item with variations vs more items?

[KnK_2015]

We have a brewery with online store, retail store, and restaurant + we try to use inventory.  We currently use a combination of categories and items with variations for our beer. One item is 473mL can with the beer types being the variations.  We did this to keep the POS button surfing to a minimum, but find it clumsy in some situations.  For example:  cashing out a retail customer with 24 beer types.  You click on 473mL can choose the variation (IPA), then get returned the main screen and have to repeat this for each beer can.  Looking for advise on best practice.

[maxpete]

@KnK_2015 thanks for your question here! Tagging in @JamesSandbar who is a part of the community to potentially weigh in with their advice for this! 

[Moly_Capital]

Do you have more than one beer size? I can only really equate it to our cafe but we have coffee/tea/blended/specialty as our categories

Then items

Sizes are the variation 

so a cappuccino and an iced latte would be in the same category because they are both coffee 

but we would find it really onerous to select the size first, especially as people order in weird formats

You don’t have to group by ale, lager etc you could do popular, general, specialty…

Items can also be in more than one category which opens up your options more too 

[Lovewell]

@KnK_2015 Are you using square for restaurants? We are a coffee shop and the traditional POS style system through the Square register. There has been an update to do sub categories within a category so you could give that a try. But  feel like what I would do is do a category with the size so 473mL and within that category you have the 24 variations as separate items. So you click 2 buttons instead of I am guessing 3 or maybe 4? (Depending on your exact current set up) This will still keep your inventory and report still going well. 

Because with your current set up once you hit the variation I believe you also have to hit the add button and that's just an extra button that can be eliminated by doing them all as different items. You'll click the category and the type of beer and it will automatically add it to the cart!

Hope this is somewhat helpful!