Set Up Unique Hours for Rails Orders

Overview

Rails Hours gives brands more control by allowing marketplace orders to have a distinct set of operating hours. Brands can set different hours for their Rails orders versus curbside, Dispatch, pickup, etc. orders. There are three main components to setting up unique Rails hours:

• Enabling Rails Hours
• Creating/managing Rails Hours
• Creating/managing Rails Hour Overrides

Once the feature is enabled at the brand level, restaurant managers will need to set distinct Rails Hours for their stores. 

Important: Rails Hours are not an extension of Business Hours. They are a distinct set of hours only for Rails orders.

1: Enabling Rails Hours

Brand Managers with the Rails Settings permission will be able to enable and disable Rails Hours via the Dashboard. 

On your Dashboard, click Settings in the left nav, select the Brand Settings tab at the top of the page, and then click General Settings.    

Next, select the Rails Settings tab. Toggle Enable Rails Hours Feature and select Confirm to enable/disable the change.

Once Rails Hours are enabled at the brand-level, Dashboard managers will see a new Rails Hours tab on the Store Hours page (of all their vendors), where they’ll be able to create and manage hours, shown in the next section.

Note: Below the Rails Hours toggle, you'll see a Certified Rails Partners section with toggles for Rails-certified partners on the Olo platform. You can toggle the partners your brand has a relationship with to appear elsewhere in the Dashboard. These toggles do not impact the Rails Hours feature. 

2: Creating and Managing Rails Hours

Hover over the Stores tab in the left nav and select Store Hours under the Operational Settings section.  

Select the store(s) you’d like to modify. From there, navigate to the Rails Hours tab.

Note: Rails Hours are empty when first enabled. Users must add distinct hours for every day and hour of Rails operation in order for Rails orders to function correctly. Rails orders will follow Business Hours if this remains empty. 

Either copy existing business hours and make edits or enter hours from scratch (restaurants with Dispatch hours will have a Copy from Dispatch Hours button available).

Notes

• If the Rails Hours feature is enabled but hours have not been created, the Rails orders for that store will follow Business hours until new Rails Hours are created/added.
• Full Business Hours for Rails orders should be set in the Rails Hours tab. For example, if you create hours for a single day, this will indicate to your marketplaces that you are only available for that one day created.
• Once hours are set, we will immediately notify your marketplace partners that new hours exist. These updates usually occur very quickly, but sometimes may take up to an hour or two to be made on the marketplace side.
• From a back-end technical standpoint, Olo is translating the Rails hours into the Pickup hours that Marketplaces currently utilize. That way, there is nothing new that the marketplaces need to do to start picking up the new hours. 

If the store wants to revert back to Business Hours, they will have to remove every Rails Hours entry. When Rails Hours is empty, all Rails orders will default back to Business Hours. 

3: Creating and Managing Rails Hour Overrides

Dashboard managers are able to add Rails Hour overrides as long as there are existing Rails Hours.

By clicking the + Add Rails Hour Override button in the Rails Hours tab, managers can set their desired override hours. 

Dashboard Managers can click the Edit button to edit the overrides or click the Remove button to remove the overrides altogether.

4: Bulk Business Hour Override Behavior

Please note that Rails Hours Overrides will NOT be created when applying Business Hour Overrides in bulk for multiple stores at a time unless all selected stores have at least one day of hours.

• • As long as the store(s) selected ALL have some Rails Hours present (the Rails Hours tab is NOT empty), creating a Business Hour Override also creates a corresponding Rails Hour Override.
  • HOWEVER, if ANY of the stores that are selected have empty Rails Hours, corresponding Rails Hour Overrides will NOT be created for all stores. A warning message will appear when this occurs. 
  • 
  • Workaround: The only way to maintain the 1:1 relationship between Business + Rails Overrides will be to apply the Business Hour Overrides one store group or store at a time.

