Customer Menu Choices

Let your customers pick their own dishes when they accept a quote. You choose which package choices are theirs to make; they tick their dishes, add any optional extras, and accept in one go. Their picks go straight into the quote. Customers can only choose from the package choices you leave to them and your optional extras: they can’t change anything else on the quote.

How It Works

1. You build a package with flexi choices, such as “Choose 2 mains” or “Choose 1 dessert”, and mark the ones the customer can choose.
2. You add the package to a quote and send it, leaving those choices open. You can add Optional Extras too.
3. When the customer clicks Accept Quote, the accept window shows Your selections: the dishes on offer under each heading, and your optional extras. They tick what they want, type their name and accept.
4. Their picks are saved into the quote and it’s accepted as usual. You and the customer both get the acceptance email, now with a Your selections summary.

After acceptance, the customer can still ask for changes with Request changes, which emails your team. Nothing on the quote changes until you change it.

Turn It On

Go to Settings → Account Details and find the Customer menu choices panel.

• Customers make menu choices must be on. While it’s off, the accept window and the quote look exactly as before, and there’s no Request changes button.
• Hide Request changes [N] days before the event sets when customers can stop asking for changes online (see below). Leave it blank to show the button right up to the event.

Mark the choices customers can make, and check their dishes and options, before you turn the setting on.

Choose Which Choices the Customer Makes

In Items → Packages, open the package. Each Flexi choice items card has a setting at the bottom:

Customer can choose when accepting the quote: Yes / No

• Yes: the customer picks these dishes when they accept.
• No (the default): you pick them, as before.

A package can mix both: you might pick the canapés and leave the mains and dessert to the customer. The number of selections on the card is how many dishes they choose, and the dishes listed on the card are the ones on offer.

Each quote keeps what it was offered. The dishes and options a quote offers are fixed when the package is added to it. Changing the package later only affects quotes you add it to afterwards. If you make a dish inactive, quotes that already offer it still do.

The online order form isn’t affected by this setting.

What the Customer Sees

When the customer clicks Accept Quote, the window shows Your selections above their name, laid out like the quote: each package, then each choice under its heading.

• Choose my menu now or later. Two cards at the top: Choose my menu now (the default) and I’ll choose later (“We’ll be in touch”). Choosing later hides the dishes, and the quote is accepted with its choices still open for you to fill in with them.
• Dishes under each heading, with a counter: “0 of 2 chosen”. Once they reach the number, the other dishes are greyed out. Dishes you’ve already chosen on the quote show as chosen and can’t be changed.

• Options. If a dish has options (such as a sauce or a gluten-free version), they appear under it once it’s ticked, with your defaults already picked. Any option you’ve made compulsory must be answered.
• Optional extras. Each of the quote’s optional extras is listed with its quantity and price, under your extras section’s name. Ticking one adds it to the order.
• P.O.A extras can’t be added here. Instead each has an I’d like more info box, which goes in the acceptance email so you can follow up.
• Running total. As they tick, the window shows what their picks add: “Your selections add $207.00. New total $3,335.00.”

The customer must reach each choice’s number for any heading they start, and can leave a heading alone for you to fill later. On a quote with several deliveries, each delivery’s choices are listed separately.

If you change the quote while the customer has the window open, they’re asked to check it and accept again, so they never accept something different from what they saw.

The Acceptance Email

The usual acceptance email, to you and the customer, gains a Your selections section: each package, its dishes under each heading (with options on a smaller line), Optional extras added with their prices, More information requested for any P.O.A extras ticked, and Menu choices: to follow if they chose later or left a heading open. It links to the quote online for the full menu.

It’s sent under your existing Quote accepted email setting.

Request Changes

Once a quote is accepted, the customer’s quote shows a Request changes button, on the standard quote and every quote template.

The customer writes a note (required) and can tick I’d like to ask about beside any choice still open or any optional extra. Send emails your team with the note, the ticked lines and a link to the order. Nothing on the quote changes: you reply and make any changes yourself, as you would for an email or a call. The email goes out under a new Change request email setting: your team gets it, and the customer copy is off by default.

Cutoff. With Hide Request changes [N] days before the event set, the button disappears from midnight N days before the event (counted in your time zone from the first delivery’s date). For example, with 2 and a Friday event, Tuesday is the last day it shows; with 0 it goes on the event day. After that, customers see “Changes can no longer be requested online. Please contact” you, with your phone or email.

In the Order’s Audit Trail

On the order page, Show audit trail lists the customer’s choices in plain terms: Items selected (package, heading and dishes), Optional extras selected (quantity, name and price), More info requested, or Chose to make menu choices later. A Request changes message is logged there too, with the note and ticked lines.

Good to Know

• Your own dishes, notes and quantities on the quote aren’t touched: the customer only fills the choices you left open to them, and the extras you offered.
• A quote that only has optional extras (no customer choices) shows just the extras, with no now-or-later cards.
• The quote’s quantities follow the package: a dish the customer picks gets the quantity the package gives it, just as if you’d picked it.
• Customers can only choose from what the quote offers: they can’t add other dishes or options.

Tips

• Name your choice headings clearly (for example “Mains to Share” or “Dessert”), since the customer sees them in the accept window. Use the card’s Overall heading.
• Turn on Show items for customer choices so the quote lists the dishes on offer before they accept.
• Offer upgrades as Optional Extras so customers can add them while they accept.

See also Packages and Optional Extras.