Meal Ordering (Food Industry)

If you are interested in adding meal ordering to your Nutritics account, please contact sales@nutritics.com

This guide will show you:

• How to set up your food outlet in Nutritics
• How to publish your existing menus and enable ordering
• The customer facing side of the ordering system
• Limiting items that can be ordered on a menu
• How to manage your orders in the orders dashboard

If you have not already built up your menus in Nutritics, please see our guide on menu creation here.

Outlet set up

To enable ordering on your account, you must first set up your outlet in Nutritics.

• Click on the cog icon in the top right corner of the screen, click on ‘settings’ then ‘ordering’.
• Search in the search bar and select your outlet from the list.
• Add in your outlet details.
• Add your outlet’s social media accounts in order to be able to share your menus to your social media platforms directly from within your menu settings.
• Set the width of your thermal paper rolls used for docket and receipt printing. Dockets and receipts can be printed from the orders dashboard.
• Tick the days that your outlet is open. If ordering is enabled on your menus, customers will only be able to order on days you are open. Use the calendar to mark any holidays that your outlet is closed. Customers will not be able to place orders for those days.

• Under the meal services heading, specify how your customers can receive their orders, e.g. take away, delivery. 
• If desired, share your outlet with other Nutritics users. Type a Nutritics username or email address to enable sharing with the user. If your licences are part of an organisation or group, you will see all users of the organisation when you click ‘add user’. You can also choose to share with all account holders within the organisation. You will have the option to share the outlet with read only or read & write privileges after adding a collaborator.

Payments

• Allow customers to pay for their order directly from your digital menus. 
• Payments will be collected by Nutritics payment partner Stripe. Follow the instructions on screen to connect Stripe with your Nutritics account and add details including where payout from orders should be deposited. By default, payouts will be made to your bank account daily.

• Once your Stripe account is connected, it can be accessed from the main menu > settings > ordering.

• Next, set up the waiting staff, areas and tables. This information will be visible on ‘eat-in’ orders in the ordering dashboard.
• Add the staff members. If desired, staff members can be assigned pin codes that they will need to enter to gain access to menus. If staff members log into a menu and then a customer orders from that menu, you will be able to see the staff member associated with the order in the orders dashboard.

• Specify the areas and table numbers in the outlet.

Menu settings and publishing

Once the menus and the outlet have been set up, open the menu you would like to publish from the Nutritics content explorer and review the menu settings. If you have not already created your menus in Nutritics, please see our guide on menu creation here.

Menu settings are accessed by clicking on the grey slider icon in the top right corner of the menu workspace.

Within the settings menu, there are several tabs that allow for the customisation of the menu:

Display tab

Choose the information to be displayed on paper and digital menus 

• Enable menu item prices, calories and allergen information, an ingredient list and front and back of pack nutrition information. 
• Choose the look of the menu e.g. apply a light or dark theme and select how many menu items or ‘tiles’ are displayed in each line. 
• Enter a disclaimer to be displayed on all menu items, or add a welcome message for your menu. 

• Decide whether to display photos on the menu. When photos are not included the menu item will be collapsed until clicked on:

• Type in a welcome message/instructions to display to customers when the menu is loaded. Use the toolbar to format the text. Click on the picture frame icon to upload an image.

Interactivity tab 

Choose how customers can interact with the menu. 

• Interactive mode allows customers to scroll through the menu and click on menu items for more information/ordering purposes and is recommended where menus are being displayed on touchscreens. Untick this option is your menu will be displayed on a digital display or TV that is not a touchscreen. 

• Tick ‘Allow users to go back to the list of menus’ to allow customers to exit the current menu they are viewing and browse all published menus e.g. you might want to allow your customer to exit the bar menu and look at the restaurant menu. Tick ‘The screen resets to the list of menus’ and the menu will return to the list of published menus after a period of inactivity. 

• Enable a ‘featured items’ screensaver and menu items will flash on screen when the menu is left idle.

Ordering tab

Enable ordering to allow customers to place orders from the digital menu. Orders will appear in the ‘Orders’ folder in the Nutritics content explorer.

• Enable card payments from this tab.
• Max advance orders per day: This allows orders to be booked for subsequent days. Define how many advance orders can be booked each day. 
• Min lead time: Set the minimum amount of time and order can be placed before it’s due i.e. the minimum lead time it will take the kitchen to produce an order for this menu. For example, if the lead time is set to 15 minutes and a customer tries to place an order at 3pm, the earliest ‘due time’ slot will be 3:15pm. 

