The Place captures 30% more orders with a 24/7 online store

The Place is a restaurant in Poland that was taking orders through Instagram DMs and phone calls. During busy hours, messages got missed. After hours, orders were lost entirely. We built an online ordering system that lets customers browse the menu and order anytime. Order processing dropped from 8-15 minutes per order to under 30 seconds, and the restaurant captures orders around the clock — including while the team sleeps.

The challenge

The Place is a family-run cake studio in Kraków that makes custom celebration cakes and trendy bento cakes. Almost every order started as an Instagram message or a phone call, and that worked while the business was small. As it grew, the inbox became the bottleneck.

• Orders got missed. During busy hours, messages piled up faster than anyone could answer them. Some customers never got a reply and ordered elsewhere.
• After-hours orders were lost. Customers browse cake photos in the evening. Without a way to order, the intent was gone by morning.
• Every order was a conversation. Size, flavor, colors, text on the cake, a reference photo, a pickup date: each detail took a message back and forth. Handling one order cost 8 to 15 minutes, and details still got misunderstood.
• Payment friction. Manual bank transfers meant waiting for confirmation and chasing customers who forgot. People expected Apple Pay, Google Pay, and BLIK.
• Scheduling chaos. Pickup dates were coordinated by hand, with no calendar to prevent double bookings on a busy weekend.
• Three languages. Polish, Ukrainian, and English-speaking customers all order from the same studio, and every conversation had to be translated on the fly.

What we built

We built an online ordering system around the way the studio actually takes orders, and launched it in six weeks.

• Cake configurator. Customers pick size, flavors, and colors, add text, and upload a reference photo. The price updates as they go, so there is nothing to negotiate afterwards.
• Modern checkout. Apple Pay, Google Pay, BLIK, and card payments confirm the order instantly. No bank transfer, no follow-up message.
• Pickup scheduling. Customers choose a pickup date and time from the slots the studio has open. The owner can block dates, and every confirmed order lands in the kitchen calendar with full details.
• Trilingual storefront. The menu, checkout, and order emails work in Polish, Ukrainian, and English, with prices and dates formatted for each language.
• Admin panel. All orders in one place with status tracking, product and price management without a developer, and marketing consent recorded with proof.
• GDPR built in. One-click anonymization of a customer's personal data that keeps the tax records intact, so the studio can honor deletion requests without breaking its books.

Under the hood it is a Next.js application with a PostgreSQL database, Stripe for payments, Cloudinary for the reference photos, and Resend for transactional emails in the customer's language.

Results

Order handling dropped from 8 to 15 minutes per order to under 30 seconds, because the customer enters every detail and pays before the studio sees the order. The store takes orders around the clock, which alone accounts for a large share of the 30 percent increase in captured orders. The owner now spends roughly one hour a month on order exceptions instead of 25 to 40 hours on messaging.

The Place still posts every cake on Instagram. The difference is that the post now ends with a link where customers can order in under two minutes. If your business takes orders through DMs, read why that stops scaling or talk to us about an ordering system that fits how you work.