Best way to QUICKLY 86 a MODIFIER option if the option is running out of stock??

[theanogreek]

What's your FASTEST way to temporarily 86 a modifier option if that particular option is running out?? Especially for the online ordering side of things.

Example - you sell fries with 5 different sauces available. Ketchup is getting low, so you want to 86 only the ketchup so it can't be ordered online. I've found a way, but it's not on the POS side, it's deep in the dashboard side, which an employee will never be able to do reliably. Other POS systems let you do it quite easily, as do 2 out of 3 of the major 3rd party ordering platforms (literally just tag the modifier option as out of stock, just as if it were an item).

Thanks for any suggestions, as this is a huge issue for a lot of us!

[BackyardBrew]

Honestly the only way i found that works is renaming the modifier temporarily by putting the word no in front of the modifier.  Thats what ive been doing its much faster than trying to hide that modifier….. all i know is if i could it would be awesome to 86 both modifications and variants separately. Otherwise you would have to turn every product you own in a restaurant into an item”squares term” of an item. 

[vhovar]

We are heavy users of modifiers for our various drinks. While this was an occasional issue it escalated greatly with the supply issue starting this past spring. I have written a web-based "tool" that allows us to rename a modifier to include the text "(OUT)" in front of the modifier name. The interface allows our employees to put in part of a modifier name and a screen will be presented to them with check boxes on the ones they would like to mark as OUT. The do the same process to remove the "(OUT)" from the name when things are back in stock. 

It would be GREAT if we had an API into the "Hide" attribute on the online item modifier it would allow us to have a much "cleaner" view from our online store. When things are rough from a supply standpoint we can have several modifiers that are OUT and it looks messy for the online customers. If we see that it is going to be a while before we restock we to to the online store and turn on the "Hide" attribute for the specific modifier entries.

I have actually written a second web-based "tool" that will allow our employee to rename a static set of modifiers item names (change flavors of a modifier item) so it will look much "cleaner" to our customers. This has greatly helped.

As has been mentioned, if we had the ability to mark a modifier item as "out of stock" that would help. My main concern with that, as with the ability to mark and Item as "out of stock", is that you have to give your employee full access to the items so they could accidently make other changes. There needs to be some ability to only provide the ability to mark items "out of stock" to certain employees.

[mitos]

I agree with this!!  We have modifier groups that are used across multiple items, but we currently have to go into the dashboard (not possible on the POS) and HIDE the out of stock modifier on EVRY ITEM separately.  Huge pain.  I've gotten reasonably fast at it, but there should be a better way!