Hi all
I’m after some tips for how I can do this :-
from December in the UK we have to have and be able to provide to our customers certain allergen information for the products that we supply.
Is there a way that I can store notes for product items that we can then recall by pressing a button, once that item is added or selected in an order?
Eg.
Add item to order then button appears ‘product info’ click it and a pop up opens with product info - ingredients, allergen advice etc.
I could do this by adding an auto command button which opens the information in an external document , excel, notepad or similar but that would be messy.
is there a way that I can implement this easily in SambaPOS?
Product Tags was my original thought too, but that would only work for packaged products. When you have varying ingredients, you would need control at an Inventory Item level.
Product tags do not have to be restricted to packaged products… you can tag any product. The thing we need to figure out is how to interact with it. It would mean you need to create a product for each item used in a recipe though.
Yes, for sure. In fact, for Recipes to work properly when it comes to Inventory tracking, you need to define a Product for each Item in the Recipe, and you also need to link the Order Tags to those Products.
Even though you may not sell a slice of ham or tomato, or a pickle or 2 mL of mustard, in order for Inventory tracking to work properly, each of those items needs to be defined as both an Inventory Item and a Product, and the Order Tags (i.e. Ham, Pickle, Mustard) need to be properly linked a corresponding Product (Ham, Pickle, Mustard products - NOT the Sandwich product).
I guess the question is: where does this “allergen information” fit more naturally? At the Product level or at the Inventory level? I’m not sure, but my gut is telling me it should be at the Inventory level.
Currently, we don’t have a choice: Inventory Items does not have an option for “extra information”, but as you say, Products do have an option for this: Custom Product Tags/Captions could work. I’m just not sure this is where the information belongs…
I agree with @QMcKay the allergen information would ideally fit at inventory level, but I guess for what I need it would be better at product level as we don’t currently use the inventory at all maybe this would force me to make the most of the software.
There are 14 allergens in total that we have to identify and obviously some products would have more than 1 allergen, These could simply appear as a list against each product on the click of a button.
For me to have ‘Ham Sandwich’ on my menu and then have a button to click that then shows the list of allergens that are in that product would be best suited. There are other ways that I can achieve this, but thought as SambaPOS is in the waitresses hands when they are with customers, they could have the info at their fingertips!
An automated command that launches a screen similar to the ‘ask question’ screen would be great but obviously wouldn’t need any input and just be information displayed.
You can assign commands to menu items. It could launch a popup, ask question, or show message when that item is added to ticket. It can read the Custom Product Tags from the ingredients and display appropriate message.
I have not tested this so I am not sure exactly how it would work. But just brainstorming it looks doable.
There you go great idea @QMcKay . If you wanted it automated like i suggested you could follow the same procedure just put the command on the menu item instead of a button.
As @Jesse mentions, you can also have the Automation Command execute automatically when the Product is selected. Manage > Products > Menu List > Menu > Category > Edit Product Properties, but then you’re going to get a lot of pop-ups …
maybe this would force me to make the most of the software.
