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A minimum that tops the order up beats a minimum that turns it away
Every kitchen has a number below which a job costs more than it earns. The question is what happens when somebody arrives just underneath it.
Two ways to handle a five-hundred-dollar minimum when the order comes to four hundred and twenty.
Refuse it. "We have a $500 minimum." True, and it ends the conversation. The customer, who was two dishes away from being a customer, goes elsewhere and does not come back for the event that would have been three thousand.
Top it up. "Your order comes to $420. Our minimum is $500, so there is an $80 minimum charge on this one — or you can add another tray and get the food instead." Same floor, same revenue, and the customer is given a choice in which one option is obviously better for them.
The second is not softer. It is the same policy, stated in a way that leaves the door open. Quite often they add the tray, which means you get five hundred dollars and they get more food, which is a better outcome for everybody than eighty dollars of nothing.
The three minimums that are not the same minimum
Most kitchens have more than one floor and have never written them down separately:
An order minimum. The floor for doing the job at all.
A package minimum. A plated dinner service that does not make sense below thirty guests, even though a drop-off lunch for eight is fine.
A delivery-zone minimum. Forty minutes away is worth it at eight hundred dollars and not at three hundred, and the number should rise with the distance.
These stack, and only the largest of them applies. A three-hundred-dollar order into a far zone with a six-hundred-dollar minimum does not owe two top-ups. It owes one, to the highest floor. That sounds obvious and is one of the more common places a hand-written quote is wrong.
Say it before they have chosen
The worst version of this is discovering the minimum at the end, after somebody has spent ten minutes choosing food. A minimum mentioned at the start reads as a policy. The same minimum revealed at checkout reads as a trick, and it is the kind of thing people mention in reviews.
What this means for your website
Order, package and delivery-zone minimums all exist and all stack, and only the largest applies. Where an order falls short, the difference is added as its own line, labelled as a minimum charge rather than buried in the food price.
The customer sees it as they build, not at the end.