Blog: 5 Quick and easy steps to create set menus in your Zonal EPoS

Whether it’s Valentines Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day or even Christmas, an occasion where a set menu is required is never too far around the corner.

Getting your set menus up and running in plenty of time ahead of these occasions will ensure a positive experience for your customers and relieve any last-minute operational headaches, allowing you to spend more time focussing on the big day.

With Mother’s Day just around the corner, why not take this opportunity to get ahead of the madness? This guide will walk you through the 5 easy steps you need to create your set menus, so that everything in-venue runs as smoothly as possible on any occasion.

 1. Creating a new sub-category

Before creating the products for the set menu in product modelling, deciding what sub-category the new products are to be placed in is essential. Creating a new a new sub-category can be a great way of improving reporting.

Here’s how you can create new sub-categories in the Aztec platform: Base Data > Product Configuration > Product Structure > Drill down the category > Add 

Tip* When creating a new sub-category, it’s important assign the new sub-category to a price band relevant to the site. Even if the products are priced in the price matrix (more on that later), if this step is missed this will prevent the product from having a standard price.

2. Creating Products

Now it’s time to create the products for the set menu in product modelling for your set menu. When creating products, we’d recommend finding  products
with similar characteristics and select “new” if you’ve created a new sub-category.

Tip* When creating items for a set menu, using the description field can save time when designing the shared panels. For example, when designing a Mother’s Day menu in the description field in the description field you could use ‘Mother’s Day 2024’.

Tip* If you have multiple sites within your estate you don’t need to create a new product for each site. You can create a group of products for each course. Products can be given multiple records in iOrder to make them appear more site specific.

3. Setting the pricing correctly

When it comes to pricing items that are part of a set menu, you will need to
know whether the products will be available only on the set menu or if they will be available as part of an ‘A la Carte’ menu. If the products will only be part of the set menu, you can price these items at zero (don’t worry, your customers won’t see the price of the products as they can be hidden in iOrder). If the product can be purchased individually on-site, it should be priced as you would normally.

4. Set up any necessary promotions

When creating a promotion for the set menu – setting up a “Multi Buy” function allows you to create a roll up price for the full amount of the set menu and display this on the receipt to the customer.

5. Ensure you’re using a compatible layout in Theme Modelling

Often products on a set menu are available day to day to be sold as individual
items. If this is the case, the products will need to be on a theme that is accessible to till users as well as the theme in use by the virtual terminal.

However, if the products are only available on the set menu and the products are priced at £0.00, these products can be hidden so the till user cannot sell products at a zero price.

Tip* A hidden panel can be created. This will ensure that the products can be pre ordered whilst not being visible to the till user.

Theme Modelling > Themes > Design > Create the new panel > Design the panel  

We hope these 5 steps have been a helpful reminder of the key areas to take in to account when building set menus!

If you have any further questions on any of the above functionality, or any of your other Zonal solutions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!