Ideas for Combo Setup

[emre]

By incoming questions regarding preparing Menu Combinations I decided to give it a go.

This screen shot inspired me to prepare this setup.

This is a regular Pizza Product. When sold individually it behaves as we know. All order tags have prices and we can select portions

When sold as a part of a deal it starts behaving differently.

1. We can’t change portions.
2. First two tag selections for each order group (dip & topping) are free.
3. Next button appears on order tag screen to advance to next product tags.
4. When min & max selections are made for all order tag groups it auto advances to next product.
5. Prices does not appears on order lines, Total price appears on group header.
6. Canceling an item cancels all items.
7. There are few more fine tuning to optimize how order tag screen appears.

On this setup 2 pricing methods are supported. You can price one item and mark others as gift or distribute price to products manually.

I setup 3 price definitions for 3 separate deals so we can configure how a product is priced in a specific deal.

If a product does not have a deal specific price it will be a gift.

There is no Deal 2 price for Tea so it becomes free.

That makes no visual difference but changes how costs are calculated.

I used product tags to configure which product exists for a specific deal.

If a product exists in multiple deals we can configure it like that.

Toasted Bagel Cheese appears in both Deal2 and Deal3.

Custom buttons added to configure Deal Menu buttons.

So to add a new Deal we need to.

1. Add a price definition for deal.
2. Configure deal items with product tags.
3. Add a custom button to menu.

As you’ve guessed there is a complex automation setup behind that. The case is already complex so some ruling is needed. I won’t dive into details but roughly:

I Created a Value Looper to add menu products to ticket.

It adds the menu item, updates quantity, portion and states, finally updates Order Group. It also disabled portion selection for these items.

This is how Value Looper Gets triggered when a deal button is clicked.

After adding menu items it triggers a Select Orders action to trigger auto selection for first item of the deal.

If the PRICE TAG is null for an order it updates it as free.

That makes first 2 order tags free.

This is how order groups are configured.

I’m thinking ways to simplify this setup but whatever I think is not very flexible to fit all possible requests I can imagine. I mean we need flexibility to allow different promotion schemes so it is really hard to design an simple (and opinionated) menu preparation method.

Another problem is we already use product tags or price definitions for different cases and I can’t imagine how it infers with existing happy hour, VIP discount, etc setups. Maybe having a single price definition for all deals will allow easier setup.

I’m waiting for your suggestions & ideas regarding simpler setup and handling costs.

[gerlandog]

@emre

1. We can’t change portions.
2. First two tag selections for each order group (dip & topping) are free.
3. Next button appears on order tag screen to advance to next product tags.
4. When min & max selections are made for all order tag groups it auto advances to next product.
5. Prices does not appears on order lines, Total price appears on group header.
6. Canceling an item cancels all items.
7. There are few more fine tuning to optimize how order tag screen appears

let see one by one

1. that should be ok, since we could define different combos for different portinos!!!
2. why? in my case (only my case, not in general) first tag is type of dough (wich if you choose integral has a different price)
3. PERFECT!!!
4. PERFECT!!!
5. no problem here!!!
6. that should be so, since it is a combo.

in my case I use order tags to set second and third half of the pizza flavor… I dont remember if that is the case for anybody else, but would this be a problem? in my case those tags changes the whole product price… and I thing that I remember that a few here had something like that… changing an order tag, changed the product price…

I this case, I think that the combo should not allow to change (i my case pizza flavors) inorder to simplify the combo process… So, defining different combos for different flavors (if that is the case).

I think this is a great idea… people have been looking for this for ages, LOL!!!

Thanks @Emre!!!

G.

[Jesse]

Interesting… This is very similar to how I attempted it once but never got around to finishing the attempt I got sidetracked with a different feature and never returned. So it looks like all of this can be done right now? I dont see where you added any specific features to support it?

Combos is something I need to work out by March. I really have zero time lol I gotta get crunching on something. March is our big remodel and redesign of our menu and its coming up fast. My time with my facilitator job at Walmart is really eating into my time to play with SambaPOS.

I have weekends off from Walmart so once these holidays are over I will be hitting next few weekends pretty hard.

[Jesse]

@emre

I’m waiting for your suggestions & ideas regarding simpler setup and handling costs.

So I assume this could potentially do wierd things with cost?

[emre]

@Jesse

So I assume this could potentially do wierd things with cost?

No I didn’t mean that. Defining a price format for order grouping hides order prices but this is how price per order appears when I remove price format.

As all items have their own price calculating cost is pretty simple.

