Creating a Food and Beverage Department

Before you start to create your Food and Beverage Department there are many things to consider and many questions to ask. Like starting any department, the more information you have and an idea of how you want the department to work, will aid you greatly in creating the department. 

 

There are three classes of departments that should be at your top level for the Food and Beverage Department.

1. Selling Departments - These departments hold your selling items (like beer, food items, liquor, etc.). To control inventory, these items need to be added as an "Inventory Item" or create a Warehouse department that holds the items inventory, and then create a sale item that is linked to the Warehouse item.
2. Warehouse Departments - The reason you Warehouse an item instead of adding it as an inventory item, is if either you sell it in more than one way, or you have different Accounting References to allocate for, or different pricing in different areas. You cannot sell directly from a Warehouse Department; it is just for inventory tracking purposes only. As stated above, you need to create a Sale item that is linked to the Warehouse item for inventory to decrease as items are sold.
3. Modifier Department - In this department you will create Modifier items. From these modifier items, you will create Modifier Categories that you link to your Sale items. Modifiers are choices or selections that your customer makes for their food items.

 

Important information that you should have before starting your Food and Beverage Department are listed below:

1. Review your Food and Beverage Menu and decide how you want it to look.
   • Do you want it broken down into specific departments (E.x. Appetizer, Salads, Mains)
   • Or do you want all Food items to appear on one page (This will depend on the number of items in your menu)
   • If Food items are all on one screen, you can differentiate groups of items on the screen by giving them different colours and put spacers in between.
   • It is also important how it looks from a Report point of view. A report can be filtered by Departments.

Please Note: the more departments and sub departments that you create, the more clicking will need to be done by your staff to enter in sales items. 

1. Are you going to keep inventory of items such as Liquor, Beer or Food. If yes, you will need the following information.
   • You will need vendor information
   • You will need to know how items are purchased.(E.x. Bottle, Case, etc.)
   • You will need to know how you will be selling the item. (E.x. Ounce, Unit/Each, etc.)
   • Does your club need the same Sales items set up in multiple areas in Food and Beverage to allocate Sales in each area, for proper allocation of Accounting References or different pricing for other functions such as Weddings or Tournaments.
   • Or is one Sales department that has all the items (E.x. Beer Sales Department only required.). Can all areas (Restaurant, Beverage Cart, etc.) in your Point of Sale use the same sales department to sell from.

Please Note: Discounts for certain Member types is handled by linking the Member type itself to a discounted rate, no need for a separate Department.

1. Do the Menu items require a Modifier? Create a list of modifiers/options that are required per item. You can link one Modifier Category to multiple Sale items. We have 2 types of modifiers (Forced and Optional).

 

Tracking Inventory

 

When adding items into the Point of Sale to track for inventory purposes, there are many ways to do this. Listed below are some of the different ways this can be done. Your club needs to decide which way would work best. Also, you need to take into consideration any reports, different Accounting References, or different Prices that may be required. 

 

**Selling Units: The Smallest way that an item is sold.

 

 

Adding Alcoholic Items as Inventory Items

 

This is best suited for Clubs that no matter where an item is sold, all the Registers use the same Departments to sell from, all these Sale items share the same pricing and Accounting References. Sales reports can be separated per Register to ascertain the Sales from an area.

 

Bottled/Canned Items

These items are added with an Item Type of "Inventory Item". They can be linked to a Vendor(s), an ordering unit and selling unit.

 

 

Learning Zone Page: Creating Inventory Items

 

Liquor Items

 

This way works best when your items have a Selling unit of an Ounce. If you are wanting an exact Inventory of all the Liquor items, then all Bottles of Liquor should be added separately into the Point of Sale.

 

** for liquor where you need to add your items into the system with a Selling unit of a 1/4 ounce (mixed drinks and shots), we suggest using the Warehouse method to add in your inventory. 

 

For A Double: If you are selling a True Double, which is double the shot double the price, you can just have your staff click the original Sale item twice.

 

If the Double Shot has a discounted price, then create a Sale item with an Item type of "Combo Item". Link the original item using "Set included items", set the price per ounce, change the quantity to 2. Review the price in Retail Price. This will have to be done per item that you sell this way.

 

Alternative: Item Type "Dynamic Combo" works best if you have multiple Sale items that share the same Sale price (Well/Rail drinks) you create one Double Sale item, link all the same priced items, and the staff will be able to double click on the item they are selling.

 

 

Adding Alcoholic Items as Warehouse Items (then link Sale items to Warehouse item)

 

Some clubs have Sale items in multiple areas in the Point of Sale or a club sells product multiple ways (E.x. By the glass, pitcher, ounce, mixed drinks or shots). Also, the Sale items may be linked to different Accounting References or priced differently. To keep track of the Inventory item in this instance, you need to create an Alcohol Warehouse. The first step is to add an Alcohol Warehouse with the item type Raw Material/Warehouse item. Please note: Items with this item type cannot be sold, the Retail price is greyed out, they are set up for tracking of inventory only. Then you must create a Sale item(s) that are linked to the Warehouse item by the item type of a Non-Inventory item that Uses Raw Materials, so when an item is sold it would decrease the Inventory in the Warehouse Item it is linked to.

