Are your orders coming in through the windows, doors, emails, calls, and the mail slot? We'll help you manage your small food business' orders with our food business order system. You focus on the food, we'll handle the rest.
Try it for free.webp)
If you're running a successful small business selling cottage food goods from your home, you understand the challenge associated with keeping track of your inventory, managing sales, and taking orders. One of the things we see a lot of is home bakery proprietors just like you with a business model just like yours starting up their dream business selling homemade food online, and before you know it, their customer base is exploding, orders are coming in through the windows, doors, and the mail slot and they are feeling under the gun. For one thing, that's a nice problem to have. But without the right order management solutions, it's going to be a very sticky problem indeed. The good news is that there are systems available that can and will help you to manage your rapidly rising sales tracking needs and that they are very simple and easy to use.
The best online ordering system for small business is one that is simple, easy to use, easy to customize, and that you can fire up and run quickly, right out of the box. You need software for taking orders that provides easy to understand instructions and is user-friendly. That's why we created Castiron, with easy to understand “how to set up an online ordering system ” instructions that will tell you everything you need to know about how to get your new order management system for small businesses up and running fast and effectively.
As a home-based baker, meal prepper, charcuterie board maker, private chef, chocolatier, or food entrepreneur, we understand that managing complex software and flashy online ordering apps might not be your forte. With orders pouring in like crazy, you don't have the time or the energy to learn some complex program with a ton of bells and whistles. We think we've built the best free order system for small business that exists today. Castiron can help you grow your business by providing you with a simple order management software so you can focus on the food, not the admin work.
Hopefully you've got time to look at a brief description or our free app to keep track of customer orders. It's called Castiron, and it is built specifically for the needs of the independent culinary business owner, like yourself, to take orders and keep track of all your eager customers. We hope you'll try its purpose-built tools rather than trying to apply a one-size-fits-all solution that's designed to cater to needs that your business doesn't share.
Rather than adding another tool to your business management stack — and dealing with all the additional costs that come with it — let Castiron do the work for you. Our powerful-yet-simple software guides your customers through the ordering process, whether you sell custom or ready-to-buy products. We'll help you organize customer orders, even if they are coming in by the thousands.
Explore our tools for free during a 14-day free trial. Start building your website, create your custom order forms, even start taking orders and payments... then decide if it’s for you.
If you're even remotely familiar with office management, then when it comes to organizing your business, probably the first thing that comes to mind is spreadsheets. To that end, there are lots of useful and time tested tools out there. Some examples include order tracker template Google Sheets, or an even more traditional free order tracking Excel template system. There are certainly many order taking software free alternatives out there for you to choose from, and if you're familiar with this type of software, it could be the best alternative out there for you. If that's the case, you'll be able to plug in your categories and variables into your sales order tracking Excel template and be off and running.
If you've got your heart set on running an old fashioned Excel sheet and you know what you're doing, that's great! But we hope you'll consider the benefits of free order management software for small business that is custom built to do much of the work for you.
Castiron is designed to be the home-based or commercial kitchen-based chef's best friend. It is a full-featured order management app and online ordering system, with a free plan so you can get familiar with the product before you buy it. Castiron is designed to be intuitive with automated email marketing, custom order request forms, product templates, and many other features that leave your hands free to do what you are passionate about: cooking!
Even if you are a whiz at using a for-purchase order tracking Excel template, our software makes the time you would otherwise spend on the time consuming task of entering items, price variables, dates, categories, contingencies, and if-then formulas both unnecessary and redundant. Our free order management software is raring to go, right out of the box with preset categories, conditionals, and list fields that allow you to set the system up and set it off to the races. Even with the best legacy style spreadsheet, you are going to have to do just about everything except for the very basics of every transaction yourself. What's more, legacy office-style spreadsheets are designed to force the user to have to choose and program the perimeters of every single transaction type and sales contingency. Entrepreneurs and chefs have one thing in common, and that is that they have a creative mindset. As you are probably aware, as a creative personality type, statistically speaking, dealing with all of the technical needs of an office spreadsheet is going to be time-consuming, mentally draining, and thoroughly unpleasant for someone like yourself.
But that is exactly who the Castiron free online ordering system for business is designed for. This free order taking app has everything you need to handle the increasing workload you are under while letting you focus on creating delicious goods for your eager customer base!
When it comes to selecting order management software for small business, you have options. At present, the best are spreadsheets, Square, and our solution - Castiron. So we put together a quick head to head comparison to help you decide what's the best order management software package for you.
Most spreadsheets and the office productivity suites they come with are not free. You will get some free ones that come with your operating system, but these will tend to be pretty unimpressive. In any event, these are among the least intuitive, the most labor intensive, and the most difficult to learn.
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Explore our tools for free during a 14-day free trial. Start building your website, create your custom order forms, even start taking orders and payments... then decide if it’s for you.
The Castiron app offers the best of both of the above systems with an intuitive architecture and user friendly interface, but with the added advantage of a decent degree of the customization you find with spreadsheets.
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Square is designed to be highly intuitive and very user friendly. While it ticks these boxes, it is not free. What's more, some businesses with particular needs or an unusual business model might not find it flexible enough to match their organization or their audience.
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The Cake Whisperer
My business would not be the same without my Castiron website! It is an easy setup with lots of customization and tons of support! I am so glad I set up my shop last year before the holidays — it really helped increase my sales!
The Whimsical Cookie
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Castiron provides me a professional site to my customers increasing my credibility and value while giving me the tools to effectively market and manage my business in an easy, user-friendly manner.
Wesley's Treats Hallie's Sweets
Castiron has made my cottage bakery shine, and my business easy to manage. As a platform they care about my business as much as I do.
Explore our tools for free during a 14-day free trial. Start building your website, create your custom order forms, even start taking orders and payments... then decide if it’s for you.
Easy to start, created specifically for local, handmade food: Castiron’s website builder was created to help you grow. Create a website in minutes with our templates, sell where and how your customers want to buy, and look professional without being technical. Keep customers coming back with email marketing tools, customer records, and more.
Food entrepreneurs, this is your moment. Your community is more and more conscious about what they buy and where it is from. They want food made with love. With ingredients they can pronounce. And they want to support their community while doing it.
Castiron is the best fit for your food business because we're not a one-size-fits-all tool. Selling local food is different from pre-packaged warehouse products. Whether you sell cooking classes, need local pick up, utilize pre-sales to plan inventory, or need a fully custom order form — we got you.
No code required. Add pages, sell your products, build order forms, and show off your beautiful work. We'll handle the tech so you can focus on growing your food business.
Never track down a payment or oversell products again. Real-time inventory tracking and secure payment processing make life easier for you and your customers, and our order form builder makes managing custom requests a breeze.
With our marketing tools, your email marketing can go on autopilot. We make it easy to promote your latest products, announce custom order availability, and stay connected with customers.
