Pausing Online Ordering During a Rush Can Cost You $4,000
$44 = The average online order for a Slice shop on a regular day.
$73 = The average online order for a Slice shop during a rush.
$4,380 = Revenue lost by pausing online orders*.
Pausing during a rush so you can catch up is reasonable. But it will backfire in lots of ways (outside of revenue loss).
1. Customers think you’re closed.
When you close your online ordering temporarily, you essentially tell customers: “We’re closed.”
This says nothing about why you’re not accepting orders, because it’s the same message as a full closing. Customers may assume you’ve shut for the day and move on.
This hurts because:
You lose the incremental orders you could have served if capacity were managed better.
You risk ruining customer trust by looking unreliable.
2. You wreck scheduling.
Let’s say you pause for an hour, telling the system you’ll reopen at 7:00 p.m.
The minute you’re back online, everyone who was going to order now hits submit. You create a post-pause wall of orders. Scheduling functions then get overloaded.
Pausing now leads to a bigger bottleneck, and the promised order times start slipping, right when customers expect you to have caught up.
3. You miss an opportunity to buffer rather than shut down.
What you may need is a buffer. When a rush hits, you can pad ETAs (estimated times) significantly. That becomes a natural throttle on incoming orders and buys you breathing room. If you’re on Slice, the tools you have (for example, data from your POS, live order queue, and oven capacity) help you anticipate when you’re reaching capacity.
Using Slice, you can work through the following scenario:
“We have capacity for 5 pizzas every 10 minutes — we currently have 10 orders queued — our effective ETA is now 40 minutes, so we’ll reflect that in the system.”
Now there’s breathing room—avoiding shutdowns and keeping your shop online and visible.
4. Staying online keeps your best customers engaged.
If you go offline, customers may stop thinking of you first next time they’re hungry.
Staying open and taking orders, even if you adjust expectations, keeps you top-of-mind, your ordering channel active, and reinforces your shop as available.
That builds long-term loyalty.
Do more than just stop orders.
With tools like those in Slice’s Family Membership, you’re not powerless when things get busy.
You can choose better options, like:
Rely on ETAs in the online ordering system so fewer people jump in at once.
Encourage preorders with realistic times.
Use marketing and promotions to even out demand (e.g., offer a coupon for off-peak) rather than simply shutting off.
Monitor your live queue and operations in real time so you can adjust on the fly rather than reactively.
Turning off will cost you money and customers.
If you pause (or turn off) ordering, you risk losing today’s incremental revenue, future repeat business, and trust.
If you stay open and buffer, you protect revenue, maintain visibility, and build loyalty, while still giving your shop the space it needs to catch up.
Buffering is a strategic lever that keeps you working, visible, and in control.
At the end of the day, you need to keep your pizzeria open, visible, and thriving. You shouldn’t just survive busy nights, you should control them.
Check out the Slice Knowledge Hub if you have any more questions.
* Pausing your online ordering for 3 hours and estimating 20 orders per hour @$73/order.
