September 20th, 2011 by Mike Spence

Over the last year we have seen more of our customers look at catering options with their products.  Obviously that leads to more calls to us asking how we can help.  Fortunately, we already have a number of wants to help with this.

It starts with creating a catering menu.  Talk to our support about creating a specific menu group with your catered items.  This allows your employees to have one button access to the items you cater and the prices you charge.

When a customer calls in, make sure you use our Customer Tracking system to add the customer.  Often these customers

are already in your database and may simply be having you delivery items to a different address.   They may even use a different contact number when calling you.   In SP-1, we track up to 10 phone numbers per client.

 

In SP-1, when you add (or edit) a customer, you can select the phone number / email address button to update or add information for the customers profile.  In catering this is advantageous because you now can get  hold of the direct person that is placing the order if there is a question.

 

The next step is to use the Additional Addresses button to enter the customers catering address. This is important because you might be providing the items to a different location than what you have on file as the main address.

Once we have the order placed, we have two more options available to us.  If you have done catering before then you know that sometimes when the customers calls, they are not actually placing the order right?  Sometimes, it’s an office manager or assistant that is calling around to check on pricing.   We handle this as well!  At the ticket completion screen, you can convert any order into a quote only.  What this does is save the order under that customers phone number for future reference.  When (if) the customer calls back to place that catering order, you will have all the details laid out in front of you!    This allows you to easily and quickly duplicate the previous quote and then turn it into an actual order.

Once the catering order is ready to finish, we can use our Deferred Order system to schedule this order for a future date and time.  SP-1 will automatically print your order on the day and time that it is due.  We even allow you to set the default time the order should be printed.   If it needs to be ready at 4pm the order can print at 3pm! 

So the complete catering options look like this:

  • Add customer with multiple phone numbers and addresses
  • Take order and turn into a quote
  • Duplicate the quote and mark it as a deferred order
  • The order then prints automatically at the time it is ready
  • Reporting for the manager and owner on all future orders

 

SP-1 can make this type of coffee shop or restaurant catering easy by implementing the built in features of our POS!

Call us for more information!

Mike.

 

 

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