Production units

Set up a production unit — a commissary that supplies your warehouses, or an on-site kitchen that cooks for one outlet's POS.

A production unit (PU) is any place that makes food: a central commissary baking for the whole group, or the coffee bar behind the counter at a single outlet. It is a location type — alongside warehouse and outlet — so a production unit always holds its own stock. Ingredients sit on its shelves, batches consume from them, and what it makes lands back there.

This was previously called the central kitchen (CK). The behaviour is the same and then some: you can now run several production units, and each one is pointed at what it produces for. This page is the setup guide — for running the console day to day (production orders, the make list, batches, transfers), see Kitchen production.

New to the terms here (batch, requisition, GRN, indent)? See the Glossary.

The one choice that decides everything

When you create a production unit you pick what it produces for, and the two options are mutually exclusive:

• An outlet — an on-site kitchen. Pick exactly one host outlet. Its menu recipes appear automatically on that outlet’s POS, and a sale depletes this unit’s stock, not the outlet’s. There is no transfer step.
• Warehouses — a central commissary. Pick one or more warehouses. Completed finished-goods batches collect in the Transfer tray and are dispatched to a linked warehouse. It can author menu items too — a central kitchen is usually where a menu is developed — but it has no POS of its own, so those dishes are mapped to the outlets that sell them in the POS app.

Many production units can sit under the same outlet — a coffee PU and a kitchen PU behind one counter, each with its own stock, recipes and costs.

The Warehouses link is two-way: the same set is where the unit sources its raw materials from and where it dispatches finished goods to. You set it once.

Setup A — a central commissary

Use when one kitchen cooks for several outlets: a bakery, a butchery, a sauce and prep unit whose output is stored centrally and pushed out on demand.

The shape is warehouse → production unit → outlets. The commissary buys and requisitions raw materials from the warehouse, makes batches, and dispatches finished goods back to the warehouse — outlets then requisition from the warehouse like any other stock.

1. Make sure you have a warehouse location first — Settings → Locations, tap New, choose Create a new location and set Type → Warehouse.
2. Create the unit the same way: Settings → Locations → New → Create a new location, then set Type → Production Unit and give it a Name and Code.
3. Under Produces for, choose Warehouses.
4. Under Warehouses, tick every warehouse this unit works with. With one warehouse in the business it is ticked for you; with several, star one as the Default — that is where its requisitions route.
5. Optionally tick the departments stocked here — their items appear in this kitchen’s stock at zero on hand, so staff can count and requisition them.
6. Save, then assign the chef: Settings → Users & Roles → New, add a Kitchen (Production Unit) role row and pick this unit.
7. In the kitchen console, add recipes under Library → Recipes — Semi-finished and Finished good only (see Recipe builder).
8. Restock the unit through Requisitions (see below), make batches on the Make list, then dispatch completed finished goods from Transfers with Send to warehouse. See Transfers and short supplies.

Setup B — an on-site outlet kitchen

Use when the food is cooked where it is sold: a café kitchen, a bar, a coffee counter. The dishes go straight onto that outlet’s menu and stock comes off that kitchen’s shelves as the counter rings up the sale.

The shape is outlet + its own production units + a supplying warehouse.

1. Make sure the outlet exists, and that you have at least one warehouse to supply it.
2. Create the unit: Settings → Locations → New → Create a new location, set Type → Production Unit, and give it a Name and Code.
3. Under Produces for, choose An outlet, then pick the Host outlet.
4. Under Warehouses, tick the warehouse that supplies this kitchen’s raw materials. This is required — without it the unit’s requisitions will not submit.
5. Save. Repeat steps 2–4 for every kitchen under that outlet — a coffee unit and a food unit are two separate production units, each with its own stock.
6. Assign the chef: Settings → Users & Roles → New, add a Kitchen (Production Unit) role row pointing at this unit.
7. Add recipes under Library → Recipes. An outlet-linked unit can make all three types — Semi-finished, Finished good and Menu item. On create, the Produced at field stamps which unit makes the recipe, and it cannot be changed afterwards.
8. Saving a Menu item submits it for approval — it scopes automatically to the host outlet’s POS and then moves pending → priced → live in the POS app. Track it on Menu status; see Menu and pricing.
9. Restock through Requisitions (see below). Nothing is transferred to the outlet — a POS sale depletes this unit’s stock directly.

Getting raw materials into any production unit

Both kinds restock the same way, and it is the same requisition machinery outlets use (see Purchase requests):

1. Raise it. In the kitchen console, Requisitions → Raise requisition. Below-par raw materials are prefilled; add more from warehouse stock or explode a recipe for a number of batches. Each line shows what is on hand at the warehouse and at the production unit. Tap Send requisition.
2. The warehouse fulfils it. The requisition lands in the manager’s Requisitions queue, where each line is sourced individually — Dispatch from warehouse (an internal transfer out of warehouse stock) or Vendor (bought in on a purchase order).
3. Receive it. When the warehouse dispatches, the delivery appears on the kitchen’s GRN tab under At the door. Tap Receive, check the quantities line by line, and Post GRN — that is what moves the goods into your kitchen stock. See Confirm GRN.

Rules and guardrails

• A supplying warehouse is required. Every production unit needs at least one warehouse under Locations → the unit → Warehouses, or its requisitions will not submit. With a single warehouse in the business this binds automatically.
• The link is fixed at creation and exclusive. A unit produces for an outlet or for warehouses — never both.
• Menu items can be made anywhere; where they SELL is set in the POS app. Every unit offers the Menu item type. An outlet-linked kitchen’s dish is enabled for dine-in at its host outlet the moment it is approved; a commissary’s dish starts with no outlets at all and waits until someone maps it in the POS app. A sale of a commissary dish depletes the selling outlet, not the commissary — its ingredients were already consumed by the batch that made it.
• A recipe’s producing unit is immutable. Produced at is set once, on create; to move a recipe, create it again at the other unit.
• Kitchen sign-ins are scoped. A chef sees only their own unit’s stock, recipes, costs and menu — not the whole business, and not another outlet’s menu.
• On a phone, kitchen staff get the slim app — Today, Reqs, GRN, Stock and Wastage. Recipes, the make list and menu status stay on the tablet or desktop console.
• Multiple warehouses, one route. If a unit is linked to more than one warehouse, the kitchen requisition form does not yet offer a per-requisition warehouse picker — every requisition routes to the unit’s default supplying warehouse.