Changelog
Follow up on the latest improvements and updates.
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We're excited to say we've released over
80 improvements
to the new portal over the last couple weeks! Huge thank you to everyone who sent in kind words and shared what you want to see improved.Some of you missed parts of the old portal you couldn't live without (yes, the payout tab 💸), and some of you unexpectedly ran into issues.
Because of this,
we’re extending access to the old portal from April 6th to April 15th.
Our goal is to make Hotplate one of the easiest, smoothest, and most supportive parts of running your business.
We’re improving the portal every week. We’re actively looking for feedback, so if you have any and haven’t reached out yet, please send it to support@hotplate.com.
With a world of warmth 🔥🍽️,
The Hotplate team
-------------------------------------------
Below is a list of some of the highest impact areas we improved directly from your feedback:
The Big Ones
- Payout tab with transaction history:The full transactions page is back 💸 You’ll still be able to payout and see your transactions under settings, but we brought back this tab as an easy view
- Unlimited inventory:You can set items to unlimited inventory again. Most chefs set limits on core items to drive sellouts and keep things manageable, but you now have the flexibility when when you need it
- Full live drop editing:We heard from you that editing live events felt like a pain. You can now more easily rearrange items, add sections, edit cover photos, create pickup windows, and change orders open/close times while a drop is live. More improvements coming here too!
- Prep tab overhauled:By default, the prep tab will now hide past & completed days, and for those of you having issues marking items as ‘prepped’, we fixed this
- Drop cutoff enforcement:Conflicting order cutoff times between old and new portal were causing unexpected orders to come through. These are all fixed
- Mobile and tablet fixes:Some of you who use the Arc browser, or specific iOS / Safari versions on mobile and tablets, had issues with seeing different parts of Hotplate. You should now see all Hotplate tabs to navigate to more easily
- Team login and account switching:Invited team members can now see all the parts of the portal they’re supposed to, and multi-account teams can switch accounts directly in the portal
- Improved scrolling:More clearly displayed scrollbars across the portal so you can easily scroll through content. We also fixed an issue where arrow keys weren’t always scrolling properly for some of you ⬆️⬇️
Orders & Prep
- Order loading:Orders now load in as they’re placed, no re-load required
- Flexible rescheduling:You can now reschedule orders to any custom time, even outside the original drop window
- Cash orders displayed more easily:We now more clearly display the amount you need to collect on pickup, and you can see this all at a glance without clicking in to the ticket
- Order notes on printed tickets:Order notes now show up on printed tickets
- Discount codes on receipts:Receipts now show which discount code was applied, not just that the total changed
- Gift card orders clearer:Drop-related gift card purchases no longer show up as their own ticket to be fulfilled
- Prep items stay in order:Prep items are back in alphabetical order
- Items on tickets in order:Items on tickets are back in alphabetical order
- Prep groups variations together:The same item with and without variations now groups together in prep instead of showing as separate line items
Drops & Menu Management
- Live drop analytics improvements:Check out your “menu” tab during a drop. You can now watch all your items go to carts and check out during a live drop in real-time, and it is an extremely fun experience to watch your items sell live 🔥
- Orders close reminder on live drops:You can now add additional orders-close reminder texts to a live drop
- Orders open/close time warnings:We added clearer warning messages in case the timing for your order-reminder texts, or your general drop schedule, conflict (e.g., your orders close time is before your orders open time)
- Clearer pricing on variation items:Items with variations now display the full price more clearly on receipts
- Drop sharing upgraded:The share button on a drop (top right corner of a scheduled drop) now opens a dialog where you can copy your drop link or generate a QR code for more easy sharing.
- Drop duplication cleaned up:Duplicating a drop now preserves delivery settings, removes empty sections, and gives untitled sections a proper name
- Live drops can be public or private:You can now more easily toggle a live drop between private and public if you need to!
- Create a discount for a draft drop:You can now create a discount code for a drop that’s still a draft before publishing
Search & Filters
- Clearer filters on mobile:Active filters now more clearly display when filters are applied to make sure you’re seeing all the orders you expect to
- Clear "reset" for filters on mobile:It's now much more obvious how to reset your filters when they're active
- Mobile search stays visible:On mobile, the search bar no longer collapses and hides that you have an active search if you navigate away
Onboarding & Help
- Built-in "Get help" assistant:There's a new "Get help" button that opens an AI assistant to give you quick answers to your questions! You can also click the “show me around” buttons to walk you through features with interactive product tours. (Note this only on desktop right now)
This isn't the full list of everything we've changed, but it is most of the major themes. We are constantly pushing improvements for y'all. If you haven't reached out with feedback yet and don't see yours on the list above, please send some in to support@hotplate.com.
