Notes and Bespoke Names for Equipment: Tell the Warehouse Exactly What to Pack

The name on a quote is written for the customer. “Cutlery Set”, “Wine glass”, “Table Knife”. The person pulling it off a shelf at six in the morning may know the same thing as “Riedel #6” or “the boxed 55 set”, and has no way of knowing that the brown handles are the ones this job wants rather than the black.

Two small fields close that gap, and neither of them touches what the customer reads.

A second name, for the paperwork

Open any equipment, beverage or miscellaneous item and you will find Name on docket, just under the item name. Leave it blank and the docket prints the item’s own name, exactly as it does now. Fill it in and that is the name your team sees.

It is the same field menu items have always had, where it is called Name on chef docket. Nothing about it is new except that the groups outside the kitchen can now use it.

Worth knowing what it does not do. It never appears on a quote, a customer menu or an online order form, so you can name something after the shelf it lives on without a customer ever reading it.

Or just for this one job

Sometimes the rename belongs to the order rather than the catalogue. The client wants the good glassware, or this delivery is going to the venue’s own store rather than yours.

In the quote builder, click an item to open it and you will see Docket name folded away under the item name. Open it, type, and only that line changes. The catalogue is untouched and every other quote carries on as before.

A line remembers what the catalogue said when it was added, which is the useful behaviour: renaming an item next March does not rewrite what a docket printed for an order booked last week.

Telling the warehouse something

Under the price there is now a Docket Note. Menu items have called it a chef note for years; the field is the same one, and outside menu it is named for where it actually lands.

Type “polish”, or “the brown ones”, or “load last, goes in first”. It prints on the docket against that line, in bold, after two exclamation marks:

55   Table Knife (Bundle item: Cutlery Set) - !! polish

The two marks are there so a note cannot be skimmed past on a sheet somebody is reading at speed.

Where the name and the note print

Both reach the documents the line actually appears on:

• The equipment and beverage count sheets
• The consolidated docket, in the supplier rows and the group headings
• The driver docket, for the van

Packaging stickers are the exception. A sticker goes on a box a customer may well see, so it keeps the catalogue name. Naming something after a shelf is only safe because it stays on the paperwork.

Kits and sets

If the item is a bundle, a cutlery set or a bar kit, the note behaves the way you would want it to. Write it against the kit and every item inside it goes to the warehouse carrying it. A cutlery set marked “polish” means polished knives, forks and side knives.

When one piece needs something different, give it its own note. Each content in the Contents list has a + Note button beside it, and the note you type there covers that piece alone. The kit’s note shows as a placeholder in the box, so you can see what you are overriding before you type.

The contents themselves print as their own rows, each tagged with the kit they came out of:

55   Table Knife (Bundle item: Cutlery Set) - !! polish
55   Table Fork (Bundle item: Cutlery Set) - !! The brown ones

That is what tells a packer these three rows are one job, not three separate hires. On the driver docket, where the question is how many kits to load rather than what to prepare, the same rows read part of 55 x Cutlery Set instead.

Putting it to work

The pattern most caterers land on is: put the permanent renames in the catalogue, because they are true every time, and leave the notes for the job in the quote.

“Riedel #6” belongs on the item. “The brown ones” belongs on the order. Setting up equipment items is covered on our Items & Categories help page, and what each docket contains is on our Dockets help page.