When you go through “Create an override for all selected stores”:

• • If every store selected has at least one Rails Hours defined, then when you add a Business Hour Override, it will be carried over as a Rails Override. 
  • 
  •  
    • If any of the stores you have selected have empty Rails Hours defined (meaning at least one of the selected stores has NO days/hours defined or has an empty Rails Hours), the Business Hour Override will NOT be carried over as a Rails Override.
      • To solve this, you can:
        • Locate the store(s) without Rails Hours defined and add distinct Rails Hours to that store(s). Then, go back into the tool and apply your Business Hour Override, which will then copy a Rails Hour Override. 
          • To do this, you need to go through the groups of stores and locate the group that does not have Rails Hours defined. Once the store(s) is located, define Rails Hours for the store(s) and repeat the “Create an override for all selected stores”
        • Select your stores in bulk, then apply the Business Hour Overrides one store group or store at a time.
        • 
        • 

Important Call Outs

• Rails Hour Overrides will only apply to Rails Hours and will not be copied to any other hours collection. If all Rails Hours are removed, then Rails Hours Overrides will be removed as well.
  • Ex: If I add overrides to my Rails Hours, then those overrides will only apply to my Rails orders. If I then decide to get rid of my distinct Rails hours (and thus, have my Rails orders follow Business Hours), then the overrides that I had set for Rails Hours will be removed as well. 
• If Rails Hours are empty, and new Rails Hours are added (either via copying or new creation), and there are existing Business Hour Overrides for the store, then those existing Business Hour Overrides will still apply to the new Rails Hours but will not be visible in the Rails Hours tab.
  • If this poses an issue, we have a workaround: After creating your Rails Hours, add a Rails Hour Override and then remove it. That will prevent any pre-existing Business Hour Overrides from applying to your Rails Hours. 
    
    
• When Rails Hours is enabled, any newly created Business Hour Overrides will also be copied over as Rails Hour Overrides. However, once copied, these new overrides will need to be managed separately from the Business Hour Overrides. 
  • Ex: If I have both a set of Business Hours and Rails Hours active at my store, and I decide to add a Business Hour override because of a flooded kitchen, then this override will also be copied over and applied to my Rails Hours. After copying, if I decided to edit the original Business Hour Override, then the changes will only be applied to the override in Business Hours, NOT Rails Hours. 
    
    
• Online Overrides will apply to Rails Hours, but will not be visible in the Rails Hours tab. They are, however, visible in the Business Hours tab.
  • Ex: If I have both a set of Business Hours and Rails Hours active at my store, and I decide to add an Online Hour override because it’s Mother’s Day and I want to prioritize in-store orders. This Online override will only appear in the Business Hours tab, but will still be applicable to my Rails orders. 
    
    
• Rails Hours and Rails Hours Overrides will NOT affect Dispatch hours.
  
  
• Rails Hours, just like your other hours, will be affected by your stores' configuration for "Orders At Closing" feature. 
  
  
• Certain Rails Marketplaces apply a closing time buffer by default. Please be aware that your Rails Hours will continue to be affected if you are on a marketplace that utilizes closing time buffers. 

FAQ

Q: Can Rails Hours extend past business hours? Or start earlier than business hours?

• A: Yes! Rails hours are customizable and can be set to be shorter than business hours or longer than business hours.

Q: What happens if a brand enables Rails Hours, but their store(s) don’t set up any Rails Hours?

• A: Olo will continue sending the Business Hours to our marketplaces until Rails Hours are added.

Q: What happens if a store only adds Rails Hours for a single day of the week?

• A: Then that will be the only day that the store will be able to accept Rails marketplace orders. The store will appear as closed for the remaining six days. If you want to have distinct hours for Rails orders for every day of the week, it’s important to have Rails Hours set up for every day.

Q: How will the marketplaces be aware that there are Rails Hours?

• A: There is no work needed on the marketplace’s side to support Rails Hours (as long as they read Olo hours via our MES service). Olo will pass the hours information through the vendor menu files (via our MES service) as “pickup” hours. Marketplaces shouldn’t see anything different and will continue leveraging the pickup handoff mode. 

Q: Which marketplaces support this feature?

• A: All marketplaces can support this feature as long as they pull hours from MES files. 

Q: Can I add unique Rails Hours for different marketplaces (i.e. DD has longer hours than PM)

• A: Currently, marketplace-specific hours are not supported with this feature. Rails Hours will apply to all Rails marketplace orders. Ex: If a vendor has Rails Hours enabled and is on Postmates, DoorDash and Delivery.com, then their Rails hours will be the same for all three marketplaces.

Q: My brand uses Menu Sync/Menu Import Service, can I utilize this Rails Hours feature?

• A: Unfortunately no. However, we do hope to add support for Menu Sync/MIS brands in the future.