We're excited to get everyone fully switched over to the new portal, and release some net-new features! 👀
This week marks one of the
biggest updates
we’ve shipped since starting Hotplate.Over the past few months, our team has been rebuilding the Hotplate portal to make it faster, sleeker, and a better experience for everyone running their business on Hotplate.
We first built Hotplate to solve the issues a few chefs and bakers were having running their drops, and then things took off beyond our wildest imagination. Today, Hotplate supports
5,000+ independent food creators
, selling all kinds of food in all 50 states and territories of the US.As the community has grown, so have the needs of the people using it every day. It became clear that in order to keep building the tools chefs have been asking for — and move much faster going forward — we first needed to
rebuild the portal itself.
This update lays the groundwork for the next phase of Hotplate.
Starting today
(March 9th)
, everyone logging into Hotplate will see the new portal experience.This is just an update to your portal, nothing will change for your customers!
Many of you have the portal bookmarked, so just a heads up, the new portal now lives at:
For anyone who had a Hotplate account prior to today and needs more time to transition, the previous version of the portal will remain available until
April 6th.
If you’d prefer to temporarily switch back, you can access the old portal at:
We love feedback
If you do switch back, we’d really appreciate you emailing us at support@hotplate.com or texting our new chef hotline at 1-888-CHEF-HOT (1-888-243-3468) letting us know why. That feedback is incredibly valuable to us as we improve the new portal and make this transition as seamless as possible for everyone running their business on Hotplate.
What’s new
While the primary purpose of the new portal is to enable what comes next, there are a few improvements you’ll notice when you log in:
- The new portal loads faster and is more responsive
- Drop stats are now easily viewable across events to help track sell-outs
- A new fulfillment report helps track pickup progress as orders are packed
You’ll also notice a number of smaller improvements across the portal — from easier quick actions on orders to the ability to attach manual orders directly to a drop.
When you log in, we’ll walk you through some of the newer additions.
An updated Hotplate brand
Alongside the portal rebuild, we’ve also updated the Hotplate brand!
This update is designed to better reflect the platform we’re building and the thousands of chefs using Hotplate to run their businesses.
What this unlocks
More than anything, this rebuild gives us the ability to move much faster going forward.
Over the past year we’ve heard hundreds of feature requests from chefs running their businesses on Hotplate. Many of those were difficult for us to ship quickly on the old system.
Now we can.
Over the next few months, you’ll start seeing many of the features chefs have been asking for begin to roll out.
We’re cooking up a lot, and it’s shaping up to be a really exciting year for Hotplate.
Stay tuned.
— The Hotplate team (Rishi, Ben, Tenaya, Sarah, Oryan, Efrain, Adam, Nico, Alex, and Michelle) ❤️
Hey everyone,
Hotplate’s support number has officially moved!
Our chef hotline has moved from 214-833-9248 to a new number:
1-888-CHEF-HOT
🔥You can call or text this number anytime if you need help. Please save the new number: we’ll be using it going forward.
Stay tuned for more updates coming next week. Our team has been heads down working on some big improvements to Hotplate and we’re excited to start rolling them out soon.
As always, really appreciate all of you building your businesses with us.
Hey Everyone
We heard you! Since the switch to Stripe Connect, many of you have been frustrated with the time it has taken for your funds to process and become available to payout with Stripe. I'm excited to follow up from my post last week with good news:
After working with Stripe and communicating your frustrations (even all the way up to Stripe's CEO) I am happy to announce that
all Hotplate accounts have been upgraded to the fastest possible processing speeds at no additional cost
.You can now
see exactly when your funds will be available
by clicking "More info" when looking at your balance.Additionally, if you’d prefer to schedule your payouts to run on their own, you can now
set up Automated payouts to receive your funds daily, weekly, or monthly
by clicking “Manage.”Thank you to everyone who spoke about your negative experience so that I could use your collective voices to amplify our requests up the ladder at Stripe. I’m happy and hopeful that you will all now enjoy a considerably better experience than you had previously.
We'll always keep building and working to support you and your businesses.
– Ben, CEO
Last month, we released an update allowing you to customize your drop text and add an orders close reminder.
We got lots of feedback, and a big takeaway was that it was confusing to edit from both account settings and within a drop.
Now, you'll find an easier way to manage your drop notifications from the new and improved
Publish tab
.Shoutout to our beta testers in the Hotplate Community for helping us with the re-design ❤️
How does it work?
Customize your drop notifications from the
Publish tab
of your drop. There are 2 ways to edit:✏️ Click directly on the text box to customize the message only for the drop you are editing.
✏️ Click Settings to edit or re-set to your defaults. All future drops will use these updated defaults.
Let Rishi take you through the update in this video or check out our help center for the full guide.
As always, reach out with any questions or feedback!
new
improved
Orders close reminders!
