sometime in our restaurant we have corporate groups coming for luncheon.This group will have a buffet kind of a meal starters,main-course and dessert.A platter of buffet will have combination of many item.it may have medaloin beef,(small portion),chicken piece, rice,veges etc. all this in small portion that are serverd according to the guest request.
In essence my question is how we can account for this kind of arrangement,bearing the fact the prices are not the same as what we have in the menu and meeting all the demand of the group.
Combo setup maybe, need more info, as mark says are you using inventory, how are dis liar dishes usually charged?
Maybe expansion on the scenario and example normal scenario would help.
I think if you’re not using inventory it is more straightforward - you can just do as one product, even a misc product… but if you are using inventory you need to decide how it would be managed. I’m not an expert with inventory, there are many others on here who can better advise best inventory use in this case…
Well am using inventory,but when it come to this kind of arrangement i opt to do it manually.Buffet lunch can be charged per plate served and that can be accommodated in the menu.The problem will come when the same guest serves again,some guest will also serve in small portion but end up serving 3 or 4 times.It becomes very hard to handle this in inventory.
My thinking was if samba can allow me handle banquets,Starting from checking for table or dining hall availability,this i think it can be achieved through table reservation which has been addressed. Tracking enquiries and provisional booking to Confirmed bookings, generation of Function Prospectus, collection of advance, to final billing and settlement to be managed with ease.
A case and scenario i have 30 guest coming for corporate dinner today they have requested that we should reserve one dining hall that can handle this group,then they have requested to be served a 3 course meal starter,main course and dessert. We have agreed that their meal should at-least have beef,chicken,veges etc.
While doing my sale i can easily set my price per plate,since this will be served as buffet,now the question is ,how to relate this buffet platter with my inventory
The buffet is self-serve or you have staff that serves each item (i.e. customer would order just like a normal restaurant except they don’t pay per plate)?
If self-serve, I can’t imagine how you could possibly do any inventory control on it.
If you are placing orders, I would imagine you have a price you charge for each customer like you mention, then each time a customer places an order, you put that item through SambaPOS as a new order on the ticket for that customer. So, for inventory consumption you are handling that, however likely those items would be zero price, so it won’t help much regarding inventory cost.
Untagged recipe lines will always decrease from Inventory when plate sold. Like Chicken and Veggies. These are not optional. But other lines like Beef, Rice, Hot Souce and Ketchup are Optional. They’ll decrease from inventory if order tagged with these tags.
PS: Beef might have a separate recipe so you can configure such items as a Product instead of Inventory Item. You can think it like a sub recipe.
Finally while adding Plate to Menu I’ll define default Order Tags.
You can unselect Beef and Rice so they won’t decrease from inventory but Chicken and Veggies will always decrease. Hot Souce and Ketchup will decrease if Selected.
By using different combinations of Order Tagging & Recipe features you can implement different use cases. You can read more about it here.
That sample may not %100 match to your case. Please keep in mind I only tried to demonstrate available features without knowing how you exactly handle plates. I hope it helps.
I think Buffet case can be implemented by treating Buffet area as a separete warehouse. You can Transfer items to Buffet area and when meal completes you can tally buffet and transfer remaining “trasferable” items back to inventory and non-transferable items to Waste warehouse.
I thought this topic would be about reservation and how to reserve tables for large group reservation ;). Turn out it is just inventory question.
For me, I just use normal inventory item. I should know how I gonna divide normal portion in to smaller portion, like 1 normal item = 2 small portion. I have 30ppl so I enter qty 15 for that item.
Since this is large group, the detail should already be discussed about how we gonna do this. Entering order in POS should just be for reference/billing/inventory not instruction for kitchen and servers.
BTW, I assume this is not daily or weekly operation, just once in a while kind of thing.
emre you have captured my interest ,this is exactly what i want.A system that will allow me sell my items like buffet and restock the remaining items in my warehouse .kindly can you expound further on how we can achieve this with samba
I always thought that when using warehouse in samba,you have to link warehouses and the departments ,what will happen in case i create buffet warehouse and wastage ware house.I have never thought of the idea of handling wastage till when emre came in my life.I now have a system i can trust and above all understand,its always exiting to learn new things
i want to know how to handle wastage and wastage warehouse,i always thought that warehouses should be linked to their specific department.
in my case though each terminal its linked own department and department linked to warehouse.following the discussion above ,By creating two warehouse for buffet and wastage’s, should i add 2 terminals.
This is how i process wastage just by using a ticket, converting it to a wastage ticket type, paid for using a wastage “payment” using wastage account to track monetary value