The lead time for orders can be controlled in 2 places: 

1) In the ordering tab of individual menu settings as described above. 

2) The minimum lead time can also be controlled by the kitchen in the live orders dashboard.

Click on the meal service type e.g. delivery and use the plus or minus icons to edit the due time. 

Note the due time can only be increased here and cannot go below the due time set on an individual menu e.g if the lead time of a menu is set to 20 minutes but the kitchen is busy and needs more time to fulfill the orders, they could set the lead time from the dashboard to 30 minutes and this lead time will be applied. If the kitchen is quiet however and wants to decrease the lead time e.g. to 15 minutes, this would need to be changed in the individual menu settings. 

• Allow orders for specific meal/time slots: This should be used where meal times are at a set times e.g. breakfast is served at 8am, lunch is at 12pm and dinner at 6pm.

• Allow orders at custom times: Allows customers to choose their order ‘due time’ from automatically calculated time slots. Define how many orders the kitchen can handle in a set amount of time. 

This will determine the amount of due time slots that are visible to the customer when ordering from your menu.

Pro tip: make sure your opening days and any days you are closed for holidays are set in your main ordering settings so they will not appear in the calendar view. These are accessed by going to the main menu in the top right corner of the screen (cog icon) > settings > ordering.

• Set the default order type (this will be the first option shown to customers when selecting how they wish to receive their order). 
• Set the service operating hours for each order type e.g table service is available all day but delivery is only from 5-9pm (or leave this blank to accept orders at all times). 
• Set and optional fee for orders. 

Note that card payments will need to be enabled for this to work (scroll to the top of the ordering tab to enable payments). 

• Select what information is required from the customer e.g. name, address, phone number (this must be ticked to enabled SMS notification to customers that their order has been received). 

Notifications

• Choose to be notified via email each time a new order is submitted.
• Choose to send customers an SMS message confirming their order. Note you will need to collect customer phone numbers (enabled from the ordering tab of your menu settings) for this to work.
• Send customers a confirmation email summarising their order.

Publishing tab

Publish your menus so staff and customers can view and interact with your menus on a digital display.

• Staff login can be enabled from this tab. Staff members can be assigned pin codes that grant them access to menus. Pin codes can be assigned by clicking on the 'add staff' shortcut or from the outlet settings accessed by clicking on the cog icon in the top right corner of the screen < settings < ordering.

• Enable order summary for staff to prompt an order review before placing

• Menus are made live from the publishing tab using the drop-down. Choose if the menu is published immediately or schedule a date and time for the menus to go live. Click here for more information on scheduling menus.

• Live menus have an orange circle beside the menu title in the Nutritics explorer and on the digital button in the menu workspace.

• Click on the digital button to preview your digital menu.

• Tick 'Show this menu in Libro smartphone app’ to publish the menu in Libro and allow Libro users to browse the menu on their smartphone

Sharing tab

• Choose how the menu will be accessed by customers in the ‘sharing’ tab. 
• Copy and paste the menu URL to display the menu on a website, tablet or other displays 
• Embed the menu on a website using the code provided by clicking 'Embed'
• Alternatively, display the QR code online or at an outlet for customers to scan and access the menu
   

• To see your full menu list, click ‘get main menu url’. This will provide you with a link to a list of all active and inactive digital menus in your Nutritics account. 

Menu templates

Menu settings can be saved as a template and applied to other menus. Click ‘save as’, name your template and the template will be saved for reuse.

To apply a template, click on the template name and select apply. Right-click on the template name to set it as the default menu layout, to update the template or to rename or delete the template. 

Templates can be applied to an individual menu, a menu 'folder' group or all menus across your account by selecting the relevant option from the drop down shown above. 

Limiting items that can be ordered on a menu

To limit the amount of items that can be ordered from a menu, click on the 'Choose Columns' button from your menu workspace.

Order limits can be set using the columns under the 'Administration' heading.

Sold out: Enable this and tick any items that are no longer available. The item will still appear on your digital menu, but will bear a 'sold out' banner.

Min and max order: Setting a min order means the customer must select at least this many menu items from this menu group e.g. create your own breakfast by selecting 2 meats.

Setting a max order means the customer cannot select any more than the specified number of items from this menu group e.g. make your own sandwich, choose 1 bread, 1 meat and 3 salads. 

Any order limits will be displayed on the digital menu beside the menu group name. 

Customer View

If a menu is password protected, a staff member will be required to log in to see the menu.

Enter the name and pin assigned to the staff member in your outlet settings.

Menu items are shown in a tile format. 

