Automatic update of on hand items when used over multiple menu items

[SmokeyBrian]

I have been trying to find a way to get inventory control for an item that is used on several menu items.  We just opened a new BBQ restaurant.  We use several of the cooked meats on various menu items.  For instance, brisket is used on a brisket platter, all meats platter, brisket sandwich, brisket sliders, brisket nachos, as an optional salad topping, etc.  We cook a finite amount of brisket every day and I would like the total cooked brisket on hand to count down as each of the above items are sold.  As it stands now the KM has to come find me to let me know when we are running low and I have to go into each item to 86 it.  This is massively inefficient, and if he doesn't catch it on time we have orders on hand that we can't fulfill.  It seems I should be able to enter how much brisket I have on hand, tie it to each menu item, have it count down and auto 86 items.  Is there something I am missing?

[rcmck]

It can be done if you can setup where brisket is a modifier for the sandwich, or sliders or nachos. I would assume you probably already have an a la carte menu group for the meats by the pound or just by themselves? If you don't, start by creating the solo items like Brisket, Pulled Pork etc. (I created and example in my own menu below, just a singular menu item)

Then under your nacho item for instance,  create a modifier group of your meat choices, dive into that modifier group to create the options.  Start by choosing create new modifier from existing item.

Then in the popup search for that original solo brisket item, and select it.

On the next screen, assuming the price is not the same, you want to select override price

Choose save and publish, then repeat this for any other meat options.

Now under the POS you can see I have a base brisket item with a quantity available of 5, and a modifier for nachos with the same quantity. 

[josh212]

Be careful that the item being used as a modifier didn’t have any default modifiers as the item you are attaching it to as a modifier because that will create an infinite loop that with cause duplicates and fail orders. 

ex I have garlic knots on my menu, we give 1 cup of marinara with the garlic knots so I used to have it as a default modifier with my garlic knots. 

I use modifiers for upsells online and on a pizza one modifier I used was did you want garlic knots with your pizza or an extra cup of sauce. Because garlic knots and marinara were both listed in the same modifier groups but when garlic knots was a menu item marinara is a modifier. It created and infinite loop causing orders to fail. 

what I recommend is creating a meat group as a modifier and then either using menu specific pricing for the modifiers underlying menu item. Now if you wanted to to utilize substitution pricing on top of that for instance a brisket sandwich you can have your menu group have all the associated modifier groups that you want that had menu specific pricing and then utilize subgroups and having the subgroups inherit parent modifiers and assign the defaults on the items on the subgroups therefore no modifiers will actually be attached to the meat. I can demo if you need 

[Lgmbts]

We cut over to Toast 3 weeks ago.  We were told that we could do what you are describing with bagels, however our item "bagels" have mods attached to them.  When we create "new modifier from existing item" and attach it to sandwiches, it also carries over the bagel mods (see mods circled in red), making it impossible to offer bagels as a mod to an item online, which is the problem we were trying to solve when we cut over.  We were told and shown it could be done multiple times before, during and after we signed up for Toast.  But after hours of configuration, calls to Toast and escalations, nobody at Toast has been able to solve the problem of removing the item mods when a new mod is created from an existing item.  Has anyone had success with this scenario?

[rcmck]

That is one issue, you would need to start with an item that has no modifiers attached to it and build from there. So like a group of all your bagels somewhere by themselves with no modifiers attached to the group. Then you base your modifiers off that existing item, as long as you use that parent item with no modifiers attached. Then you can add those existing items to another group and add your modifiers to that group (have to be group level, and not item level modifiers). I have not tried yet but you should be able to remove that group of bagels after you are done. Sorry if this is confusing, I'll try to make an example later if I have time.