Get to grips with Dines' new Coursing feature - which enables you to assign menu items to designated Courses and then serve them at different intervals
Coursing
Coursing is a feature on Dines that enables you to assign menu items to designated Courses (e.g., Starters, Mains, Desserts), and then serve them at different intervals. This helps to create a smoother dining experience, ensuring that customers will receive their Courses at the exact right moment.
In this guide, we will dive into how you can set up Coursing for your venue, as well as explain key functionalities of this feature that can help make your venue’s day-to-day that much easier.
📖 Table of Contents 📖
Setting Up Coursing
First things first, you can enable Coursing on by navigating to Settings/Admin > EPOS Settings > Coursing on Order Items.
This will now open up a new section within your Dines Settings. If you navigate to Operations > Courses, you’ll be able to start your Coursing journey!
By default (for accounts created after January 2024), there will be three Courses already present within this section; Starters, Mains, and Desserts. If you have been with Dines for a longer time, however, fear not! Adding Courses is very simple. We’ll show you how to do that now.
Adding a Course
Firstly, you’ll need to click “New Course” at the top right of the Courses section. This will open a new page with two sections; Details and Menu Items.
The Details page features a few simple boxes to fill in. First, you’ll need to choose the name of your Course in the “Course Name” box. The "Rank" box dictates the placement of your Course within the overall serving sequence. It is ranked with “0” as the first priority, meaning your initial Course (e.g., Starters or Appetisers) should be ranked 0 to ensure it is served first.
Please Note: Course ranking must be sequential. For example, you can’t rank one Course as “1,” the next Course as “4” and the following one as “9.” The ranking should proceed as 0, 1, 2, 3, and so forth.
The final option you’ll find on the Details tab is the Display Colour, which is the colour in which your Course will be highlighted on the EPOS view. There is a choice of ten colours.
Now let’s move onto the Menu Items tab, where we can start linking items so that they automatically assign to your Course within EPOS. This is a crucial step, as if you do not assign your items to the correct course, they will be deemed as “Serve Now” (by default) when selected, meaning that they will be prepared right away. You wouldn’t want your main meal burger served before your appetiser spring rolls, so it’s very important to assign everything correctly!
Thankfully, it’s very easy to do that.
When you navigate to the Menu Items tab, you’ll see the “Add Item” button at the top right. By clicking this, you can link all of the relevant items to your course. There is a handy search feature at the top of this pop-up, where you can type in part of the item name, and be shown the matching items. This can be particularly handy for venues with large menus.
When you’re done, click “Link Menu Items,” and don’t forget to save at the bottom of the page!
Tip: It is best to not link Drinks to Courses, unless they are specifically coursed-based, e.g., an Irish Coffee for dessert. Leaving your standard drinks (e.g. Soft Drinks, Beers, Wines) out of Courses will prompt them to “Serve Now,” meaning that your customer won’t be waiting until the next Course for their drink.
Tip: If your venue serves food in a Tapas style where all dishes are brought out at once, you might want to add all food items to your first Course. Then, you can create empty courses for Course 2 and 3, which can be filled later if the customer decides so. This setup gives you the flexibility to stagger the Courses if needed, as you can manually assign different menu items to different Courses and adjust them using the cart on the right-hand side. Further details on this can be found below.
Repeat these steps for as many Courses as you wish to create. And then when you’re done, it’s time to see Coursing in action…
Using Coursing
Now that you have successfully set up your Courses, every item associated with them will be automatically included in the relevant Course in Categorised View in EPOS. Feel free to give it a shot yourself, or check the GIF above, which briefly shows items from Starters through Mains through Desserts being added to the order cart. Note that every item has been effortlessly assigned to the correct Course.
When your order is complete, tap “Send Order” at the bottom right-hand corner, and you will be given options for where the order will be sent (providing you have Tables / Locations set up).
Note: For more information on setting up Tables / Locations, please refer to our EPOS Settings article.
After this, when you navigate to the Tables section at the top of EPOS, and select the corresponding table for the order, you'll notice that the initial Course (Starters in this instance) has been automatically ordered away. This is a standard functionality of our Coursing feature. The rationale behind this automation is to alert the kitchen staff of the order right away, so that they can start preparing the order immediately.
It is always the first Course that is automatically ordered away. For example, if the customer has decided not to order a Starter or Appetiser, and instead has opted to go directly for a Main, the Main Course will be sent first automatically.
We’ll come back to Tables view in a moment, but for now, let’s highlight a few helpful things you can do within the Cart for each order you take.
Cart Options
Below are some helpful pointers and tricks for using the EPOS Cart functionality with Coursing.
First of all, you may sometimes be asked by a customer to change the sequencing of their Courses. For example, a customer may wish to have Crab Cakes served with their Main Course, even though it is classed as a Starter.
It is very easy to change this. Simply hold down on the item within your Cart, select “Change Course,” and then choose when it should be served. The item will now appear within the altered course… and your customer can now have Crab Cakes with their Main Course!
It is also helpful to know about Course Management View, which can be activated by clicking on any of the Course headings within the Cart. Using this view, you can mark any item as “Serve Now,” meaning that it will override any Coursing settings that have been set previously. This can be particularly handy if somebody has a sweet tooth and doesn’t want to wait for their Bannoffee Pie dessert!
Course Management can also be used to reset items back to their default Course, if they have previously been moved for the order. Simply select your item within Course Management, tap “More Actions,” and then select “Default Course.”
That’s enough tips and tricks to start you off for now - let’s jump back into what can be achieved with Tables view!
Tables View
The Tables View will serve as your central hub for managing Coursed orders, providing you with the means to track the customer’s order as it progresses, and give the kitchen a heads up for preparing the subsequent Course.
From here, you can “away” Courses, therefore prompting the kitchen to prepare the next Course.
For example, when Starters have been served, it will be time to “away” the Mains, so that they can prepare the Main Course in the kitchen. All you need to do is tap on the correct Table to do this, and you will see the option to send the next Course at the bottom of your screen.
It is also possible to away Courses from the main Tables view, simply by tapping and holding on the relevant table, and selecting the Course that appears. However, if there is not a next Course (e.g., the table is already enjoying their Desserts), this option will not appear.
Tables view is also great for Supervisors and Floor Managers to get a high-level view of how service is going at any time. As you can see above, there are times listed next to each Course. Managers can see how long a table has been waiting on their food, and use this information to check with the kitchen, and then reassure the customer if their food is taking slightly longer than usual.
Another helpful aspect of Tables view comes when an order is already in progress. Oftentimes you will find that customers will order their Starters and Mains to begin with, and will then decide on Desserts after their Main Course has been finished. They will not always order Desserts at the start of their visit.
In this scenario, you can add items to an order that is already in progress, and the system will automatically prompt you to decide if you want the Desserts served immediately, or if you want the Course to stay on Mains for now.
To do this, simply open the relevant table on Tables view, and select “New Order” at the bottom left. You can then take your customer’s order like normal, until you tap “Send Order,” where you will be prompted to choose whether the order is sent immediately to the kitchen, or if it should wait until you go back later.
And finally, one last helpful feature of Tables view is the ability to filter by Courses! This can come in handy if your venue is completely full, and you are trying to find out which tables are likely to be freed up first. You can simply filter by “Desserts,” for example, and then you’ll know what tables are on their final course.
And that about covers it for using Coursing! Thank you for reading our article today. If you have any questions at all, or if you have suggestions for a Knowledge Base article you’d like to see, please do not hesitate to reach out to our team. You can contact us via email at care@dines.co.uk, use our Live Chat service here, or send us a WhatsApp message on 07822 002783.