Aloha Kitchen Consolidation Printing

[posrescue]

Had a long time Aloha user reach out to me recently with some issues that their dealer was not addressing. During some Q & A I found that an undocumented feature in Aloha could add a lot of efficiency in their kitchen. They talked to their dealer and was told this feature didn't exist even though it was already set up and working. Thought this might be of use to someone.

The feature is chit tag printing and was added years ago for a chain of Japanese steak houses I installed and supported. The feature allows a consolidation section at the bottom of the kitchen chit making it faster and more reliable to get the raw product pulled to go to the dining room.

When setup correctly the consolidation would look similar to the example below.

Ordered:
1 8oz filet
1 Filet and Shrimp (6oz filet and 6oz shrimp)
1 Steak and Shrimp (6oz strip and 6oz shrimp)
1 8oz Filet
1 Shrimp (10oz shrimp)

Consolidation at the bottom of the chit:
2 ea 8oz Filet
1 ea 6oz Filet
1 ea 6oz strip
22 oz shrimp

I have used this in a lot of other types of restaurants as well. I forgot it is not in the manuals and since setup is not in the GUI there are obviously end users and dealers alike that are unaware of the feature.

If anyone wants the setup details just reply.

 

[AlohaRoss]

Now you cannot just tease us with such things, if you have some documentation pass it on. I remember there being a print consolidation setting, but like many Aloha features, not well documented. Most have been trial and error. Here are some other not well documented features. print priority, Flex tax, concept, tip share, checkout buckets, exception modfiers,submenu slaves. if you have used any of these as well and have something to share, then please do.

AlohaRoss

http://www.needaholahelp.com

3rd Party support

 

[posrescue]

Ross,

In notepad enter the info for the items you want to be included in the summary section and save it as chittag.cfg in the Data folder. The system will recognize the existence of the file and will add the summary section to the kitchen chits automatically. The summary section is not effected by any other chit printer settings.

The information is entered in the following format.

item id, ingredient name, quantity

example:
In the chittag.cfg file

001000, ea 8 oz filet, 1
001010, oz shrimp, 6
001020, ea 8 oz strip, 1

If the following is ordered:

1 filet and shrimp
1 strip
1 filet and shrimp

The summary section should print:

2 ea 8oz filet
12 oz shrimp
1 ea 8oz strip

This feature was originally put into place for a Japanese steakhouse chain. I saw that their hibachi chefs were pulling all of their own food from the kitchen at about $20 an hour. The owners didn't want the other kitchen employees to do the pulls because they were afraid of math and consolidation errors. The summary section did all of the consolidation and math for them so they kept the Hibachi chefs on the floor and had a much cheaper employee do the pulls.

If you use your imagination many different types of restaurants can benefit from this.

 

[posrescue]

oops.

The example above should have showed the following for the chittag.cfg.

001000, ea 8 oz filet, 1
001000, oz shrimp, 6
001020, ea 8 oz strip, 1

The item number for the filet ans shrimp should have been the same item number as the actual item is a filet and shrimp combo.