Curbside Pickup Launches Ordering and Pickup Platform for Small Businesses

Curbside Pickup launches order-ahead technology with automatic arrival detection for restaurants, pharmacies and retailers, and the first 10 orders a month free

TX, UNITED STATES, August 27, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- On a weekday, a café can serve every person standing in front of it and still lose money. The customer who opened the door, counted six people at the counter and walked back out doesn't appear in the till, the roster or the end-of-day report. The business never knows they came.

Curbside Pickup today launched an ordering and pickup platform designed around that gap. Customers order and pay ahead through the app or any mobile browser. When they arrive, geofencing detects them automatically and alerts staff, who bring the order to the car, hand it over at the counter, or have it waiting inside. There is no phone call, no queue, and no one standing at a register wondering whether their coffee has been made.

The company is targeting a problem that counter-service businesses tend to treat as unavoidable weather rather than a solvable operating issue.

"Owners talk about the lunch rush like it's a fact of nature," said Rami Smair, Founder and CEO of Curbside Pickup. "It isn't. It's a queue, and a queue is just demand arriving faster than a counter can process it. The frustrating part is that the cost is invisible. You feel busy. You feel like you had a good day. What you can't see is the eight people who looked in and kept walking, or the regular who now goes somewhere with a shorter line."

The platform covers four collection modes rather than one. Curbside pickup brings orders out to a customer's vehicle. In-store pickup, sometimes called click and collect or BOPIS, lets customers collect an order that is already bagged and paid for. Table ordering lets diners scan a QR code and order from their phones without waiting for a staff member. Counter pickup replaces the buzzers and pagers that businesses hand out and frequently lose.

The arrival detection is the part the company says separates it from an ordinary online ordering page. Systems that rely on the customer texting "I'm here" produce cold food and confused staff. Curbside Pickup uses battery-efficient background geofencing, so the notification fires the moment the customer enters the pickup zone and the order leaves the pass at the right time.

The technology is aimed well beyond hospitality. Pharmacies filling scripts for customers who are unwell, florists handling Mother's Day volume, butchers and fishmongers taking weekend orders, grocers, juice bars, ice-cream shops, liquor stores, pet supply shops, auto parts retailers, fresh produce markets, mobile food trucks and even public libraries all share the same pattern: a counter, a wait, and a customer who would rather not stand in it.

Cost and complexity have historically kept that technology out of reach for independent operators. Smair said the pricing model was built to remove the excuse.

"Most small businesses have been pitched a system that needs new hardware, a twelve-month contract and a training day," he said. "So they don't do it, and they keep losing the customers they never knew they had. We wanted an owner to be able to try this between the lunch and dinner service, on the tablet they already own, and decide for themselves."

One curbside pickup vendor - Curbside Pickup - offers businesses the ability to create an account, upload a menu or product list, connect a payment method and begin accepting orders in under an hour. No specialist hardware is required; the system runs on any existing phone, tablet or computer. The first 10 orders each month are free with no credit card required, and billing after that is month-to-month with no lock-in. Customers can pay by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay, on arrival, at the counter, or on a tab.


About Curbside Pickup

Curbside Pickup is an ordering and pickup technology platform that lets businesses take orders ahead of time and hand them over without queues, phone calls or buzzers. It supports curbside pickup, in-store pickup, table ordering and counter pickup across restaurants, cafés, pharmacies, retailers and other counter-service businesses, with automated geofence arrival notifications, integrated payments and business analytics. The Curbside Pickup Business app and the consumer app are available on iOS and Android, and any mobile browser.

Curbside Pickup Business also gives operators reporting on order volume, peak periods and repeat customer behaviour — data most independent businesses have never had about their own counter.

Learn more at https://www.curbsidepickup.io/

Amira Smair
GeoMe
media@geome.io