Buyer accounts

Nobody has to sign up to buy from you

Guest ordering is the default and always will be. A buyer opens your storefront, picks what they want, chooses a pickup slot and pays — no sign-up, no app.

The links Pantryk emails them afterwards work the same way. An order tracking link, a custom-request link and a review invite each carry their own authority for the one thing they name, so a buyer follows them without ever signing in.

An account is additive: something a returning buyer can choose, never a step you make them take.

What an account gives a buyer

Signed in, a buyer gets one place on your storefront that gathers what they have with you, in four areas:

• Orders — every order they have placed with you, opening the same order page their tracking link opens. They can cancel an order there, or ask you to cancel one, exactly as the tracking link lets them.
• Requests — their custom and catering requests, where they can accept, decline or pay a quote you sent.
• Messages — the threads on their own orders and requests, with anything you wrote and they have not read marked unread.
• Notifications — a bell of their own: an order ready or cancelled, a quote issued or expired, the steps of a custom request, and a message from you.

Their name, email and phone are kept with the account too, so the next checkout starts with the fields they have already given you filled in. Typing over them still wins — nothing they type is overwritten.

Signing in is a code in an email

There is no password anywhere in this.

1. The buyer opens Sign in from the header of your storefront and types their email address.
2. One email arrives carrying both a 6-digit code and a sign-in link. Either one signs them in — the code if they are on their phone, the link if they are reading the mail on the machine they want to be signed in on.
3. Code and link last 15 minutes and work once. Asking again inside a minute re-sends nothing new; the email already on its way is the one to use.

After that they stay signed in in that browser, so coming back costs them nothing. A long gap away ends the session, and the next visit asks for a fresh code.

An account covers one storefront only

An account belongs to your storefront alone. The same person shopping another Pantryk kitchen signs in there separately, and the two never see each other: no shared history, no shared list, nothing crossing between storefronts. The sign-in screen says it in as many words: this account only covers your storefront, and other Pantryk kitchens keep their own.

That is the whole model: the account IS the Customer record you already have. It is not a second identity filed somewhere else.

What it changes in Kitchen

Almost nothing, on purpose.

• There is no accounts screen. Customers is the one list, one row per buyer matched on their email address, whether they signed in or ordered as a guest.
• An order, a request and a message thread look and work the same either way. Nothing routes differently because a buyer happened to be signed in.
• Sign-in is the buyer’s to start. You cannot create an account for someone, and there is no password for you to reset.

So there is nothing here to set up, switch on, or keep tidy. The one thing worth knowing is the answer to the question buyers ask you: no, you don’t need an account — but you can have one.