Catering Orders and Prep Management
Creating a catering order, tracking its prep status, and where prep and tastings are managed.
A catering order is one event's food. It links to a wedding or an EventSync inquiry, carries the menu and guest count, and is the container for prep, tastings, costs and the day-of screens.
The orders list
KitchenSync → Catering Orders opens on four cards — Total Orders, This Month, Pending Selections and External Vendor — above the list itself.
Narrow it with the time filter (All, Upcoming, This Week, Past), the status select (All Statuses, Not Started, In Progress, Finalized), or the search box, which matches on event or menu name.
Creating one
New Catering Order.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Wedding or event | Search weddings and events. This is where the date, client and guest count come from |
| Menu | From the menu library |
| Guest count | "e.g. 120" |
| Service style | In-House or External Vendor |
| Special notes | "Any dietary restrictions, allergies, or special requests…" |
There is no event-date field — the date comes from the linked event, which is why the link matters. Choosing External Vendor is what makes the external vendor section appear on the order's Admin tab.
Costs are not set here either. Budget lives on Admin.
Prep status
Every order carries one of three:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Not Started | No prep work has begun |
| In Progress | Prep is underway |
| Finalized | Prep is done and stock has been deducted |
It shows on the orders list, on the dashboard's Orders by Prep Status chart, and against each event in This Week's Events.
Finalized is not just a label — finalizing is what deducts ingredients from inventory. Treat it as an action, not a status you tidy up at the end of the week.
Prep
Prep tasks live on the order's Prep tab, grouped by station, with Add Task, Regenerate and Finalize. Generating scales each recipe on the menu to the servings actually needed, and regenerating keeps any task you wrote by hand.
The whole of that is its own article — see prep tasks for the seven stations, what a task holds, and what finalizing does to your stock.
Tasks can also be ticked off from the dashboard's Open Prep Tasks list and from the Display Board. All three are the same list.
Menus
Menus are not managed from this page. They have their own screen — KitchenSync → Menus — with a library and a builder where you add sections, add items, tag allergens and Save Version.
A menu is attached to an order at creation or from the order's Menu tab. What the client then chooses feeds the dietary summary and the quantities prep scales from.
Tastings
Two routes to the same records. From the order's Menu tab you get only that event's tastings, which is what you want while working on it. From KitchenSync → Tastings you get every tasting the venue has, which is what you want when looking at the week.
Statuses are Scheduled, Completed and Canceled. Scheduled ones appear in the dashboard's Pending Tastings panel.
When picking a date, the scheduler reads the venue calendar and marks each day Open, Partial or Busy, and blocks days outright where a wedding already fills them — so you find out before booking a tasting onto a wedding day, not after. Quick Pick jumps to the next genuinely free slot.
See tastings for what an appointment records.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can one order cover two service periods? Create an order for each. An order links to one event, but an event can have several orders — a cocktail hour and a dinner, say.
What happens to prep if the guest count changes? Regenerate. The generated tasks rescale to the new count and your manual tasks stay.
Can kitchen staff check tasks off on a phone? Yes — the dashboard and the Display Board both work on a tablet or phone in the kitchen.
Why can't I see the External Vendor section? It only appears when the order's service style is set to External Vendor.
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