Introduction
Managing ingredients is a key part of proper menu management. Some ingredients are shared between different menu items, some items can be substituted for other ingredients, while other items are unique to a single dish. In order to best leverage the Nimble tagging system when designing a menu, care should be taken up-front to create a tagging nomenclature system that maximizes the value of the tags and helps avoid wasting time by having to re-tag items in the menu.
What Are Tags?
In Nimble, tags are names that are assigned to items in the menu used to logically group items together for reference in the menu.
All items need at least one tag, but if none of the tags are flagged for reporting then they will not appear on the menu in the POS client. This is useful for ingredient items used to construct your menu items. These ingredient items are not individually for sale- such as slices of tomato or packets of ketchup – but are used to build up your menu items. By using tags, you can create logical groups of items that can be used in substitutions or combo items. Items can have multiple tags so can be used in different ways in the product.
Grouping Example – Hamburger
This example is of a restaurant that sells multiple types of food, including hamburgers. Some of the ingredients used on the hamburger are also available on other menu items. A hamburger has several classes of components that are used to build up the final product:
- Bread / Bun
- A patty
- Regular toppings
- Premium toppings
Bun / Bread
The example hamburger comes on a standard bun, but the restaurant allows the customer to substitute any other bun type for a $0.99 upcharge. All of the bun types are tagged using the “sandwich bread” tag, and a price modifier of $0.99 is applied to all items using that tag.
Patty
The hamburger comes with a 1/3 lb beef patty. Customers can freely change the beef patty to a 5 ounce chicken patty or a black bean burger patty, or may opt to pay a price premium to change to a turkey patty or Beyond Beef patty.