Venue Management - Food and Drink

This article will show you how to set up your Venue's Food and Drink at the Venue Management level. If you want to simply add bespoke food and drink items to each event, look at this article. 

1. What is the Food & Drink Section?
2. Menu Vs Individual item?
3. Creating individual items
4. Creating Menu's 
5. Next Steps

Disclaimer - Setting up your menus can feel daunting - however once you have decided the best approach of using it for your venue, it can be hugely rewarding and save lots of time + be a big value add for your customers. If you haven't yet - make sure to book in a call to discuss the best way to set up and use F&D on Hostology with one of our team. You can book the call here.

What is the Food & Drink Section?

The Food & Drink section for your venue is the place to create and save items that are available to all of your customers. Similar to other Venue Management items, this removes the need to create and add items to each event every time.

You can add items at the event level if you would prefer, to create bespoke individual items for each event you have, but please note items added at the event cannot be saved and used for other events. To see how to add Food and drink items for a specific event, check out this article here

To access food and drink for your venue, go to your venue's menu and select 'Billable items' then 'food and drink':

Menu Vs Individual item?

The food and drink section is split into two tabs:

• Menus - These are a collective of individual items, with one price
• Individual items - Individual items

So the main distinction here, is that individual items will show in an event with their specific price. However, a menu will only show the menu price. So if you had 5 items, all £5 each and put them in a menu worth £20 - your customers would only see that all 5 are worth £20, and not their individual prices.

Menus can also be used to create set menu's. So if your customers need to choose options, this is a great way to set up. As you can create a menu with multiple options for each course, and then simply remove the options your customer does not want - without needing to adjust and edit the price "per head" costs.

Creating individual items

To create an individual item you first need to navigate to your venue, and click on 'Billable items' then 'Food & Drink' in the menu on the left hand side. 

Once you have navigated to the Food & Drink page you will land on the Menus tab, here you will need to click on the 'Food & drink items' tab then 'Add new': 

Here you will be able to input the following information:

• Dish/drink name - What is the dish called?
• Course Category - A list of options available, from starters, to bar options. (a handy label)
• Price per person (inc. VAT) - Pricing in Hostology is labelled as "Per person", but in quantity can also work as just the total quantity of items wanted.
• Description/plating notes - Where you can add a more detailed description of the dish
• Allow for ingredient swaps and changes - a simple checkbox, this allows customers to know they can request changes where possible.
• Upload a picture
• Allergens - A list of recognised Allergens. For customers with specific dietaries or Allergens not listed, you can add these as a "Dietary note" at the event.
• Dietary requirements - See above

You can edit items by clicking the 3 dots next to the item that you want to edit, then clicking on 'Edit. Once you have edited the information you want you can then click on 'Save item' to save any changes.

To delete items click the 3 dots next to the item that you want to delete, then click on 'Delete' and 'OK'

NB - When editing any food & drink item all changes will automatically be updated to all events that they are selected in.

Creating Menu's 

To create a menu, you first need to navigate to your venue and click on 'Billable items' then 'Food & Drink' in the menu on the left hand side:

Once you have navigated to the Food & Drink page you will land on the Menus tab, click on 'Add new' to start creating your menu. Fill out the required information and click 'Add menu':

You can edit a menu by clicking the 3 dots next to the menu you want to edit, then click on 'Edit menu details'. You can then edit the fields you want and click 'Save menu':

To delete a menu click the 3 dots next to the menu you want to delete then click on 'Delete', then 'OK':

NB - When editing any menu item all changes will automatically be updated to all events that they are selected in.

Next Steps

Check out this article about how to add accommodation

Check out this article about how to create time saving workflows

Check out this article about adding & managing Suppliers