Integration with Catering Solutions

10 votes

Please comment below with your campus' catering software solution name, and thoughts on the "depth" of the integration (event details, mapping catering items to 25Live Resources, linking to the catering solution for details, etc.)

Under consideration Suggested by: John Wright (29 Sep, '20) • Upvoted: 06 Mar • Comments: 7

Comments: 7

06 Jan, '21
Kenny Miller
Our campus foodservice provider (Bon Appetit, part of Compass Group) uses Catertrax - http://catertrax.com . You can view our specific instance for on-campus clients here: https://biolacampuscatering.catertrax.com . I know many other colleges and food service providers use either or both of those providers & catering software.

My thoughts on the depth of the integration -- I think event details (date, time, location, expected attendance) would be awesome to have integrated / sync'd between the two platforms. We receive feedback that clients mis-type, and hate double-entering, these details into both platforms. And people need to put room reservations in & have them confirmed before making catering orders, so it's only right that this info gets into 25Live and then send to the catering platorm.

I don't think it's worth integrating any sort of menu items into 25Live, but there is value in sycing the "expected" attendance upon reservation, versus the "actual" catered attendance.
28 Jan, '21
Julie Hoyenski
Catertrax! Our inhouse catering team uses it. In addition to the data Kenny Miller mentions, the Requestor's name, email, phone number and billing code (which is a Resource in our instance). If it were also possible to share diagrams and Resources assigned in 25L to meet Catering's needs, that would be the cat's patoot!

We too have issues with customers placing catering orders before an event & location have been approved by our office. Having this integration would help keep the horse before the cart. Customers would be VERY happy to have the ability to visit Catertrax after an order had been prepopulated, such that all they needed to do was make their food selection to finish it off.
03 Feb, '21
Kathy San Antonio
We use Catertrax. I think requestor name, department, email, cost center (a custom attribute on our form), date of event and event reference number would be useful to use in integrating with Pro. As long as the "sync-ing" is from 25Live Pro TO Catertrax (and not the other way around!) that might be a good feature.
02 Jul, '21
Sabrina Shepherd
We use CaterTrax as well. I am not familiar with the system, our campus just merged our academic year event management with summer conferences (yay!) so we are in need of one "order" sheet that can be given to the crew that shows the room setup (obviously location and event times) as well as the catering order all in one (clean, readable!) sheet. From the very beginning of our campus utilizing 25Live, I always wished catering would use the same system...so having these two systems communicate so that all of the event information can be in one place would reduce A LOT of manual labor for administrative staff.

And I will also echo the comments above about customers making catering orders before they have a room reserved.

Thank you!
08 Mar, '22
Pamela Mason
I think this integration is a good idea but would need a lot of customization available to the University. Some may want to restrict the certain data come from one source over the other and some may want to see both. For instance I would not want the bill information overwritten on either side. It would be nice if they could have a link to pull up the event in 25live so they could see whatever information the interface user has granted them to see. In many cases I would rather they do this than to try and transfer the data between the too. Also having option for the bill amount to be added onto the pricing tab if the payment method in Catertrax is bill via 25Live or something like that would be better. I think any integration needs to have a lot of different perspective involved. I have worked on configuration for CaterTrax before and would be happy to help with an integration. Currently we have a login for our catering folks in 24Live and they don't seem to use it much.
06 Mar
Sabrina Shepherd Merged
I know that this has been asked for by others in the past but I couldn't find anything in the search. I also know this involves another outside vendor so it's complicated but I'm desperate for Catertrax and 25Live systems to talk to each other! It's so difficult having 2 separate systems. Thanks!
13 Mar
Amanda Schehr Admin
"Intergrate Catertrax and 25Live" (suggested by <Hidden> on 2024-03-06), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.