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From idea to till — how a dish moves through the system

A new dish doesn’t appear on the till by magic. It starts as an idea in the chef’s head, passes through a sequence of five rooms in the admin app, and only at the end does the cashier see a button they can press. Each room does one job. Skipping a room means something downstream won’t work.

This page is for owners and chefs who want to know why they have to set up a dish in three different screens, and what would break if they skipped one. After this, the screens stop feeling redundant and start feeling like a checklist.

What it does

Imagine the chef just decided to add a new dish to the menu: Pizza Pistacchio e Mortadella.

Here is what happens, room by room, from idea to till.

StepRoomWhat you doWhat the system getsWhat would break if skipped
1The pantry (inventory)Make sure every ingredient (mortadella, pistacchio cream, dough) exists as an inventory item, with its supplier, its cost, its packaging.Cost-per-unit baseline for every ingredient.The cost dashboard would show “unknown cost” for the pizza, and the recipe wouldn’t roll up.
2The kitchen (recipe)Create the recipe for the pizza. List the ingredients it needs from the pantry, the quantities, the yield (1 pizza per recipe run). Optionally mark it à la minute (cooked on order) vs. batched (made ahead).The list of what one plate actually contains, the cost to make one plate, allergen rollup.The AI wouldn’t know what’s in the dish, the cost-per-plate would be missing, and à la minute deduction at the till wouldn’t fire.
3The window (menu item)Create the public dish — the name, the description, the photo, the allergens declared to the customer, the long marketing prose, optionally internal notes. Link it to the recipe from step 2.The customer-facing version of the dish. The AI catalogue runs automatically here.Customers wouldn’t see the dish on the public menu, and the AI wouldn’t catalogue it.
4The till (POS item)Create the POS button for the cashier. Set the price (or accept the inherited price from the menu item if online ordering is on). Assign the kitchen station (KDS), the tax category, the modifiers available. Link it to the menu item from step 3.The thing the cashier rings up. Pricing, routing, modifiers, availability toggle.The till would have nothing to press — the cashier couldn’t ring the dish even though the customer can see it on the menu.
5Order (a customer orders)Customer orders. Cashier rings it up. The order flows to the kitchen on the KDS, and the ingredient quantities are deducted from the pantry (à la minute) or from a prep batch (batched).Sales record. Inventory deduction. Margin calculation.Sales numbers wouldn’t reflect this dish, stock wouldn’t deplete, and the cost dashboard would think you sold for free.

The same shape applies to every dish — a pasta, a wine bottle, a cocktail, a side. The five rooms are always in this order, and step n+1 builds on step n.

How to use it

The pistacchio-pizza scenario, in detail

Friday morning. Chef Marco writes “Pistacchio + Mortadella pizza, €18” on a napkin. Here’s what happens between napkin and Saturday-night service.

Step 1 — Pantry.

  • Marco opens Admin → Inventory.
  • Mortadella is already there (used in another antipasto). The supplier is Salumificio Bordin; cost is €18.50/kg. Skip.
  • Pistacchio cream is new. Marco creates the inventory item, supplier Pasta Vera, cost €11.20/jar, 250g per jar.
  • Dough is already there. It’s not bought — it’s produced by a recipe (the dough recipe).

Step 2 — Kitchen.

  • Marco opens Admin → Recipes, clicks “New recipe.”
  • Output: Pistacchio Mortadella Pizza, yield 1 plate.
  • Ingredients: 250g dough, 60g mortadella, 30g pistacchio cream, 5g pistacchio nuts. Pulled from the pantry; cost rolls up automatically — €1.92 per plate, ingredient cost.
  • Type: à la minute (made on order). When a customer orders, the kitchen makes one fresh — no batching.

Step 3 — Window.

  • Marco opens Admin → Menu, clicks “New menu item.”
  • Name: Pizza Pistacchio e Mortadella. Slug auto-derived.
  • Long description (the marketing prose): “Dough fermented 48 hours. Mortadella di Bologna, sliced thick. Pistacchio cream made in-house with Bronte pistachios. Finished with chopped nuts and a thread of olive oil.”
  • Photo uploaded.
  • Allergens declared: gluten, nuts, dairy (mortadella is fine for dairy but the dough has milk in it).
  • Internal note: “Some customers ask if the mortadella is fennel-free — yes, it is, ours has no fennel.”
  • Link to the recipe from step 2: dropdown picks it up.
  • Save. The AI catalogue runs in the background and tags the dish with concepts (pistachio, mortadella, wood-fired, Italian, contains-gluten, vegetarian-no).

Step 4 — Till.

  • Marco opens Admin → POS, clicks “New POS item.”
  • Linked menu item: Pizza Pistacchio e Mortadella. The button inherits name, photo, etc.
  • Price: €18 (the napkin price).
  • Tax category: standard (Thai VAT, or whatever the venue’s rule is).
  • Kitchen station: the woodfire oven station on KDS.
  • Modifiers: none for now (no “extra mortadella” option yet — Marco may add later).
  • Save. The button now appears on the cashier’s till tonight.

Step 5 — Order.

  • 9pm Saturday. A customer orders.
  • Cashier taps the button. The order goes to the woodfire station on KDS. The pizza is made.
  • 250g of dough is deducted from the dough batch in the pantry (FIFO — oldest batch first). 60g of mortadella, 30g of pistacchio cream, 5g of pistachio nuts are deducted from inventory.
  • The €18 price plus the €1.92 ingredient cost generates an €16.08 gross margin row on tonight’s sales report.

From napkin to till: about 30 minutes of admin work, spread across four screens. Once it’s done, the dish sells itself.

The rule that orders the rooms

Each room consumes the output of the previous one.

The recipe needs the inventory items to compute cost. The menu item needs the recipe to compute allergens. The POS item needs the menu item to inherit description and (optionally) price. The order needs the POS item to ring up.

Working backwards is faster than working forwards. If you start with the POS item before the recipe exists, you can ring the dish, but the kitchen has no instructions and the cost dashboard is blind.

If you ever feel like the app is making you do extra work, check whether you’re working backwards through this sequence. Almost always, you’re trying to create a step-3 thing without finishing step 2 first.

Worked examples

  • 🍕 The straight-forward case — Pizza Pistacchio e Mortadella above. Five rooms, in order.

  • 🍷 A wine — slightly different shape — Wine bottles don’t have recipes (you don’t produce them, you buy them). Step 2 (kitchen) is skipped. The inventory item for the wine carries the bottle-purchase cost directly. The menu item carries the structured wine attributes (grape, region, body, sweetness). The POS item carries the by-the-glass and by-the-bottle prices. Five rooms become four.

  • 🍅 A simple ingredient that becomes a side dish — Bread for the table. Step 1: flour, water, salt, yeast in inventory. Step 2: bread recipe (batched — you make 30 loaves overnight). Step 3: a menu item “House bread, baked daily”. Step 4: a POS item that the cashier rings as €4 per table. Step 5: order. The recipe is batched so when the order is rung, the deduction comes from the bread batch, not raw ingredients.

  • ⚠️ A common mistake — You create the menu item but forget to create the POS item. The customer sees the dish on the public site, taps “Add to cart,” the cart says “this dish is not currently orderable”. Why? Because online ordering requires a linked POS item. You went window → didn’t open the till. The fix: open POS, create the linked item.

  • 🎁 A service you sell that isn’t a dish — Sommelier hire for a private event, €120/hour. Skip steps 1-4 entirely. Go to Admin → Events → Packages (or the event booking screen) and add it as a service line. It bypasses the dish lifecycle and lives in the events room.