Best way to set up Items, Variations and Modifiers

[asllewellyn]

I am opening an ice cream shop.  There are a few variables in selling ice cream; flavor, # of scoops, type of cone or cup, toppings.  What if it's 2 scoops of 2 different flavors?

Initially I thought the item would be "Sugar cone, 1 Scoop" with the flavor being the Variation.  However, if my item is "Sugar Cone, 2 Scoops" and the scoops are different flavors, that may not work.  Then, of course, toppings...

I have to track inventory on all the pieces as well.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[pessosices · Accepted solution]

@asllewellyn Welcome to Square!

We're also an ice cream shop, so I think I can lend some insight."

First, it all depends on your pricing structure. For us, we go by the scoop with any toppings or cones as extra - rather than a separate price for ice cream on cones. If your pricing is based on the cone vs cup, then that's how you should set up your items.

Flavors:
Since we have so many flavors that are constantly changing, and since we're so high volume, we don't put our flavors into our register. If you do want to, I suggest putting them in as modifiers, since you can set them up to choose more than one - so if you're doing a 2 Scoop, you can choose 2 flavors.

Toppings & Cones:

Again, we don't track our individual topping types because they take too long, but we ring up our toppings as a separate item, "Topping." You could alternatively set up modifiers for toppings, or a single item Topping with modifiers for each topping.

We also have our cones as a separate item, but you could do the same as toppings for your cones - a modifier group with each cone type in there. Doing a cone as a separate item makes it easier to track inventory on them!

# of Scoops:

We have each of our Scoops numbers as a different item - again speeds up the process, one tap instead of Two.

Ice Cream 1 Scoop

Ice Cream 2 Scoop

Ice Cream 3 Scoop

You could also do a Variation for the Scoops, if you prefer - Variation is probably better here than Modifier for # of scoops, so you can more easily track how much of each you sell. But we like separate items to speed up the process.

So you can do 1 item as follows:

Ice Cream

-Variation- Size
-Modifier- Flavor
-Modifier- Cone

-Modifier- Toppings

Or a few items by size:
Ice Cream 1 Scoop
-Modifer- Flavor
-Modifier- Cone
-Modifier- Toppings

Or our way, all separate items:
Ice Cream 1 Scoop

Topping

Cone

Try them out, test them out, see what works best for you and your employees in your busiest time!

Let me know if you have any more questions!

Pesso

[asllewellyn]

Great information!  Thank you!  I'll consider all of your suggestions.  

[rsklar]

Hi @asllewellyn,

We too are an Ice Cream Shoppe.  We use modifiers simply to add to or charge for certain items.

for example might start at a base price, Modifiers increase the size and price such as this.

Base is a small

Modifiers are Medium, Large, quart, tub

Each modifier adds an amount to the base price to get your final price.

You can run reports based on what you sold to know how many of each size you sold.

We also use Modifiers to add things like Waffle Cone for an extra Charge or a Waffle Bowl.  This helps as well as I can track how many get a Waffle Cone/Bowl i can also tell which sizes are likely to get one.  i.e., 60% of large cones are served in a Waffle Cone.

I agree with @pessosices you would end up driving yourself nuts trying to track toppings and flavors all the time.  You can keep track of these in your ordering.  I track my Ice Cream orders by flavor when I get tubs and toppings as by purchase.  I can pretty much track the trend of what is and what is not selling based on my purchase history over time.

We also serve things like Soft Pretzels so I use modifiers to indicate if they want Salt / Cheese (extra) and for Sandwiches you can use modifiers to track which bread and condiments.  These are great for printing out as a reminder how to make the sandwich without needing a kitchen printer.

[asllewellyn]

Thank you for your reply.  I have some planning to do, obviously.  Your answer really helps me.

[NWHG2000]

Question for everyone here about online ordering for an ice cream shop. Up until this summer we were a cash-only business with no online ordering, but with COVID we are now accepting cards and doing online orders.

Normally we don't track flavors or toppings either, but for online orders it's necessary. At any given time we can have up to 50 flavors that change on a daily basis. In our current POS system there's no way to import modifiers or copy them from other items, so we're manually entering all the flavors into each item every morning and it's maddening. We are switching to Square and we're wondering if the modifiers are easier to manage in Square, or if there are limits to the numbers of modifiers. Any help/insight would be greatly appreciated! 

[Alex_]

@NWHG2000,

Excited to hear you're switching over to Square. Personally, I find it pretty easy to assign or unassign modifier sets to specific items if that's what you're aiming for. You can also do what @pessosices mentioned and create separate items for your modifiers or create a multi-layered modifier system. 

[pessosices]

Hey @NWHG2000 

Square is perfect for this!

You just set up the modifier groups once, and edit them as needed, but they stay attached to the items!

You can check out our online store to see how we did it!

https://pessosices.square.site/

Hope this helps!
Let me know you if you have any other questions