** I auto generated recipes

However calculating cost for items that sold as gift is different. For example Coke is a product that normally sold individually but because of Coke given free with Menu, cost of Coke will appear a little off. Because cost of coke is already added to menu price.

Here you can see what I mean. In this case only first item have a price. Other items are gifts. (they appear in white color and prices are hidden with state formatting).

Which method sounds better?

1. Pricing items individually
2. Pricing base item and marking other items as gift. (Maybe for ease of pricing)

I’ll be glad to hear your thoughts.

[RickH]

For me id say option 2 Pricing base item and marking other items as gift. (Maybe for ease of pricing)

[Jesse]

@emre

Which method sounds better?

Pricing items individually
Pricing base item and marking other items as gift. (Maybe for ease of pricing)

I’ll be glad to hear your thoughts.

Hmm interesting let me think on that.

EDIT: I think I should just build this and play with it see how it works.

[JTRTech]

Looks awesome, did you have a thought on cancel? Would you cancel the whole order group?

[emre]

Yes. Cancel Orders Action does it.

[Jesse]

Hmm I played with it @emre and I like it so far. I dont have a ton of time today to really dig in but I think I will definitely use a version of this for my restaurant.

[Hasa]

I love this for deals and promotions. I’m trying to see how this can help me with my breakfast situation.

could we adjust how these sub items of the promotion show up in kitchen printer.

Only problem i see with this in my setup is the cooks prefer to see items small and easy to read right under the main item Breakfast special #2.

[emre]

@Hasa I always thought your food looks something like that.

However while building this setup I imagined something like that.

Let’s name it as Mega Menu. When I sell a Mega Menu I literally sell 2 pizzas, 1 liter code, bread, etc… Other than mega menu I also sell coke and garlic bread separately.

For example today I sold 1 mega menu, 1 Coke and 1 garlic bread.

How should inventory appear for

Mega Menu
Garlic Bread
Coke

… and how we should display costs.

When we use Order Tag based setup it is easily configurable as needed but using that in that manner leads to issues. For example user may want fanta and request it extra cold. We need to have a tree of tags to be able to solve that and placing all buttons on a single screen does not work fine. I mean it works fine but it may work better. I implemented prefixes, suffixes, order tag categories and order tag groups but we still have cases that needs to be improved.

If I implement a solution sooner or later someone will request something different so I’m trying to understand how we can handle menu costs. I don’t mean your case. I mean Food + Drink + Dessert + Extras type menus. I believe stuff we implement for this case will also be useful for you.

[Hasa]

The way you are handling this is actually beautiful. Very good flow, I like it a lot.

Iv been thinking long and hard on what I really would want as the ideal solution for my breakfast special setup and I kinda realized sub order tags are exactly what I need. If I only had that selection issue resolved I think it would be perfect. Reason being is that it shows “Light Hash Browns.Onions” . When I showed that samba can do this to a big restaurant Coney Island in Detroit the guy instantly said I want your system. He said that hes has been looking for a program that organises tags in the same line like ours does. @emre im getting alot of attention with samba here in detroit and expecting my installations to increase significantly in the next 2 months. I was just kinda waiting to see if we would be able to come up with a way to handle that little issue we talked about. I am continuing installations even with the my sub order tag issue but obviously expecting some complaints. Im hoping it wont be a big issue for customers.

BTW i will be releasing a video soon on my new surveillance integration. I think people here will really love what I did. It will be very affordable at only $200USD license price for program

[emre]

@Hasa Thank you. I understood your sub order tag issue.

[Jesse]

Few things I had to consider was Voiding items needs to be included. Right now it wont void entire combo. That was not a simple fix.

I am going to modify it to allow portion selection for Drink. The combo menu I am building will be quick service minded like a hamburger, fries, drink combo where they choose type and size of fries and drink.

[gerlandog]

@Jesse

The combo menu I am building will be quick service minded like a hamburger, fries, drink combo where they choose type and size of fries and drink

I am really looking forward to this!!!

KISSES!!!

G.

[Jesse]

Hehe working on it now as we speak.

Ok well I am about to… I just finished redoing my ticket template:

[emre]

Why Cash tendered is a little off?

[Jesse]

Hmm interesting… not sure let me check. Its because I used PAYMENT TOTAL:Cash tag…

Ok that looks better.

EDIT: I wish the preview would read the formatting tags for text size. I know I can just test it with a real printer… but sometimes I don’t want to waste paper Also most of the time I am never at the shop when I do dev stuff.

[emre]

@Jesse

EDIT: I wish the preview would read the formatting tags for text size.

This is what printer does so it is a little hard to match that appearance.

PS: Cash Tendered still have some blank space.