in our image library to help get you started, and we’re adding more all the time.
- Quickly add or remove products
- Unlimited number of products and categories
- Apply offers and promotions
- View and print reports
FoodCommerce has a variety of different delivery options which you can use in your store.
You can deliver locally in postcode defined areas, have your customers collect their orders from pick-up points, deliver nationally using a courier service, or a combination of all three.
Customers choose when their orders are delivered from the days and times you offer, in a similar way to shopping online with the supermarkets.
- Use local delivery routes, or “milkrounds”
- Offer collection services
- Send text messages to remind customers about their delivery
- Compete with supermarket deliveries
- Nationwide delivery options
- Control the number of deliveries per delivery slot

Marketing your online store is your responsibility but we try our best to help you as much as we can. All of our shops are search engine friendly and perform well in Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. We offer a powerful discounting facility where various offers and claim codes can be added to your store. We can help you promote your website using online advertising such as Google AdWords.
Our sister product Online Connector provides email marketing, text messaging and social media services to help promote your online store.
- Search engine friendly online store
- Free support and advice with online marketing
- Use promotions to tempt new customers
- Works with Online Connector for email, text and social marketing services
When selling expensive loose or cut products such as meat and cheese you will want to charge for the actual weight you supply the customer. To do this you will need to take payment after you have prepared the order.
When a customer order is placed their card details are taken and securely stored in your Sage Pay or Cardsave account.
Once you have prepared the order you enter the exact weights in the control panel which recalculates the amount and takes the payment from the customer’s card.
Throughout the process the customer’s card details are completely secure and cannot be seen at anytime by anyone.
- Charge for the exact weight you supply
- Delay taking payment until you have prepared the order
You will need either a Sage Pay or a Cardsave account to use with your FoodCommerce store. All your customer’s payments will go straight into your merchant bank account and your customer will see your company name on their bank statement.
Transactions are taken in real time throughout the day. These transactions are then collected up into an overnight process called “settlement”, which moves funds between the customer accounts and your merchant account. Your bank then transfers the funds from your merchant account into your bank account, usually at the same time.
All payments are taken securely and we are compliant with the PCI DSS standards all the UK banks require.
There is also an option to take orders without taking card payment details and instead collect payment on delivery. You choose on which delivery schemes this is allowed.
- Take credit and debit card payments
- Pay on delivery option
- Payments go straight into your bank account
An overnight process decides the orders you need to start preparing based on the delivery day and the time you need. The order status is moved from “open” to “picking in progress” meaning the customer can no longer make changes and you can begin to put it together.
FoodCommerce provides you with a pick-list to tell you what needs to be done and a delivery note to include with the order.
When you are busy you can print many pick-lists at once, produce product reports summarising what you need, and when you have finished a transaction report to tell you what you did.
- Daily to-do lists keep you organised
- Substitute unavailable products
- Take payment before delivering the order
- Quickly process refunds if required
Everything technical is managed by us on your behalf. We look after the hosting, the security certificates, your domain name and even your email if you want us to.
The FoodCommerce application is entirely written by ourselves and we are continually working on it adding new features and improving on existing ones.
The easy to use control panel is where you manage your orders and products on a daily basis. For things you do less often, like set up a new delivery scheme or create a new page we are here to help should you need it.
- No technical skills required
- We are always here to help with technical queries or tasks
- Hosting and email included
- Leaves you to concentrate on running your online business

Free help and support by email and telephone is included with all FoodCommerce stores.
When you first set up your FoodCommerce store we will guide you through the process and help you put your store together and get it launched.
- Free email and telephone support
- You talk direct to the people who write and run FoodCommerce – no call centres
- Online marketing advice
- Suggest new features or improvements

