Otter FAQ: Your questions, answered.

So you’ve taken the first step to succeeding in delivery by signing up for Otter, eh?

You’ve decided to superpower your delivery business by signing up for Otter – congrats! Wait, you haven’t signed up yet? What are you waiting for? Regardless of whether you’re a current customer or simply a restaurant looking to learn more about Otter's delivery management & optimization solutions, this article's for you.

Let’s talk restaurant tech. 

If you work at a restaurant, which if you’re here, you more than likely do, you know that there’s a whole lot of things you have to keep up with.

From hiring & supervising employees to overseeing inventory, creating marketing campaigns and promotions, making great food & taking care of your customers. And today, amid the online-ordering boom, running a restaurant also requires you to keep up with a lot of technology.

Otter exists to simplify your tech stack so you can focus less on the operations & more on what you love: food & people. While our delivery solution is built to be as user-friendly as possible, the whole concept of a delivery management & insights platform is still new. Due to this, you might have some questions about Otter in general, the packages & features, our integration capabilities, support, or hardware – if you have questions, this article is the answer.

In the next few sections, we'll answer the most frequently asked questions about Otter from general inquiries, to package related questions, to questions feature explanations, integration capabilities, pricing questions, hardware questions, and questions about support.

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Otter FAQ

What is Otter? ‍

Otter is a delivery management & optimization platform that helps your restaurant increase sales and efficiency. Our partnerships with major online and direct-to-consumer ordering platforms enable the business to provide restaurant customers with unparalleled order aggregation, automation, and data reporting: ensuring restaurants succeed in an omnichannel world by increasing online sales and operating with greater efficiency. Otter’s innovative order management and analytics technology products can be tailored to meet all restaurants’ online ordering needs.  

Why should I use Otter?

Otter provides you with a comprehensive product and service offering focused on helping your restaurant quickly and sustainably grow its online food ordering business. Our innovative solutions eliminate the chaos of online ordering to help your restaurant succeed in delivery.

What types of businesses does Otter help?

Otter operates globally with a wide range of restaurants - from large enterprises to small businesses, food trucks, and everything in between. A few key restaurant customers include KFC, Taco Bell, Arby’s, Subway, Golden Corral, Ben & Jerry’s, Pressed Juicery and more.

Questions related to Otter’s packages

• What’s included in the Free solution? Free provides you with delivery data across key metrics and reporting to help you gain insight into your performance.
• What’s included in Essentials? Essentials one tablet solution provides everything you need to consolidate your services into one screen. ‍
• What’s included in Core? Core is the all-in-one solution for delivery management, consolidation, insight and optimization.‍
• What’s included in Pro? Pro provides your restaurant with best-in-class insights, data, expansion opportunities, and support.

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Questions related to Otter features‍

What is Otter Order Management?

‍ Otter's Order Management solution syncs all of your delivery services into a single tablet and printer – giving you complete control of your online ordering business. From our connected system, you can automatically accept orders from all of your delivery apps, track and monitor the status of everything at a glance, pause and unpause your stores, 86 menu items when you’ve run out of ingredients, update your store hours, and measure the success of your online ordering business with comprehensive reporting and insights.

What is Otter Auto-Accept & Print?

‍ Never miss an order again with the ability to auto-accept every order as soon as it comes in. When your restaurant's slammed, feel free to turn this feature off so you can manually accept as many orders as you can handle.

‍What is Otter Menu Management?

Our Menu Management solution consolidates all your online menus across locations, brands, and platforms into a single place – empowering you to make updates and changes as needed on the fly. Menu Management also allows you to rename, update pricing, and edit modifiers for individual menu items or entire categories if you want to try something new. If a specific menu item has been performing well on delivery platforms, you can reorder your menu to bump it to the top. If something’s been underperforming, you can push it to the bottom or deactivate it altogether.
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What is Otter Insights?

‍ Insights, Otter's customized reporting suite, is our solution to most of the food delivery industry’s unsolved problems. Our industry-leading dashboards are able to leverage customers’ data to uncover insights which empower them to maximize revenue & operational efficiency. These dashboards sit parallel to our Order Manager technology and showcase the need for delivery best practices, identify causes of lost revenue, and highlight the value of having an efficient and powerful restaurant tech stack.

What are Otter Virtual Brands?

The concept of virtual brands is still so new that the idea of creating one can feel complicated, but the team at Otter has you covered! A virtual brand is a stand-alone listing on the food delivery apps. The reason it’s called “virtual” is because the brand name & menu items may not have a brick and mortar – the customer can only order online and have the food delivered to them directly. The benefit of creating a virtual brand for restaurants is simple – utilize your existing labor & square footage to fulfill more orders, thus increasing your restaurant’s sales. Want to try it out for yourself? Get in touch with our Customer Success team at success@tryotter.com to implement some virtual brands at your restaurant. 

What is Otter's Advanced Reports?

