Item Routing

[Sdaniel]

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! 🙂

[Sdaniel]

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! 🙂

[nbunda]

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!

[Sdaniel]

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.