A few months ago, Rishi hosted a chef meetup in Dallas - and he loved meeting so many of you in person! 🙌🏾
A lot of you shared feedback, and two things came up more than anything else:
- You wanted to control notifications per event instead of one setting for everything.
- You wanted an automatic text to go out when orders close.
Both of those features are now live as of today! 🎉
We think that an "orders are closing" notification is a great way to build hype and encourage that last minute purchase before orders close.
Settings
You can now set up your defaults in the settings tab so that all future events start with the same configuration. You can find this in your Settings under Event Notifications.
Events
And you can modify notifications on a per event level giving you maximum control over what notifications are sent to your subscribers and when. You can find this on the "Publish" or "Share" tab of an Event.
Hopefully this is a helpful visualization for what notifications you're sending and when!
- Ranga
new
improved
Beautiful gift cards!
An example gift card for a Hotplate creator in Jersey City, Soaked Bar! Check them out
hereGift cards got an upgrade
We gave gift cards a facelift – making them more attractive and match your brand. Additionally, we added a bunch of updates to gift cards to make them easier to buy and use for customers.
And a highly requested update – you will now be notified whenever a customer buys a gift card from your storefront!
You can see how your gift cards look by heading over to your storefront and clicking "Gift Card" in the top right.
Pro tip: make sure your logo has a transparent background for the best results!
We hope you enjoy this fun little improvement, have a good week!
-Ben
We have been rolling out a new mobile design for your sale pages over the past few weeks, and we are now confident it has a
dramatic positive impact
on customer order rate
and subscriber signup rate
, so we are rolling it out to everyone today!
Updates to how your sales look on mobile
We have updated the look of your drops on mobile according to feedback and internal testing:
- Show more enticing stats to your customers, like a countdown if orders are closing soon
- Condense your sale info so customers can instantly click on menu items to buy
- Improve the look and feel of the pre-sale chat
- Improve the messaging and call-to-action for customers to subscribe when they hit a sale before it opens or after it is sold out or closed
- Update the UI to always reflect your chosen theme colors, so everything feels like you!
Info page
We also added a new Info page for events, which customers access by clicking "More info"
This will include all of your locations, pickup times, delivery times, and everything else a customer may want to know about the sale, without cluttering the main sale page with all that info.
To ensure customers are always have placing an order on their mind, we also include a button at the bottom for them to click to place an order, which brings the menu front and center :)
- Ben
Improvements
- Added a Notes filter to prep and packing, allowing you to search your orders by notes!
- Updated many underlying systems as we prepare for some exciting system and visual improvements
- Small fix to improve sorting by first and last name in your packing tab
We’re excited to launch a space for chefs and bakers using Hotplate to connect! We hope this community becomes your go-to place to ask questions, get inspired, and offer support to other chefs and bakers like you. Most of all, we hope these conversations help everyone grow their businesses and learn from each other’s experiences.
Some ideas for what to post (but feel free to do what’s natural!):
- Wins:("I just posted on Nextdoor and got 30 subscribers!")
- What’s working:(Strategies that have helped your business grow)
- Struggles:(Things you’re trying to figure out)
- Growth questions:("What do you guys post on Instagram/social media?")
- Questions for others:("What type of content does everyone consume on social media?")
Here’s how you join:
We use a platform called Circle to host our community.
- Click the Communitytab in your portal to go to our community home on Circle.
- Create your Circle account (this is separate from your Hotplate login). If you already have an account, you'll just be prompted to log in.
- Read the welcome post, and introduce yourself in the main feed!
Note: To keep the community relevant and helpful, we’re currently only opening the invite to businesses with more than 10 orders. If you’re just starting out and would like support in getting there, send us an email at support@hotplate.com, or check out our guide on how to get started.
❤️ Oryan + Tenaya
Last week, we launched our
Loyalty Points program
— and in just 10 days over 600 of you
have already enabled it! 🎉As part of that launch, many of you noticed we included an optional bonus feature:
Today, we’re circling back to officially launch this feature as our new
Customer Referral Program!
If you have this setting enabled, customers who share your storefront with their friends will now see a prompt like this:
Customers can share your storefront from a few different places:
- The confirmationpage, after placing an order
- After subscribing via the “Never miss a sale” buttonon your storefront
- The Share button at the top of your storefront(available if the customer has recently placed an order and is still "logged in")
How It Works
- The referring customer will earn bonus points aftertheir friend places their first order. (For off-platform orders like cash or Venmo, the bonus will be grantedonce you confirm receipt of payment.)
- Bonuses only apply when the referred customer has never orderedfrom you before.
- There’s no limit— customers can earn multiple bonuses for referring multiple new customers!
Similar to Loyalty Points more broadly, we’re excited to keep building on and improving this feature based on your experiences and feedback. We can’t wait to see how you use it!
🎉 Nico
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