 

Note: By creating a Warehouse, all Inventory remains in one area so that your club knows how much of the product is available within the whole club. You will not know in Tee-On how much of each item is in each area where it is sold.

 

Learning Zone Page: Creating a Non Inventory Item that Uses Raw Materials

 

 

 

Add Food Items into the Point of Sale for Inventory Purposes

 

You first need to decide which items, if any, you want to keep track of in your Point of Sale. This can be a Sale item or even a Modifier item.

 

Just like the Alcohol department, there are multiple ways to do this. For example, if your club only has one hamburger item on their menu, but has add-ons like Bacon and Cheese, your hamburger can be put into the Point of Sale as an Inventory Item.

 

If your club has multiple Hamburger items for sale on the Menu, then you would create a Food Warehouse, enter the Hamburger patty in this department where the Inventory will be tracked. Then create all the Sale items for the Hamburgers as Non-Inventory Items that Use Raw Materials and link the Hamburger patty in the Sale items to the Food Warehouse item.

 

 

Final Thoughts on Tracking Inventory

 

It is a good idea to track your beer and liquor because it is expensive and sometimes the most attractive to abuse. Tracking food items works well for protein and other items that are relatively expensive.

 

 

Important Step in Adding in an Inventory or Warehouse Item into the Point of Sale

 

Link the Inventory or Warehouse items to a Vendor.  You will be able to use the fast way in our system to enter your inventory, we highly recommend doing this step.

 

Learning Zone Page: Adding and Editing a Vendor

 

Once your items have been linked to the Vendor you are able to use "Manage Inventory" in the Admin screen to enter in new inventory. You will be provided a PDF of the new inventory automatically once submitted for your records. 

 

Tracking Lettuce, Ketchup and Spices and other small items does not make as much sense. The effort expended to setup the items in the warehouse and then continually receiving new shipments into inventory and performing regular physical counts, will often cost much more in labor than the actual cost of what you may be losing. 

 

In these cases, you have two other options:

1. Use theoretical cost so you can have a closer estimate of cost of sales for your operation if that is important to you
2. Do nothing. Do not track at all.

 

Modifiers

 

There are two types of Modifiers that can be created in the Tee On Point of Sale. An Optional Modifier and a Forced Modifier.

 

Learning Zone Page: Creating and Linking Optional Modifiers

Learning Zone Page: Creating and Linking Forced Modifiers

 

An Optional Modifier is used when a customer can choose none or many items but do not know how many will be chosen. (E.x. Pizza Modifier where there is no limit to the number of items the customer may choose.)

 

A Forced Modifier is used when you are looking for a definite number of choices to be made by the customer (E.x. Steak Modifier where they must choose between rare, medium or well done)

 

You can also create a Modifier within a Modifier, For example, a Side choice with a Meal that requires an Optional Modifier to be chosen after the initial Side choice has been picked. (E.x. Garden Salad, then choice of Salad Dressing).

 

Hint: Create your Modifiers before creating your Sale items, especially if you are deciding to used Forced Modifiers. The POS will not let you save a Sale item that states with Forced Modifiers if you do not link the Forced Modifier at the time of adding the item. Also, if you save an item with any other item type, you will not be able to change the item type to "With Forced Modifiers". You would need to delete the item and add it again with the Forced Modifiers. 

 

 

Adding Items into your Food and Beverage Department

 

Work from the spreadsheet you created that lists everything you want to enter. There are two ways that you will see the data. When you are making sales and when you are running reports. Your department structure should reflect your needs in both cases.

 

When making sales, the most important factor is speed. The flatter the department structure, the faster the sales. The screenshot below shows you the impact . The structure of modifier departments and warehouse departments do not matter because you do not directly sell from these departments.

 

View Screenshot

 

When running reports, the most important factor is how you want the sales summarized. See below for examples of reports.

 

We suggest entering items in this order. It may seem like it is working backwards, but in the end when you are creating your Sale items you are able to link any Modifier and any Warehouse item for Inventory purposes at that time to ensure that you do not forget any links.

 

Note: Complete one Department at a time. Entering information into the Point of Sale is repetitious so completing one department at a time rather than jump department to department we find the most efficient. 

1. First, create any items into your Warehouse that you want to track Inventory for.
2. Then add all Modifier items to the Modifier Department, with sub-departments called Optional and Forced Modifiers. 
3. Create the Modifier Categories from the Modifier items.
4. Then create the Menu items and link any Modifiers or Warehouse items that are necessary.