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! 🙂

[rcmck]

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.

[Sdaniel]

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.

[rcmck]

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. 

[Rob]

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