Vendor Resources

Configuring Products and Menus

Pre-Requisites


If your Event Vendor Coordinator has invited you to a FastBar event and given you permissions to edit your own Products and Menus, there are 2 key concepts you need to know:

  • Products - an item that you want to sell

  • Menus - a grouping of products for display on a Point of Sale device

You should add Products first, then add those Products into a Menu.

Add Products

You can add a Product by clicking the "Add New Product" button:

Then, add your Product:

  • Image: click the image to upload your own image, or link to an image online, or search for an image using our built-in image search feature. Note, images must be at least 600px x 600px in size

  • Name: the name that will be displayed on the Point of Sale and receipts

  • Category: the category of the product, useful for grouping items on the Point of Sale, or in reports

  • Price: the price of the product

  • Add Tax: determines if tax, if defined at the Event level, would be added to this item. Contact your Event Vendor Coordinator for information on your specific event

  • Add automatic tip: for RFID events, this determines if an automatic tip, if defined at the Event level would be added. For example, typically auto tip would be added to food and beverage items, but not merchandise items. Contact your Event Vendor Coordinator for information on your specific event

Custom Items on the Point of Sale

If you have a large number of SKUs that would be impractical to setup in FastBar, or if you need to sell items where you don’t know the price ahead of time, or if the price may vary, you can use FastBar’s Custom Item feature.

When enabled, you will be able to input the name and price of the Product directly on the Point of Sale.

Contact your Event Vendor Coordinator for information on having this feature enabled for your event.

Creating and Editing Menus

Once you’ve added Products, you can create a Menu and add your products to it:

For most Vendors, we recommend only creating a single Menu.

If you are a large vendor operating at multiple different locations within the event selling different products at each location, then it may make sense to create separate menus for each location.

When creating a Menu, you drag and drop Products over to the Menu, and place them in the order you want them to appear on the FastBar Point of Sale device:

Recommendations for Creating Products and Menus

To ensure the fastest possible service for Attendees at your event, we recommend the following:

  • Keep the product offering simple - while it may be typical for you to sell a large number of items in regular day to day operation, events benefit from a more streamlined product offering.

    For example, if you ran a regular bar, you may have 10+ beers on tap, a variety of selections in bottles and cans, many different wines available by the glass or bottle, and 10+ different brands of vodka, tequila, whiskey etc… At an event bar, you may just have 3 kinds of beer, 2 wines, and 1-2 of each different kind of spirit on offer. Since event bars are often high volume and need to be set up for speedy service, the simpler the product offering, the easier and quicker it is operationally.

    The same applies if you’re a restaurant who sells burgers, or a coffee cart selling beverages - the simpler your product offering, the better.

  • Use a single menu - in most cases, a Vendor will only need a single Menu.

    However, if you are a larger Vendor selling different Products at multiple Locations, we would recommend creating 1 Menu per Location, and only including the Products for sale at that Location on that specific Menu.

  • Consolidate products where you can - let’s say you have 6 different soft drinks or sodas available for purchase at the same price. You could create individual products in FastBar for each of those items, and they would show up on the POS as separate buttons. However, you could also choose to consolidate all sodas under a single button “Sodas”. This will help simplify the menu on the POS and make it easier and quicker for your staff.

    One determining factor will be how granular you want your reporting. If you need sales reports on each individual item, then you’ll need to configure them as separate products in FastBar. However, if you just need to know how many sodas you sold and the dollar value, then we’d recommend consolidating products where possible.

  • Keep the number of products on a menu under 25 - wherever possible, we recommend keeping the number of products on a particular menu under 25. This can be done with a combination of keeping the product offering simple, and consolidating products where you can.

    The FastBar POS will automatically adjust the size of buttons on the menu depending on how many items you have on offer. Up to 25 items will be displayed at once on the screen. Once you exceed 25 items, the menu will become scrollable so that the operator can access other items, however, if you keep it under 25 items, everything is front and center for quick and easy access.

Questions

If you have questions that relate to the event, or your participation as a Vendor in the event, please reach out to your Event Vendor Coordinator.