Menu setup help needed

[clkirk]

I am having great difficulty in setting up my menu items for my food truck business. Could someone suggest how to set up the following items so inventory and sales are tracked correctly?

 Bratwurst Sandwich

• Modifiers (toppings)
• sauerkraut
• onions & peppers
• Bratwurst Platter
• Includes one side. I currently have these sides as items and modifiers
• Slaw
• potatoes
• apples
•  Modifiers (toppings)
• sauerkraut
• onions & peppers
• Bratwurst Dinner
• Includes two sides
• Slaw
• potatoes
• apples
•  Modifiers (toppings)
• sauerkraut
• onions & peppers

Sandwiches, platters and dinners all come from the same inventory of bratwurst. The sides are available with dinners/platters and also separately. Total sales/inventory needs to be calculated whether it was sold with a dinner, platter or individually. The sides are currently set up as items and modifiers so that they can be selected as an option on dinners/platters and sold by themselves.  I have tried setting this up several ways but cannot get the desired reports for sales or track inventory. At this point the dinners, platters and sandwiches are separate items and the toppings and sides are modifiers. This gives me the correct output to the KDS so I know what to put on each plate but does not give correct reporting or inventory so I have to manually calculate at the end of day. Also no way of know if I am running out of items to 86 them. If I list all of the items separately it helps some with reporting but if more than one person is on a ticket there is no way to what items go together on a plate. If square is setup for use by restaurants there should definitely be a way to do this.

 Much help is needed and greatly appreciated.

[Goldneye]

HI, you can review Square for Restaurants

https://squareup.com/us/en/point-of-sale/restaurants

https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/6407-get-started-with-square-for-restaurants

[ArrostoDeli]

This isn't just a restaurant issue. We should be able to sell things as package deals. If you have items A, B & C, you should be able to sell a gift box of those 3 items and have that adjust your inventory of A, B & C. 

[clkirk]

This is not helpful and doesn't address the question

[BernadetteA]

Hi @clkirk Thanks for reaching out. It is not currently possible to track modifier inventory.

@JamesSandbar @Donnie-M @LLCafe @GoGoGuest 

Do any of you have a suggestion for the best way to setup this food truck menu? Thanks in advance! 😊

[eHotPot]

Well, please add my vote for allowing modifiers to be trackable in inventory. Otherwise, we would have to add the modifiers as separate items and the wait staff would be very confused and probably forget to do it.

[clkirk]

What we need is a way to build combos without using modifiers so that the inventory can be tracked and multiple items can be bundled together to build a dinner or combo.

[JamesSandbar]

been saying that for years now 🙂

[Newseller007]

Great idea

[clkirk]

how to do we accomplish this?

[clkirk]

Here is my question I tried to ask online support. They directed me to call the restaurant team. Will try that n Monday and post response. Hopefully it will help others as well.

Question:

If there are multiple covers on one ticket I cannot figure out how to send it to the KDS in such a way that I know what is plated together for each customer on the ticket.

If I set up all of the all foods that I have for sale as ITEMS then the inventory is correct but have no idea what gets plated together.

If I use modifiers to indicate what goes together for each person/cover/seat, then the inventory is not tracked.

Example: There are two covers on ticket one. The first cover orders a Bratwurst, Potatoes and slaw. And the 2nd cover orders a Smoked sausage, Potatoes and Apples. If they are all rung in as ITEMS the inventory will be correct but have no idea what each customer gets on their plate.

Need a way to indicate the number of covers/seats per ticket and what each wants.

Is there a way to accomplish this with the current system? I find that Items/Variations/Options/modifiers to be very confusing. Some of these track inventory and some do not.

[clkirk]

I spoke with the restaurant customer service team. They said that "seating" was available in the plus subscription. I told them that I operate a food truck and everything is "to go" so the seating would be irrelevant to me. With all of the contact-less and prevalence of to go orders I surprised this option is not available. Seems square is not a good option for restaurants and it is time to look for another elsewhere. In the mean time my son is developing an app that will work with square to scan all orders, items, option and modifiers and will adjust the inventory. This work around will produces better sales reports, adjust my inventory and mark items not available on the online store. This will allow me to continue using modifiers to build my combos so that they display correctly on the KDS and I know what to plate together.

[JamesSandbar]

Hey Clkirk

Yea the KDS is still in development. They are working on add coursing, seating , and better dining options routing. KDS just came out and they have been making progress. We are running  100% KDS in my kitchen right now and we have these issues also. But I made a work around by adding a Modifier Called

"zZ Food Mods Zz"

First off the the zZ it because modifiers are prioritized alphabetically. This modifier group is used for allowing me to add special items/notes to any food item. 

Ex. Separate Plates, Allergy!, and a Course Line "---------------"

We have a Taco item with 6 variations but then add a separate side item to complete the dish. what we do is after ringing everything for the cover the last item will add the Course Line Mod "------------------" this organizes the covers order and doesn't disrupt the tracking.

As you cant make this "------" an item because it would group multiples together just make a food mod group with this text in it "---------------" and assign it to all items and apply it to the last item of each cover.

let me know if you need more info.