Multiple Locations with one kitchen

[jeffreyjp]

We are a mid-sized bakery with four retail stores and many commercial customers.  We have been using Toast POS for a year and now want to add On-Line Ordering to our system but are encountering a few challenges:

1) We'd like to only offer advance orders for goods - if we haven't already made something the customer can't possibly pick it up that day. It seems like the only way to do this is to set the Throttling Time to 12 hours or so - but then customers who place an order late in the day are told it won't be available until 12 business hours later (often the next afternoon, even though the product will be ready the next morning). The interface becomes very clunky and confusing to customers.

2) On-Line Orders fire to the 'kitchen' at the pick-up location.  We need all orders to come to the main bakery and be consolidated into a production list there so our 'expediter' can then distribute to the appropriate store the next morning.

What is the best way to configure a system to only offer advance orders and then have them all come to a single kitchen? 

3) We'd like to use standing orders for our commercial customers so that the advance orders will automatically generate, or at least be easily duplicated.  It seems like the Catering & Events add-on offers some of this functionality, but we don't need the rest of the features in that package.  Is there any way to do this in vanilla Toast?

[Rob]

Toast recommends creating 2 menus for workflows like yours. You can find more info in the link! So one menu would be for your advance orders and the other menu would be for the rest.

Configure Menus for Bakeries or Coffee Shops

[jeffreyjp]

Thank you for the link.  

"If your guest placed an order with both a pre-orderable item and an item that they can pick up in 20 minutes, both will print on the same ticket. " - This implies that the system does not know what day the advance order is for.  Would we then have to track them all manually?

[Rob]

I believe so. We also have future orders as an option, but I'm unsure if they can work together with this bakery setup.

Schedule Future Orders

[jeffreyjp]

I thought I'd add a follow-up on our solution. We now take advanced orders online via the Catering module web portal due to the great functionality the software for controlling and scheduling advance orders. We added the Toast Catering & Events module at all four locations, then put 4 KDS screens on a wall near the main production floor - one for each store. As online orders come in for each store, we "Fire" them to the Kitchen, where they show up on those KDS screens. Once the products are routed to the truck for the appropriate store, we "Fulfill" the orders, then have the stores hit the "Order Ready" button once the product arrives there.

This seems to be working very well, with a couple caveats:

First, the Catering module Online ordering system doesn't seem to allow returning customers to log-in or reorder their previous orders as well as the base online system does.

Second, hitting the "Order Ready" button on the POS does not (yet) trigger an SMS message to the customer in the Catering Module. We think they may address this issue in the near future.

In general, we're very happy with the addition of the Catering & Events system which supports advance/scheduled orders, as well as our recurring orders. I'm still figuring out ways to use it, but until Toast alters their Online Ordering system to handle advance orders we'll be happy with this method.