Changelog
Follow up on the latest improvements and updates.
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You already use Hotplate to run drops. But when someone walks up at a pop-up, taking their payment often means switching to Venmo or another platform. That customer may never hear about what you’re making next.
We're excited to introduce Pop-up Mode. Now you can take walk-up payments on your iPhone, find preorders at pickup, and turn in-person customers into subscribers for future drops.
⎯
For walk-ups
Take payments with a tap
Create an order and accept any contactless card or Apple Pay. No separate hardware required.
After payment, your customer enters their phone number. We text their receipt, subscribe them to your drop texts, and award loyalty points.
For pickups
Find the order. Keep the line moving
Scan the QR code on your customer's confirmation page or search for their order
Your first taps are on us
To celebrate the launch,
we're covering payment processing fees on the first $100,000 of Tap to Pay transactions on Hotplate
. Eligible fees will be credited back nightly.Available in the latest Hotplate iOS app. Open Orders → ⋮ → Pop-up Mode and allow permissions.
To the chefs who tested this with us: thank you for helping us build it!
❤️ The Hotplate Team
Now you can team up with other chefs and bakers on a single drop!
Invite one or more collaborators, build the menu together, and send one drop text to everyone's subscribers.
- Each chef adds their own items to the menu
- Assign revenue splits to shared items
- Earnings & tips are split automatically - no more manual math
- Send the invite link to collab with someone who's not on Hotplate yet - you'll earn referral credit for a year 🎉
Shoutout to our beta testers: Zach and Bilal, Holly and Matt, Em and Christina. Their feedback massively improved this feature!
❤️ The Hotplate Team
Order confirmations got a makeover!
The important details -- name, order number, location, pickup day and time -- are now bigger, bolder, and easier to read at-a-glance.
On mobile, tapping
View
opens the QR code with key info to make pickups a breeze.
We updated the entire drops flow to make everything quicker and easier!
What's new
- Drops open front and center instead of on the side
- Edit pickup windows freely when your drop is live. No need to close them just to make a change
- Better date and time pickers
- See original and modified inventory per item
- Streamlined Schedule tab
- Red dots on Menu and Stats indicate you're actively selling
- & more!
A huge thank you to everyone who sent in feedback and tested the new version. Stay tuned for more updates!
❤️ The Hotplate team
One of our most requested features is here:
You can now
reply to reviews
on your storefront!
Whether you're thanking someone for a glowing review or responding to feedback, review replies are an easy way to show appreciation for your customers and build trust.
How it works:
- Click on a pending or published review
- Write your reply and save
- Your customer gets a text notification letting them know you've replied
- Your reply appears publicly beneath the review on your storefront
Thanks to the 225 of you who voted for this feature in Canny, and a special thanks to our beta testers.
You asked, we built it!
The Hotplate app is now available on the App Store.
Your portal, now just a tap away. With
push notifications
to keep all your updates in one place.To everyone who joined our beta: thank you. Your feedback helped us improve the experience and get the app over the finish line.
❤️ The Hotplate Team
When you refer a chef to Hotplate (using your unique referral link), you'll now earn 20% of their Hotplate fees for an
entire year
!Even better: you’ll get
paid out every month
, so you follow along as your friends' businesses grow.Previously, you only earned fees on their first month of sales. We expanded this to a whole year, because we know that some businesses take more time to get going.
To copy your unique referral link or track your earnings, go to Settings and click
Refer a chef
.Thank you, as always, for helping Hotplate grow!
This change is effective for referrals made on/after May 7, 2026.
You can now create gift cards directly in your portal, without needing to buy them yourself!
- Head to Gift cards
- Click +
- Enter an amount
- Create!
Perfect for giveaways, fundraisers, donations, and store credit.
What's new
- The Gift cards tab
- Create a gift card straight from your portal
- See all gift card codes
- View original and remaining balances
- See the orders associated with each gift card
Great for
- Fundraisers, donations, giveaways, raffles
- Sending a gift card directly to a customer
- Keeping track of all gift cards: those purchased from your storefront, through drops, and created by you
Read more about this change in our help center.
Thanks to our beta testers!
Creating an order just got a whole lot easier 🎉
You can now send customers a payment link for manually created orders - perfect for handling one-off requests, custom orders, special pricing, or anything that happens outside of a normal drop.
Instead of juggling Venmo requests, DMs, spreadsheets, and separate invoices, you can keep things organized alongside your existing preorders.
What you can do
- Create an order for a customer
- Add pickup details, items & quantities
- Send a secure payment link directly to the customer
- Customize the text notification they'll receive with the link
Great for
- Custom orders
- VIP requests
- Handling orders outside of your regular drops
This feature started as one of our most requested workflows - thanks to everyone who helped beta test and shared feedback along the way 🔥
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! 👀
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