The zero-touch path (Deliverect)
If your restaurant runs on Deliverect, onboarding is nearly automatic:- Connect the MealOps channel in Deliverect. Your Deliverect representative (or you, from the Deliverect console) enables MealOps as a channel for your location(s).
- Phantom sets everything up automatically. When the channel registers, Phantom creates your restaurant, imports your menu, links chain locations under one brand, and applies safe defaults: agent ordering starts off, with manual order review and conservative order caps, until you’re ready.
- Your menu syncs continuously. Every menu you publish from Deliverect is imported — items, prices, photos, modifiers (including nested modifiers and meal deals), multiple menus with their own service hours, allergen tags, and calories. Item snoozes (86s) and busy/paused mode flow through in real time.
- You receive a claim invite by email. The invite goes to the location’s contact email and links you to your operator console at https://phantom.mealops.ai.
- Complete payout onboarding. From the console, connect payouts (Stripe). Your restaurant is invisible to agents until payouts are enabled — this is the last gate before going live.
Your operator console
The console at https://phantom.mealops.ai is where you run everything:- Orders — live queue, approvals, statuses, and history.
- Menu — imported menus with local curation: price overrides, hiding items, and local 86s. These per-location overrides survive menu re-imports; edits you make in your POS keep flowing through underneath them.
- Hours — see the section below.
- Ordering rules — prep time, required notice, order caps (max order value, max item quantity, max headcount), blackout windows, and approval mode.
- Payouts — Stripe payout onboarding and status.
- Agent access — which agents may order from you, and API keys if you run your own integration surface.
Going live checklist
A restaurant becomes discoverable and orderable by an agent when all of these are true:- The restaurant is active (not archived) with its POS channel connected and enabled.
- At least one agent has permission
allowedfor your restaurant. - Agent ordering is switched on.
- Stripe payouts are enabled.
- The menu imported and looks right (no empty menu).
- A pickup phone number is set — courier delivery hard-fails without one.
- The address has map coordinates — saving the address in Settings re-checks courier coverage automatically.
- The contact email has claimed the console (so a human sees approvals).
Hours
- Deliverect stores: the hours on your Deliverect location record are authoritative and sync automatically (edits you make in Deliverect reach Phantom when your menu publishes and on periodic refresh — agents fetch fresh hours when they view your restaurant).
- Manual hours: hours set directly in the console are marked manual and are never overwritten by the POS sync. This is the only hours channel for non-Deliverect stores.
- Planned closures: set blackout windows (holidays, private events) in ordering rules; agents can’t schedule orders inside them.
- Multiple menus (Lunch / Dinner / Catering) each carry their own service windows — agents see items greyed outside their menu’s hours and can’t order them for those times.
Timing: prep, notice, and busy mode
Agents are held to your kitchen’s real timing. Three knobs, all in ordering rules:- Prep time — how long the kitchen needs on a normal day. Seeded from your POS default preparation time when available; override it any time. Publishing an accurate prep time makes your “earliest orderable time” honest — agents schedule accordingly.
- Required notice — a minimum scheduling notice, separate from prep (useful for catering: “orders need 24 hours’ notice”).
- Busy / paused mode — flip busy mode in Deliverect and it flows straight through: busy adds your chosen delay to every new order’s timing; paused blocks any order due within the next two hours while still allowing scheduled orders further out. Un-pause and orders resume instantly.
Delivery
- Courier delivery is fulfilled by DeliverThat where covered. Courier dispatch adds a scheduling floor (roughly 95 minutes’ advance notice) and a delivery fee quoted at checkout. Coverage is probed automatically from your address.
- Self-delivery: if you run your own drivers, ask support to enable self-delivery — then the courier floor disappears and your prep time is the only timing constraint. New stores default to pickup-only until delivery is explicitly confirmed, so nobody’s order waits on a courier that doesn’t exist.
- If a store neither self-delivers nor has courier coverage, agents simply see it as pickup-only (with the reason).
Orders, approvals, and payment
- Approval mode is yours to choose: auto (orders accept automatically), manual review (every order waits for your tap), or threshold review (small orders auto-accept; large ones wait for review). New stores start conservative.
- Orders are prepaid: the eater’s card is charged or authorized before the order ever reaches you.
- Payout on acceptance: when you accept an order, the payment is captured and your payout is triggered to your connected Stripe account.
- Agents can cancel an order only before you accept it (the ticket and any courier are cancelled and the payment reversed automatically). After acceptance the order is yours — item changes require a cancel-and-reorder, which keeps your POS ticket trustworthy.
- Order caps (max order value, max item quantity, max headcount) are enforced before any order reaches you.
Chains and brands
- Locations connected under one Deliverect account are grouped automatically as one brand; the first location’s menu serves as the brand template. Grouping is explicit — restaurant names are never used to merge locations, so identically named independents can’t be confused.
- A location with no menu of its own serves the brand template menu; local differences (prices, hidden items, local 86s) live in per-location overrides that survive re-imports.
- Brand defaults let a chain set policy once — approval mode, ordering-rule seeds, allowed agents, branding — and have every new location inherit it on day one.
- Brand membership grants a manager access to every current and future location of the brand from one login; per-restaurant roles still work for single-store managers.
- Chains get cross-location reporting rollups over any date range.
Menu quality
Every menu import is checked automatically: $0-priced items, duplicate PLUs (deduplicated), and modifier groups that can’t be satisfied are flagged for review. Items needing review are excluded from agent ordering until resolved (needs_review), so agents can never sell something your POS can’t make.
Two habits keep your menu healthy:
- Make structural edits (items, prices, modifiers) in your POS — they sync through.
- Make local, per-location edits (hide an item here, price differently there, 86 something today) in the console’s menu overrides — they persist across syncs. Editing availability directly instead of using overrides is why a menu edit might seem to “revert” after the next POS publish.