Meal Program with Olo Integration FAQ
5 min
What is the Meal Program?
- Formally known as Relish! Our product received a brand new name!
- The ezCater Meal Program is a corporate subsidy program that enables employees to place individual meal orders that are delivered together.
- These orders include items that are served on an individual basis, rather than larger catering items that may have a larger serving size.
What makes a Meal Program order different from a Marketplace order?
- Fast Cutoff: Order cutoff is approximately 90 minutes prior to fulfillment, creating significantly shorter lead times than typical catering lead times.
- Recurring & Sizing: Orders are often recurring and scheduled, with a maximum of 30 individually packaged and labeled meals.
- Fulfillment: Individual packaging and labeling creates unique needs, so all fulfillment should continue to be completed through the ezCater Partner Portal. The ezCater Partner Portal remains the source of truth for reporting and review of ezCater orders as a whole.
How does this impact the Olo Rails Integration implementation?
- This will impact any new brand that is integrating through the Olo Menu API or converting from Orders to Menu API. If there is even one location participating in the Meal Program for the brand, these steps are required.
- Currently, there is no method to uncouple the standard Marketplace menu from the Meal Program menus in ezCater, hence the need for tagging in Olo.
- If menu tagging is not complete for the Meal Program items, there will be no available Meal Program menu for the location. The import process will create a blank Meal Program menu, as the import pulls what is configured inside of the Olo Menu Admin.
Best Practices and Considerations
- Meal Program orders are also subject to the $0.40 per order fees associated with successfully integrated orders.
- A separate Olo menu category will be needed for the Meal Program specifically, which includes any item that is offered on their Meal Program menu. This may be different from standard Marketplace catering items, and may not currently exist in the Olo Catering Channel.
- Lead times for Meal Program categories should be set to ~60 minutes in Olo to avoid any order failures.
Meal Program Menu Setup and Considerations
- Tagging must be completed on the Meal Program category just as done for Marketplace. Additional tags are necessary to ensure this category flows to the Meal Program menu and not the Marketplace menu.
- Considerations: The Menu Sync resource outlines that a brand could technically use the same catering item for both catering Marketplace and Meal Program with special tagging. However, this set up will force order failures due to the lead time discrepancy and is not best practice.
- Standardization: Internal brand alignment may be required, as the Meal Program menu setup may differ with Franchisee involvement and prior setup.
- Menu Tagging Requirements:
- Required Tags:
- QuantityUnit
- CateringServeSize (must always be "1")
- TaxCategory
- “RelishChannel” = “T”
- If the RP has individually packaged sides, they should also have: Key: INDIVIDUALLY_PACKAGED_RELISH_SIDE and the Value: T
- Where applicable, FoodLabelingTags, ItemTypeTags, and ChoiceTypeTags will still be required and reviewed during a menu consultation.
- Utensils are only required if the items are shared between the Marketplace and Meal Program.
- Testing:
- At this time, while ezCater can validate and provide Menu Requirement Consults for the menu build, there is no testing environment for the Meal Program, as this will be independent of the standard POS testing environment.
For any questions on the process, please reach out to the ezCater Integrations team at [email protected].