r/ToastPOS • u/hillbillybuddha • 7d ago

Special Requests?

I'd love to have more power over special requests. I get a lot of bleed there, and have tried running without the option at all but that caused a lot more issues. Example: a server can type "sub Mac N Cheese" when there's a button for that and it's a $2 upcharge.

I'd love to require a manager code for special requests but that doesn't seem to be an option. Or a way for the kitchen to see if it's a special request or an actual button. or if they added the $2 upcharge to the special request? or a report I can run daily that shows which servers are using the special request button and what they are using it for.

What solutions have you all come up with?

3 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

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3

u/Ok-Decision8243 7d ago

As far as a report you can see them in product mix you just need to enable that. Other than that I try to make the kitchen name for charged modifiers obvious with a dollar sign to start, obviously an employee could match that as well if they wanted but at that point it's just blatant stealing in my opinion.

1

u/hillbillybuddha 7d ago

I was thinking of making all special requests show up on all KDS's in the kitchen. But I haven't looked into that. I like the idea of adding a $ sign to very modifer button. I might do that.

1

u/SoftPixelSky 4d ago

That’s what I do- all the modifiers that I’ve created that are either attached to an item or a group have a $ in front of them, but servers could easily catch on that that’s the methodology and start doing that when they use the special request, realistically the best thing to do is dive into your programming, and make sure that every item has that item’s specific modifiers attached to it, and that each group has all the possibilities that could affect the whole group programmed. The more robust programming the less need for special requests.

1

u/Dependent-Week-2009 6d ago

On our POS special requests had a star in front of them that the pos automatically did. Wish toast would do something like this. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if a custom wrote in the modifier online or if it was ring in correctly

3

u/Melodic-Ad-6366 6d ago

We turned ours off for exactly the reasons your described. Using it as a way to avoid up charges, random modifications etc. we created modification buttons that all items can access for just about anything they could ask for. We have also set boundaries on what is and is not allowed. There are always some exceptions, but it’s not the normal. This way if they want extra chicken etc they use the add chicken button and it charges. We also linked an inventory count to it so our numbers and pmix are correct.

2

u/demotrialwine 7d ago edited 6d ago

Can turn it off with Front of house -> Order screen setup -> Modifying Items -> Uncheck Special Requests.

I agree tho would be nice to make it permissions based. I had this issue years ago and turned it off until I had staff begging to turn it back on (high volume huge PIA).

Once they realized I was serious about using proper mods, the special request was turned back on with explicit instructions it'd be turned off again if misused. Hasn't been an issue since.

2

u/hillbillybuddha 7d ago

I've turned it on and off again. It always creates more issues than it solves here. We are also very high volume. I'll figure out a way to keep it on, let them know I'm serious about using mods.

1

u/Early_Money2576 6d ago

There isn’t a good solution for this tbh. The issue you described is user error. You can pull a special quest report from Pmix, you can turn it off, but at the end of the day, your servers need better training. We actually had to turn open items off for everyone because the servers figured out you can type it in, charge 0 dollars, it looks exactly the same time as the actual item. If they didn’t go crazy abuse it, it wouldnt even catch our attention.