BOPIS stands for buy online, pick up in store. Your customer orders and pays on your website, you set the items aside from your own shelves, and they collect them at your counter. For a neighbourhood shop, it’s the simplest way to sell online, because you don’t ship anything.
Syndicate builds online stores for neighbourhood shops, cafés and restaurants, so we have a stake in how you sell online.
What happens when a BOPIS order comes in?
Say a customer orders two bags of coffee and a gift card on your website at 9 p.m. They pay at checkout, and you get an email. If you connect your website to your point-of-sale system (POS), the order also shows up on your till.
The next morning, someone on your team takes the coffee off the shelf and bags it. They write the customer’s name and order number on the bag and put it on a pickup shelf behind the counter. Then they mark the order as ready, and the website sends the customer a message saying it’s waiting.
The customer comes in, gives their name or shows the message, and you hand over the bag. It takes about as long as a regular sale, and they’re standing in your shop while you do it.
Retailers also call this click and collect, or in-store pickup. Curbside pickup works the same way, with the handover at the door or the car instead of the counter. In every version, you fill the order from your own shelves, so you never book a courier or print a shipping label.
What worries owners about pickup orders?
In October 2026, a vitamin shop owner we spoke with about selling online raised four worries. Where would the orders go? Who would pick and pack them? Would they need to hire someone? And who would look after the online store?
Where do the orders go?
Keep them on one shelf or in a few labelled bins behind the counter. For a small shop starting out, that’s enough space. Sort the bags by pickup day so you can spot the oldest orders, and keep anything cold or valuable where you store those products now.
Who picks and packs them?
The people who serve your customers today can do it. Picking a pickup order is the same job as fetching something for someone at the counter, done ahead of time. Try packing orders twice a day, once before opening and once in the mid-afternoon lull, so the work fits around your busy hours.
Do you need to hire someone?
You can wait on that. Count how many orders come in during the first few weeks. If packing starts to get in the way of serving people in December, add hours then, and you’ll know how many you need.
Who looks after the online store?
Prices change and products sell out. If someone has to update the website by hand, it ends up showing old prices and items you’ve sold out of, and customers order things you don’t have. Connect the online store to the stock you track now, through your POS if you can, so a sale at the counter updates what the website shows. You still need one person on your team to add new products and photos and change prices, so pick that person now and give them time for it each week.
How much does a pickup order cost compared with a delivery app?
Delivery apps take a smaller cut on pickup orders than on deliveries. Deliverect, a company that connects restaurants to delivery apps, publishes Uber Eats rates in its Uber Eats guide for restaurants, updated October 3, 2025. It lists 6% on pickup orders and 15%, 25% or 30% on delivery orders, depending on the plan. Deliverect adds that local regulations can change the costs.
On a $40 pickup order through Uber Eats, 6% is $2.40. The same $40 as a delivery order costs you $6 on the 15% plan and $12 on the 30% plan. When the order comes through your own website, you pay no commission on it. You still pay card processing fees and whatever your online store costs each month, so your saving depends on how many orders you take. You also keep the customer’s name and email instead of the app keeping them.
Our page for shops and cafés that want their own online store compares owning your store with paying a platform on every order.
How do you set up BOPIS before the holiday rush?
Use this pickup checklist for the counter. Tape it beside the till for the first week and change it as you learn.
- Set your pickup hours, and say on the website when orders will be ready, for example “orders placed after 4 p.m. are ready the next morning.”
- Clear one shelf or a few bins behind the counter and label them by day. Show every staff member where they are and how to mark an order as collected.
- Pick how long you’ll hold an order, such as a week, and say so in the confirmation message.
- Write the ready message once: what’s waiting, your address and hours, where to come in, and what to bring (a name or the order number).
- Decide what you’ll do when an item is out of stock. Call the customer, then offer a swap or a refund for that item.
- Tell people. Put a sign at the till and a QR (quick response) code that opens your online store, then add pickup to your Google Business Profile and your social media.
- Choose your last day for Christmas pickup orders, such as December 23, and post it from the first week of December.
When you connect the website to your stock count, you’ll make fewer of the calls in step 5. A customer at the counter can still buy the last item before you pack an online order, so keep the call-and-swap routine ready.
Where do these numbers come from?
We took the commission rates from Deliverect’s Uber Eats guide for restaurants, updated October 3, 2025. Deliverect is a third party, not Uber, and the guide is on its Canadian site. Your own rates depend on your plan. We left out the US surveys on pickup shopping that other guides quote, because none we found measured neighbourhood shops in Canada.
We checked the commission rates in October 2026, so confirm them at the linked source and in your own agreement before you decide.
How does Syndicate set up pickup for a local shop?
With Syndicate, we build your online store around the counter you already run. We set up stock tracking around the system you use now, and a POS integration keeps transactions, inventory and customer profiles in step.
We include the in-shop kit (QR codes, shelf talkers, checkout signage and staff prompts) and train your team to run the store. Your own staff can pick and pack, or we can send in-person staff to help, billed by the hour. When you’re ready, you can also deliver nearby at a flat rate you set, within a radius you choose. Every store comes with a French version.
Le Kioko, a sushi restaurant in Montreal, now takes 40% of its orders through its own online ordering. Le Kioko has made $100K in sales through it over more than 12 months.
We can have a store ready in as little as 7 to 10 days once we have everything we need from you. It starts from 500 CAD a month, financed over one year, and it belongs to you.
Would it be a bad idea to have pickup orders running before the holiday rush? Book a free demo or call 1-844-404-4796.