Otter's Advanced Reports provide your restaurant with an additional level of granularity and richness in terms of performance data. Advanced Reports feature new columns and levels of aggregation to even further support your restaurant’s operations, finances, and performance. The most notable features within Advanced Reports are financial data points like commissions, payouts, and tips as well as prep times, day-by-Day Reporting that exports your store’s top-line and lost revenue performance broken out by day to build out advanced models, and best in class Advanced Product & Modifier Reporting.

What is Handoffs by Otter?

Think of Handoffs by Otter as a digital host that manages courier & customer pick-ups. Our order handoff solution increases order handoff speed to decrease in-store chaos. This solution is great for restaurants looking to reduce order issues and increase customer satisfaction.

What is Boost by Otter?

‍ Boost is Otter's marketing solution that allows your restaurant to run promotions and marketing campaigns without lifting a finger. Boost provides detailed targeting, customized & automated marketing campaigns, and daily reporting at no additional cost.

Otter Integrations

• Does Otter integrate with POS systems? Absolutely. We have partnerships with major point of sale companies including Revel, Brink, Clover, NCR Aloha, Squirrel Systems, Toast, Micros, POSitouch, Square, & XPIENT.‍

• Does Otter integrate with direct to consumer delivery platforms? Mhm. We integrate with most of the leading direct to consumer delivery platforms including Flipdish, 9Fold, JoyUp, Mr Yum, Allset, Appfront, FreshBytes, GloriaFood, LoDel, Menufy, Captain, Sauce, Lunchbox, Mobile Food Menu 

• Does Otter integrate with my third party delivery service? Yep. We have partnerships with top third party delivery services including Uber Eats, Caviar, Doordash, Order with Google, Club Feast, Postmates, BiteSquad, ChowNow, Waitr, Zuppler, Grubhub, Seamless, & Ritual.

If you’re a delivery service or POS company looking to integrate with Otter, please let us know a little bit about you here. 

Pricing & billing questions

How much does Otter cost?

When you partner with Otter, you get a tailored solution and only pay for what you need. We offer 4 packages at 4 different price points to help your restaurant succeed in delivery. Otter Free provides you with delivery data across key metrics and reporting to help you gain insight into your performance. The cost of Free? Well, free. Yep, $0.00. Essentials is the one tablet solution that provides you with everything you need to consolidate your delivery services into a single screen. Essentials starts at $59 per month. Core is the all-in-one solution for delivery management that consolidates all your delivery services into a single screen and provides you with performance insights. Core starts at $79 per month. Pro provides your restaurant with best-in-class insights, data, expansion opportunities and support – starting at $99 per month. If you’re an enterprise customer looking for a more custom-fit solution, we offer that too. Get in touch with our team to build the best Otter bundle for your business! getstarted@tryotter.com If you’ve decided on a package but it’s missing that special something, you can add a specific feature or two a la carte. We offer certain features like Live Data, Menu Item 86ing & POS Integration at a la carte prices. Learn more here!

When will I be billed?

‍ You’ll be billed once a month. The specific date you’ll be billed depends on when you signed up. If you have questions or concerns about your billing date, please reach out to us at hello@tryotter.com 

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Hardware questions

• I received my hardware, what should I do next? Once your hardware’s been delivered, it just needs a simple set up. Check out a step-by-step walkthrough here

• How do I set up my printer? The team at Otter makes printer activation simple. Check out a video tutorial on printer setup here!

• What should I do with all of the tablets that my online food ordering services sent me? Feel free to keep them charged and stowed away should you ever need them again. But maybe the bigger question is… what are you going to do with all of that newly recovered counter space?!
  

Support related questions

• How can I get in touch with support? You can get in touch with our support team in a few ways. Reach out to us by email and we’re get back to you as soon as possible hello@tryotter.com, check out our support hub to dig into more detailed questions & answers across topics like getting started, tablet settings, printer settings, POS & more.  If you’re a current customer, feel free to chat with us via the Live Chat option in the bottom right corner of the Otter app. 

• What if I want to add a new delivery service? We’d love to help you add a new delivery service! This is a great way of increasing sales & orders, and when you sign up with Otter, you could also unlock an exclusive rate. Lower commission = more $$$ in your pocket. To sign up for new platforms, simply email success@tryotter.com to get in touch with someone from our Customer Success team.

• What if I want to add POS integration? Awesome! As we mentioned above, Otter integrates with most POS systems including Revel, Clover, Toast, NCR Aloha and more. If you’re ready to integrate your POS system to Otter, simply email success@tryotter.com and someone from our Customer Success team will assist you. 

• What if I want to change my subscription to another package? We get it. Sometimes you just want a little extra. Extra support. Extra features. Extra everything. If you’re looking to upgrade to a new package, email our Customer Success team at success@tryotter.com and someone will be in touch shortly. 
  

We hope this article has resolved the majority of your questions!

If you’re an existing customer, you’re ready to start using Otter like a pro. Feel free to bookmark this page for future reference.

If you're a restaurant that's ready to sign up, fill out the form below to get started. We’re eager to help your restaurant increase sales and decrease stress!