Bundles

A bundle is one item made out of other items in your catalogue. The customer buys a lunch box; the kitchen makes a sandwich, a slaw pot and two cookies. You set it up once and it behaves like any other item on a quote.

Bundle, package, or options?

These three sit close together in the app and they all put lines on a quote, so it is worth being clear about which question each one answers.

	Options & Includes	Bundle	Package
What it is	Wording on one item: a choice the customer makes, or a list of what comes with it	One item made of other catalogue items	The shape of an event
How it is priced	The item’s price, plus any surcharge on a chosen option	One price for the whole thing, however many items are inside	Per guest, multiplied by the guest count
How you order it	A quantity of that item	A quantity: 12 lunch boxes	Set the guest count and every quantity follows
What the kitchen sees	The item, with the wording underneath it	Each content as a real dish, with its own recipe, allergens and food cost	Whatever the package put on the order
Can carry staff and hire	No	No	Yes: staff, equipment, venue hire and choice rules

Do the contents need to appear as separate items on chef dockets, kitchen prep lists and reports?

Use a bundle when the answer is yes. Each content is a separate catalogue item, with its own quantity and kitchen department.

Use Includes when you only need to describe what comes with the original item. Use Options when someone chooses a variation or accompaniment. Both stay attached to the original item; neither creates a separate item for kitchen preparation or reporting.

Use a package for an event priced per guest, which can also include staff and hire.

Example: Scones with jam and cream

If the team only needs a reminder that jam and cream accompanies the scones, keep Scones as a regular item and add Includes: Jam and cream. The kitchen sees the scones with the jam and cream wording attached. Jam and cream does not become a separate preparation or reporting item.

If the scones and the jam and cream need to appear separately, create a bundle containing two catalogue items: Scones and Jam and cream. Assign the appropriate kitchen department to each content item.

The bundle name does not add an item to its contents. A bundle called “Scones” containing only Jam and cream will only create a jam and cream content line. Assigning a kitchen department to the bundle does not create a scones preparation line.

They also combine. A package can offer a bundle inside a choice rule, and a bundle’s contents can carry their own options. Full detail on the first two is on our Item Options help page and our Packages help page.

Setting one up

Open the item and tick This item is a bundle, directly under the item name. Then choose what to call each one: bundle, platter, lunch box, hamper, box, pack, tray, bag or set. That word is used on the packing documents, so a content prints there as “Ham sandwich (part of 12 x Lunch Box platters)”. The chef docket and the count sheets name the bundle instead, “Ham sandwich (Bundle item: Lunch Box)”, because those are telling the team what to make or pull rather than how many boxes to fill.

The Options & Includes section becomes a contents list. Search for each catalogue item, set how many go into one of the parent with the plus and minus buttons, and click Add item for the next. A platter holding six sandwiches carries 6, so one platter yields six and three yield eighteen.

Bundles are not only for food. The switch is on menu, beverage, equipment and miscellaneous items, so a bar kit and a drinks pack work exactly like a lunch box. Venue items are the exception, because a venue line is a booking rather than something you assemble. Contents can cross those groups too: a lunch box can hold a sandwich and a can of drink.

What the switch changes

• Dietary codes and allergens move to the contents. The pickers disappear from the bundle and anything already on it is cleared, because a platter’s codes come from what is in it. Tagging the wrapper as well would be a second answer that can disagree with the sandwiches.
• The supplier is cleared. A bundle is assembled from your own catalogue rather than bought in. Its contents keep their own suppliers, so supplier orders still go out correctly.
• Include in chef & driver docket is unticked once, then left to you. The kitchen should prep the contents, not a line called the platter. The bundle still prints on the driver docket, because that setting hides the assembly from the kitchen, not the box from the van. (It is a menu item setting, so an equipment or beverage bundle has nothing to untick.)
• Untick the switch and the links drop away, but the wording stays: the contents remain as plain Includes text. Nothing on your quotes disappears.

What the customer sees

One priced line. The bundle’s description sits under the name, then the contents follow as indented sub-lines, quantified at the line’s own total (“12x Ham sandwich”). The contents are not priced, because the bundle’s price covers them. If a content carries a chosen option with a surcharge, gluten free bread for instance, that adds to the bundle line and shows straight after the option name.

Two tickboxes in the item modal control those counts, and they answer different questions.

• Show quantity in customer quote is the parent count. Untick it and both the parent and the contents hide their numbers, so the customer cannot read the count off the contents.
• Show contents quantity in customer quote is the contents alone. Untick it and the customer still sees “12 x Lunch Box” while the contents read “Ham sandwich” rather than “12x Ham sandwich”. Use it when what is in each box is not the customer’s question.