Customers can click on the language dropdown at the top of the screen to translate the menu into their preferred language.

Customers can scroll through and filter the menu by clicking on the tabs along the top.

Customers can also filter by their dietary preferences and allergies by clicking on the drop-down menu at the top of the screen.

Clicking on a menu item will open it (the information on display e.g. calories, pricing etc. can be controlled from the menu settings).

Specify the desired number of servings and any notes for the kitchen.

Items are added to a basket at the bottom of the screen. 

You can view a running nutrition summary using our meal planning tool. Once an item is added to the basket, click the ‘i’ icon to view the meal’s nutritional content in comparison to standard reference intakes:

These figures will update automatically as items are added to or removed from the order.
Depending on the menu set up, customers can choose to eat in, take away or have their order delivered by following the prompts on screen.
 

An order confirmation page will prompt customers to review their order before placing.

If payments are enabled, customers will be prompted to enter their card details to complete their order.

Customers will receive on-screen confirmation of their order.

ORDERING VIA A TABLE'S QR CODE

To get a table's QR code click on the 'Start' button in the top left corner. Choose Digital Menus>Get QR code per table.

A zip file will download containing all QR codes per table. These can be printed and distributed to tables for scanning when ordering. The codes can be scanned using a camera to load information quickly.

Order Dashboard

The order dashboard is accessed via the Nutritics Content Explorer. Click ‘Orders’ then ‘Live Orders’.

• A summary of all orders is shown in the first panel. Items are organised into the food and recipe groups set up in the Nutritics account, or by menu groups.
• You can hide this group name by going to Settings>Ordering and clicking ‘Hide groups on order summary dashboard’:

   

• The number of times an item has been ordered is shown beside the item name. You can click the item to expand this and view any modifications also.

• Individual orders are shown to the right of the summary panel. 
• Order information includes an icon displaying if the order is for sit in, take-away or delivery

• Also shown is the order number; the time the order is due; customer details; and the order items organised into groups. 
• Click on the paperclip icon beside a customer name to see more information on the customer. 

Toggle a condensed view of the orders or enable fullscreen mode using the icons in the top right corner of the screen. 

We’ll condense the order for easy viewing but you can click on an order to isolate it and view it alone.

Select the button beside the total order count in the dashboard to open all orders in a new panel. This panel allows you to view all orders and modifications associated at once. 

Control the minimum lead time for orders directly from the orders dashboard. Click on the due time and use the plus / minus icons to increase/decrease the lead time. This is useful for ensuring the kitchen is not overloaded with orders.

Click on an item in the order summary panel to view all orders containing that item. In the panel that expands, you will see if any orders require a modified version of that item, for example if the customer has added any notes to their order. Click on the item again in the order summary panel to go back to viewing all orders.

Where items are on multiple orders, you can click the three dots to the right of the item to tick these off in bulk.

Right-click on an item to view the cooking instructions and ingredient list. You can adjust the number of servings required and the ingredient list will update automatically. 

Keep track of order progress by clicking on order items to tick them off. 

Change the status of an order using the drop-up menu on individual orders, or set order status in bulk from the order summary panel. 

Print a receipt or docket for an order by clicking on the printer icon on individual orders. Note that the width of the thermal rolls used for printing must be specified in your outlet settings accessed by going to the menu in the top right corner of the screen > settings > ordering. Print dockets in bulk based on their status by clicking on the printer icon in the order summary panel.

Print labels per item ordered by right clicking over the meal:

Alternatively, print an individual label for a modification by clicking the three dots to the right of the request:

Filter your orders using the search tool. 

Orders can be filtered by: 

• Due time 
• Date the order was placed or days offset e.g. days in advance, setting this to 0 will show today’s orders, setting this to 1 will show orders for tomorrow, setting it to 2 will show orders for 2 days time and so on
• Area where the customer is sitting (if applicable) 
• The menu the customer ordered from e.g. bar menu, main restaurant menu 
• Staff member (if staff login is enabled on menus) 
• Order status e.g. pending, ready for collection 
• Table number 
• Meal groups e.g. starters, pastries 

Save commonly used searches by setting your search criteria and clicking ‘save’. Give the search a title. 

Saved searches can be pinned to the dashboard for immediate selection:

You can also right click the saved search to ‘set as default’. This will automatically load the search when you open the dashboard. You can further decide if the search should be saved for your account or your device. This is useful for saving different searches per ward on one account but different devices.

New orders can be placed directly from the order dashboard by clicking on ‘new order’. This will open a list of menus. Select the relevant menu and order as normal.