Marking dishes as sold out on screen without redesigning anything
· 5 min read
In Casty you mark a dish as sold out by switching its Availability off in the menu board, which takes it off every screen that shows that menu. There's nothing to redesign and nothing to republish, and it takes about as long as wiping a line off a chalkboard. When the dish is back, switch Availability on again and it returns to its usual place on the board.
Why it matters
Picture the lunch queue. Someone spends the whole wait deciding on the lasagne, gets to the till and hears it went twenty minutes ago. They have to start again with a queue behind them, and the person serving has the same conversation with the next three customers. A board that's honest about what's left keeps the queue moving.
A chalkboard you can rub out, and a printed board you can't change at all. A screen set up as one designed image sits awkwardly in between, because someone has to open the design, delete the dish, publish it again and hope the layout still looks right, at one o'clock on a Saturday.
How it works
Casty keeps your menu in a menu board, separate from the screen design. Each dish is a product with a name, a price and the other details, inside a category such as Lunch or Cakes, and each product has an Availability switch. The layout shows whatever products are available, in their display order.
To mark one as sold out:
- In the CMS, go to Library, then Menu Boards, and open the category's products.
- Click the pencil icon on the dish's row.
- Switch Availability to Off and click Save.
The products list then shows a cross against that dish, and it no longer appears on the screen. In the Casty demo, Harbour Cafe takes its avocado on sourdough off the brunch menu this way. The menu board guide has screenshots of each step.
Screens pick up the change when they next check in with the CMS. If you want it off the screen straight away, open Displays, click the three dots on the screen's row and choose Collect Now, which asks the screen to check in immediately.
Who does it, and from where
The person who knows a dish has run out is in the kitchen or behind the counter, so that's who should be able to switch it off.
The CMS runs in a web browser, which means it works on a phone, and a shift manager can switch a dish off between orders. We can set up a login for them with access to the menu board but not the layout designer, so they can mark dishes off and fix prices without any risk of moving the design around. Giving staff access covers the kinds of login available.
Then agree who does it. A simple rule: whoever calls a dish off to the floor also switches it off on the screen. If that's the head chef, it might be easier for the chef to shout and the person on the pass to do the tapping.
Design the board so a missing dish doesn't show
Before you go live, test what the board looks like with a dish or two missing. Switch something off on a quiet afternoon, have a look at the screen (or request a screenshot from the Displays page if you're not there) and switch it back on.
A few design choices make the board cope better:
- Don't pack the screen edge to edge. A bit of space at the bottom of each category means the board still looks finished with one fewer line.
- Keep each category in its own area of the screen, so a short list in one doesn't throw the others out.
- Avoid designs where every dish has a big photo in a fixed grid. A missing tile is far more obvious than a missing line of text.
The menu board itself is set up once, and the digital menu boards guide covers that side in more detail.
Bringing dishes back
Availability stays off until someone switches it back on. That's sensible (a dish that's off because a supplier let you down might be off for a week), but it means you need a habit.
Put it on the opening checklist. Open the menu board's products, look for crosses in the Availability column, and switch back on whatever's available today. It takes a minute and saves a morning of customers wondering where the bacon roll went.
Other things that sell out
Not everything on a screen comes from a menu board. Specials shown as pictures in a playlist can come out of the playlist, or you can give the picture an expiry date in the media library so it drops out on the day it ends.
Lists kept in a dataset (a cake counter, today's guest ales, a soup of the day) can be edited row by row. Delete the row, or keep it and change a column to "Sold out" if you'd prefer customers to see that it was on. The DataSet widget also has a filter option to show only some rows, if you'd like sold-out lines hidden without deleting them.
Prices work the same way
While you're in there: a price change is the same few steps. Click the pencil icon, change the price, save. The demo's buttermilk pancakes go from £8.50 to £8.95 that way, with nobody opening the layout.
Questions people ask
Can I mark something as sold out from my phone?
Yes. The Casty CMS runs in a web browser, so you can open the menu board on your phone, switch the dish's Availability off and save.
Does the dish come back on its own the next day?
No. It stays off until someone switches Availability back on, which is handy when a dish is off for a few days. Make checking the list part of opening up.
Can kitchen staff do this without being able to change anything else?
Yes. We can set up a login that gives access to the menu board without the layout designer, so staff can mark dishes as sold out and update prices but can't change the design.
Will the screen show a gap where the dish was?
That depends on the design. Switch a dish off on a quiet afternoon and look at the screen before you rely on it, and leave a little space in each category so the board still looks complete with something missing.