How to Set Up Smart Prep Time Rules for Your Restaurant

Every order you take comes with a promise that it'll be ready when you say it will. Prep time is how Per Diem keeps that promise. It's the cushion that makes sure you never offer a pickup or delivery time your kitchen can't actually hit, even when an order is complicated or unusually large. Here's the key thing to understand: Per Diem doesn't use one single global prep time. Instead, you set rules at several different levels, and when an order is placed, the system automatically picks the longest rule that applies. So the trickiest, biggest order in the cart always sets the pace. The longest matching rule wins every time. A prep time rule can come from 5 places. First, opening and closing buffers. These stop you from taking orders too close to opening or closing. No orders for the first few minutes after you open or the last stretch before you close. Buffers are tracked separately from prep time, and they keep last-minute rushes from slipping in. Second, fulfillment prep time. Set a prep time by fulfillment type: pickup, delivery, or curbside. Then layer on filters for day of week or location, so Fridays can run longer than Tuesdays, and one location can behave differently from another. Third, Category Prep Time. Set a prep time on a product category. If an order contains even one item from a category with, say, a 60-minute rule, the whole order gets at least 60 minutes. And you can measure it in minutes, hours, or days. Fourth, Order Total Prep Time. Build tiered rules based on the size of the cart. $0 to $200 might be 30 minutes. 200 to 500, a full hour, because bigger orders genuinely take longer to assemble. And fifth, the older legacy rules: Location/Category and Advanced. These are deprecated, so there's no need to configure them today. When the order is placed, Per Diem checks every rule that matches and picks the highest number. That becomes the prep time the customer sees. That's the whole logic— the longest applicable time chosen automatically. Catering works exactly the same way. There's no separate catering prep time field. If you want catering to take longer than regular orders, just set a longer category prep time on your catering categories: platters, trays, event packages. Because category rules apply to any order containing those items, your catering windows are handled automatically. Whether the order is catering or regular. And when things get hectic, Busy Mode can dynamically add extra minutes on top of the resolved prep time during a rush. But that's a feature of its own, covered separately. Setting it up is straightforward. Head to Operations, then Order Placement, then Prep Times. The page opens with a banner reminding you that when multiple prep times apply, the the longest one is used, and it shows you the current longest rule in effect. Each rule source is its own accordion section. Open the one you want to configure. For Fulfillment Prep Time, click Add Rule, choose the Fulfillment Type, optionally filter by day of week or location, enter your minutes, and save. For Category Prep Time, pick the category from the dropdown, enter the time, minutes, hours, or days, and save. One entry per category. For Order Total Prep Time, define your dollar ranges and the prep time for each tier, then save. And for Buffers, set a default for all locations, then add per-location overrides wherever you need them. To edit prep times, you'll need the Order Placement permission. That's Owner, General Manager, or Manager. Single location admins can adjust their own location's rules, but they can't change the global defaults. So what does the customer actually experience? When they add items and head to checkout, Perdiem takes the resolved prep time—that longest matching rule—adds it to the current time, and respects your business hours and buffers. The result is the earliest pickup or delivery slot that's truly available. The customer just sees a list of time slots starting from that moment, picks one, and completes checkout. The prep time itself stays invisible—it simply shapes what's bookable. From there, the order flows to your point of sale with the scheduled fulfillment time attached. And if you've set your print settings to print by prep time, the kitchen ticket prints automatically—exactly when the team needs to start cooking. Not too early, not too late. That's PrepTime on Perdium. Smart, layered rules that always protect your kitchen, so every time you promise is a time you can keep. Link below to see it live.