topic Re: Item Routing in Restaurant Operations

Item Routing

Sdaniel — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 23:32:36 GMT

Hi everyone!

Looking for a bit of guidance with item routing. We have a special menu group called Limited Time Beverages, which is used for both dine-in and online orders. When someone orders a drink from this group, it prints correctly at the drinks prep station for both online orders and dine in orders. The problem is with online orders, the kitchen printer, which is linked to the food prep station, doesn’t get the drinks, just the food. So, drinks don’t show up on the kitchen ticket for online orders. Which makes sense since the kitchen printer is assigned to the food prep station only.

This is the only beverage menu that's used for both online orders and dine-in. For all other drinks have separate menus for dine in and online orders. For online orders, both the food and drinks prep stations are assigned to the menu group, so drinks show up on the kitchen printer ticket. I'd like to avoid making two different versions of the limited-time beverage menu, if possible.

What we need:

For online orders, drinks from the Limited Time Beverages group should print on the kitchen ticket.

For dine-in orders, drinks should not print on the kitchen ticket just at the drinks station, like they do now.

I've been working with the "Item Routing" settings but haven't been able to fully figure out a way to make this work. This seems to only be an issue at locations that still use printed kitchen tickets. At locations that rely solely on KDS and no longer print tickets, this is not an issue.

Thanks all! 🙂

Re: Item Routing

rcmck — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 01:33:03 GMT

I think it would be as simple as rerouting by dining option with the condition of online from drinks to drinks and food prep station. (this might be redundant though for your online specific menu that already routes to both drinks and food, I'm not sure if it will matter or not?)

I am a little confused why it is not a problem for locations with all KDS. How do online drinks go to food prep station in locations with KDS from the limited time drink menu that only routes to drinks? Is there already some item routing being used? I am not an MLM user so maybe there is some location specific prep station stuff that I am not familiar with.

Re: Item Routing

Sdaniel — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 16:26:26 GMT

Hey!

You're correct, since we're using MLM across 26 locations, each one is set up with its own prep stations. I should have clarified that the locations using only KDS screens don't display drinks on the food prep station screen, which is the intended setup. These stores also have a dedicated carryout expo KDS that shows both food and drinks for carryout orders, including TDS, online orders, and third-party deliveries. They have an Epson L90 printers that print item labels or the takeout receipt, which lists all items in the order from their carryout KDS.

Re: Item Routing

rcmck — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 16:40:27 GMT

Thanks for clarifying, having a dedicated takeout KDS is the only way I could think to achieve it, so that explains it. So I think that item routing should do it, you would have to create one for each dining option that applies though.

Re: Item Routing

Rob — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 18:47:38 GMT

I did some research and these were the instructions that I could find, which I think supports the idea that this could only be done with item routing, not sure if this is helpful, let me know if you have other questions!

1. Set up item routing rules to ensure that drinks from the limited-time beverages group print on the kitchen ticket for online orders but not for dine-in orders.
2. Ensure that both the drinks and food prep stations are assigned to the 'limited-time beverages' menu group for online orders. This will allow drinks to appear on the kitchen printer ticket for online orders.
3. Routing based on dining option - Use the routing settings to specify that for dine-in orders, drinks should only print at the drinks prep station. This can be done by setting up routing rules that differentiate between online and dine-in orders.

Routing overview

Re: Item Routing

nbunda — Thu, 01 May 2025 18:20:21 GMT

I agree this sounds like it can be done with a routing rule, but you may need to add a prep station as well, at least to make it easy.

I have a similar setup: When it is an over-the-counter order, staff doesn't need to fill fountain drinks (they are self-serve), so they don't get sent to the kitchen's Dessert/Drinks printer. But when it is a online or 3rd party order, kitchen staff will need to prep the drink. This also applies to merchandizer items we have in our dining room, like ice cream cakes.

I have all of these items specifically assigned by default to a "No Print Dessert/Drinks" prep station, which is NOT assigned to any printer. This takes care of the in-store orders, ensuring that these items do not print to the kitchen. But I have routing rules for each of our off-premise dining options which reroute "No Print Dessert/Drinks" to the standard "Dessert/Drinks" prep station, which IS assigned to the kitchen's Dessert/Drinks printer.