Both are per line, so the same bundle can be quoted differently on two orders. Your own screens and every kitchen and packing document always show the real quantities.

Guest menus list the bundle once and the contents by name only, with dietary codes and allergens still printed.

Tax on a bundle

The bundle’s Tax rate applies to its full price, including paid options on its contents. It overrides the tax bands of the individual items inside the bundle; the contents are not taxed separately.

If the bundle is included in a priced package, the package’s tax band takes precedence over the bundle and its contents. A quote’s Override all tax bands takes precedence over both.

For example, a bundle at 0% stays at 0% even if its sandwich has a 15% band. If that bundle is included in a package at 5%, the package price and its paid options use 5%.

See Tax Rates and Packages.

Notes on a bundle

A bundle’s own name never reaches the docket, so a note written against it would have nowhere to print. Instead it is copied down to every content. Write HALAL against a menu bundle and every dish inside it goes to the kitchen marked HALAL; write “polish” against a cutlery set and every piece reaches the warehouse marked polish.

The field is offered on menu, beverage, equipment and miscellaneous bundles. On menu it is the Chef Note; everywhere else it is the Docket Note, named for where it lands. Our article Notes and Bespoke Names for Equipment: Tell the Warehouse Exactly What to Pack covers the warehouse side of this in full.

If one content needs something different, give it its own note. Each content in the Contents list has a + Note button beside it; click it and a note box opens underneath, showing the bundle’s note as a placeholder so you can see what that content would otherwise inherit. Type over it and only that content changes. Clear the box again and the content goes back to following the bundle.

The button reads Note in blue once a content has one of its own, so you can see at a glance which ones have been singled out.

A bundle can also carry its own Name on docket, and so can each content, if what your team calls a thing is not what the customer was quoted.

What your team sees

• The chef docket lists the contents as real dishes, each tagged with the bundle it belongs to (“Chocolate chip cookies (Bundle item: Morning Tea Box)”) so the chef can see why eighteen muffins are on the list and that the row is only part of a job. Any chef note, the bundle’s or the content’s own, prints on that line after two exclamation marks, in bold, so it cannot be skimmed past. Recipes, food cost and the shopping list all work off the contents, so a bundle is never flagged as a dish without a recipe.
• Packing documents follow the quote. The driver docket, run sheets and stickers list the bundle as one line with its contents underneath, because the driver is packing boxes rather than plating dishes. Stickers count one per box, not one per sandwich.
• Count sheets list the contents. On the equipment and beverage dockets, a bar kit’s glasses are the rows, tagged “(Bundle item: Bar Kit)” and reading exactly like the chef docket, notes and all. The kit itself is not counted, because there is nothing on a shelf to count out and count back in.
• Stock warnings look inside. If you record a stock level on an equipment item, quoting two bar kits that each hold twelve glasses warns against the glasses, counting what other orders that day already claim.

What a bundle costs you

A bundle is costed from its contents: each content’s cost times how many one bundle holds, from its recipe or the cost typed on it. The bundle’s own edit panel lists each content with its cost and the total, and shows the margin against the bundle’s price. Until every content has a cost the bundle has none, since a total with a line missing would read low; the panel says what the costed contents come to so far and which are missing. On a quote, options chosen on a content, such as gluten-free bread, add their cost to the bundle line, as they add their surcharge.

Things worth knowing

• Contents are one level deep. An item already inside a bundle cannot itself be a bundle, and the tickbox tells you which platters it sits in.
• Contents come from the catalogue, not the quote. You cannot change a content’s quantity on one order. Change it on the item and it applies everywhere from then on. Delete the bundle line and its contents go with it.
• A content cannot be deactivated while a live bundle includes it. Take it out of the bundle first.
• Online, a bundle behaves like any other item. Its contents show underneath it and a content’s own choices are offered, so the customer can pick them. Availability follows the bundle, so set the dates, days and cutoffs there rather than on the contents.
• Bundles show a badge on the items list, with a Bundles filter next to the category pills on each item group that has them.

For worked examples of all four ideas side by side, see our article Options, Includes, Bundles and Packages: Which One Do You Mean?.

Can I give bundle contents separate groups or customer-choice rules?

A bundle has one flat list of included catalogue items. The bundle form does not offer separate named contents groups or a “choose two from three” rule for that contents list. A content item can have its own options, which are distinct from grouping the bundle’s contents.

Use a package when the offer needs fixed inclusions and flexible selection rules, a guest count and per-guest pricing. A bundle is ordered as a quantity of an item; its contents scale with that bundle quantity. See Packages for Number of selections and per-guest versus fixed quantities.

Bundle contents are catalogue configuration, not a freely editable list for one quote. Do not change the shared bundle to customise a single event without checking the effect on other uses; create a separate catalogue item for a different bundle composition.