What you are building, and what it costs
The order spreadsheet goes wrong in a boring way. An order comes in by text, someone retypes it later, and somewhere between the phone and the sheet a pickup time or a flavor changes. The fix is to stop retyping.
By the end of this afternoon you will have three pieces in Airtable: a table that holds every order, a form that is the only way an order gets into that table, and a board the kitchen or the counter reads on a tablet. When a staff member takes a phone call, they fill in the same form a customer would. That means one way in and one copy.
It costs nothing to start. Airtable's Free plan allows 1,000 records per base. A Free workspace can have at most 5 people with Editor or Creator permissions. Both limits come back at the end, because that is where this setup stops working.
Step 1: Move the spreadsheet into a table
Do this step on a computer. You can import a spreadsheet in the Airtable web app or in a browser, but not in the Airtable phone app.
Clean the sheet before you import it. Delete the blank rows and the rows someone used for notes. Keep one header row with plain column names, like Customer, Phone, Pickup, Items and Notes.
Think about how much history you bring over. Every row you import becomes a record, and records count toward the 1,000 per base on the Free plan. If the sheet holds two years of old orders, save a copy for your books and import only the open orders and the last few weeks.
Then import it:
- Create a new base in Airtable and open it.
- Click + Add or import and pick the file type your sheet is in.
- Choose Create a new table.
- Look over the new table. Check that the pickup times and phone numbers came through the way you typed them.
Rename the table Orders. Everything below hangs off it.
Step 2: Build the order form
A form is a page anyone can fill in, and it writes straight into your table. Every time someone submits an Airtable form, it adds one new record to the table the form was built on. Build the form on the Orders table so every order lands in that one table.
Add only the fields you need to fill an order. Customer name, a phone number, the pickup day and time, the items and a notes box is usually enough. Leave Status off the form, the kitchen sets that one.
Then turn on Required for the fields you cannot fill an order without. Each field on the form has a Required toggle, and the form will not submit until that field is filled. At the least, make the phone number and the pickup time required.
Two more settings:
- Click the share form button in the view bar. It gives you a link to the form that you can copy and paste anywhere. Put it on your website and in your text replies.
- Turn on the email for new submissions. The form view has a setting that emails you each time someone submits the form.
Now set the rule for staff. When an order comes in by phone or text, they open the same link and fill in the form while the customer is still on the line. No notebook, no second sheet.
Step 3: Make the one view the kitchen reads
The table works for you. The kitchen needs something simpler: a board where each order is a card, sitting in a column for its status.
Add a Status field to the Orders table as a single select with four choices: New, In progress, Ready and Picked up. Then add a Kanban view and group it by Status. A kanban view shows records as stacks of cards grouped by a single select field, so each status becomes its own column.
Next, add a filter to that view so it only shows orders where Status is not Picked up. A view filter hides records that do not match your conditions, but only in that one view, so finished orders drop off the kitchen's screen. The order is still in the table, since that is where every form submission goes. Name the view Kitchen and open it on the tablet by the counter.
A new order arrives with no status, so whoever sees it first sets it to New. From there, staff change the card's Status to In progress when they start it and to Ready when it is bagged.
Step 4: Run both for a week, then delete the spreadsheet
Do not delete the spreadsheet today. For one week, every order goes through the form, and the spreadsheet stays around as a backup you only read. Nobody types a new order into it.
At the end of each day, open the Orders table. Every form submission is a new record there. So today's records should match the orders you actually filled. If one is missing, find out how it came in, maybe a direct message or a walk-in, and send that kind of order to the form too.
Once a full week goes by with nothing missing, delete the spreadsheet. If it is a Google Sheets file, it moves to the Google Drive Trash and is deleted forever after 30 days. That gives you a month to change your mind. After that, the Orders table is the only copy, which is the whole point.
Deleting matters. If the old sheet is still around, someone will type an order into it on a busy Saturday, and you are back to two copies.
Where the free plan runs out
As of September 29, 2026, the Free plan allows 1,000 records per base. A shop taking dozens of orders a day will fill that within weeks, and the rows you imported in Step 1 count too.
The second limit is people. A Free plan workspace can have at most 5 people with Editor or Creator permissions. Count yourself, a manager and everyone in the kitchen who changes a card's Status, and a small crew hits five fast.
When you hit either limit, you have two choices. You can move to a paid plan, and Airtable's plans overview shows what each plan allows. Or, if orders now run the business, it may be time for an ordering system built around your menu. The afternoon still counts either way, because your fields and the one-way-in rule carry over.
What to do
- Today, on a computer, clean up the order sheet and bring it into a new Airtable base with + Add or import and Create a new table.
- Build the form on the Orders table, make the phone and pickup fields Required, and turn on the email for each submission.
- Copy the form link from the share form button and put it on your website and in your text replies.
- Add a Kanban view grouped by a Status single select, filter out Picked up, and open it on the kitchen tablet.
- Tell staff that phone and text orders go into the form, starting now.
- After one clean week, delete the spreadsheet. A Google Sheets file stays in the Drive Trash for 30 days before it is gone.
- If you are getting close to 1,000 records or five editors, look at ordering systems built for a shop like yours, where you own the code and the accounts from the first day.