Restaurants and Catering: Exact Locations

Restaurants face two location problems. The first is customers who cannot find the door: an entrance up a side lane, a first-floor dining room, a shopping court with twenty similar frontages. The second is catering, where the team and the vans must reach a hall, garden or private home that has no obvious address.

A UPCS code gives each of those places an exact location. It takes anyone who opens it to the exact spot that was picked, a 3 m x 3 m square. The code complements your address and listings, and it is short enough for a menu card or a booking confirmation.

For the dining room

Pick the actual door guests use, and publish the code on your website, receipts and booking messages. A guest who types it into the search box at upcs.io sees the entrance and can tap Get Directions. If parking is separate, give it its own code.

For catering and events

Catering crews often unload at a service gate that is far from the guest entrance. Pick both, then include them in the event brief:

• Guest entrance for the client and invited people.
• Loading point for vans.
• Kitchen or setup area when the venue is large.

When a client books a garden or a private home, ask them to send a code from the map instead of a text description. The team arrives at the intended spot, and the same code can be reused for the next booking.

Integrating with your ordering

If your restaurant runs an online shop on WordPress/WooCommerce, PrestaShop or OpenCart, the plugins let the customer drop a pin at checkout so delivery drivers receive an exact point. Custom sites can use the embeddable map and REST API. For delivery drivers, see food delivery.

You may also like weddings and private venues and events and festivals.

Back of house and front of house

Guests use the front door, but suppliers, vans and catering crews use the service entrance, which may be on another street. Coding both separately keeps deliveries out of the dining room and keeps guests from wandering around the building. For events at a client's venue, a code for the loading point also lets a second van or a late-arriving team member find the setup area without phoning the crew leader, who is usually busy.

Practical tips

• Zoom in until the grid appears and place the pin on the door, not the building outline.
• Print the code on menus, window stickers and gift vouchers.
• For events, send crew leaders one message with all codes, in order of arrival.
• Keep a short list of recurring venues and their codes in your event planner.

Frequently asked questions

Do guests need an app? No. A browser is enough to look up the code.

What about a restaurant inside a large mall? Pick the entrance of your unit if it has its own door, or the nearest public access point, and mention the floor in your message.