Hope this helps!

Re: Item Routing

Sdaniel — Thu, 01 May 2025 18:50:59 GMT

Thanks for the insight! We have dedicated prep stations for both basic and espresso drinks, and the routing to those stations is working well. For dine-in orders, we actually do want both standard drinks and barista-prepared beverages to print at those respective stations, and we have staff assigned specifically to handle those orders.

The main challenge I’m trying to solve is with online orders. Our stores would like drinks and food items to print on the same ticket. I can achieve this by creating a separate online ordering menu and assigning both drinks and food prep stations to that menu group. The only printer in the kitchen is for our food prep station, and since some stores reply on that ticket to place on carryout bags, they also want drinks from the LTO beverage menu to print on that same ticket.

However, I was hoping to avoid duplicating menus and instead find a way to manage everything under one LTO Beverage menu.

I'll continue to play around with item routing and hopefully make this work.

Re: Item Routing

Sdaniel — Fri, 02 May 2025 17:42:51 GMT

Hey Rob!

Thank you for sharing this! I did some testing and part of what I am looking for works... the problem I am having now is that dine in food that was assigned to the Food prep station now routes to our barista prep station. I looked through the article and am having trouble figuring out what I am doing incorrectly in the setup.

Re: Item Routing

rcmck — Fri, 02 May 2025 18:12:04 GMT

Can you share some screenshots of prep stations and item routing that you tried?

Re: Item Routing

Sdaniel — Thu, 08 May 2025 19:10:53 GMT

Of course!

Here is the Limited Time Beverage Menu Group: Both Food and Barista Prep Stations are assigned.

Using this location as an example, but here are the printers assigned to the food and Barista prep stations:

Item Routing: I had set more rules but archived them as the rules were not working. The problem is that with this rule, items from the food prep station will not appear on the Barista Prep Station KDS, but not at the Food Prep station KDS.

I am sure there's something I am doing incorrectly; any guidance is appreciated. 🙂

Re: Item Routing

rcmck — Fri, 09 May 2025 02:19:19 GMT

Thanks, I may be missing something but why is the LTO Beverage menu routed to food and barista by default? Or is that just your current workaround at the moment? You just want it to go to food when it is takeout right?

As far as the item routing example you shared, it looks like it is sending food to barista because basically that is what it is being told to do, anything that is dine in is reouted from master_food to master_barista.

Again, maybe I missed something but I would think that you would want your LTO Group to just route to master_barista, then reroute it if it is takeout from master_barista to TG_Food and TG_Barista

Something like this, (not sure if it still need to also go to master_barista too but you would just select that as well, if that's the case)

You would add these for however many takeout/delivery dining options you have that it would apply to, obviously you would give them more meaningful names than what I wrote to keep track of them.

Re: Item Routing

Sdaniel — Fri, 09 May 2025 16:43:30 GMT

Hi!

Originally, the LTO Beverage Menu was only routed to the Barista station. However, for testing purposes, I also assigned it to the Food Prep station, following Rob’s instruction:

Ensure that both the drinks and food prep stations are assigned to the 'limited-time beverages' menu group for online orders. This will allow drinks to appear on the kitchen printer ticket for online orders.

On our Third-Party menu, both Food Prep and Barista are assigned to the LTO Beverage menu group, and everything functions as expected. However, for Online Ordering and Dine-In, we use a shared LTO Beverage menu. This results in LTO beverages appearing correctly at the Barista prep station and on the Carryout KDS but not printing on the same ticket as the food since the menu isn’t also assigned to the Food Prep station.

The diagram you shared seems to make sense. I will give that a try. Thank you!

Re: Item Routing

Sdaniel — Fri, 09 May 2025 21:10:51 GMT

I think this may work. I am going to be doing more testing with one of the locations next week, but I think the problem with my set up was that I was more focused on dine in orders. I've switched everything to look more similar to your diagram. Fingers crossed! 🙂