You can configure Vista Cinema to automatically hold and fire items to the kitchen for multi-course orders. This prevents items from being prepared too soon, thus reducing wastage and ensuring delivery of hot food to guests at the correct time. It is especially helpful with in-seat dining for cinemas, where it can be difficult to tell in a darkened auditorium when guests are nearly finished with their current course.

Note: We recommend that POS operators don't use the Set Delivery screen when Automatic Hold and Fire is configured. These are two quite separate features that aren't designed to interact:

• Use the Set Delivery screen if you prefer to deliver in-seat orders at specific times (for example, starters at 2:15pm, mains at 2:30pm).
• Use Automatic Hold and Fire to schedule order delivery based on a configured period of time after the previous item (for example, starters immediately, mains 15 minutes after starters).

Steps

1. In Cinema Manager, create an Item Delivery Group for each course and configure its Order Sequence according to where it will appear in the meal. For example: Starters (order sequence 1), Mains (order sequence 2).

   Note: You can also create an item delivery group with no automatic hold and fire sequence assigned, such as Cheese Platter. The hold function won't automatically apply to the items in this group, so you'll have to fire them manually.

2. For each of the item delivery groups you've created, select Automatically Hold Next Group.
3. Select Automatically Fire Next Group and enter the duration (in minutes) after which the next item in the meal must be fired to the kitchen screen or printer.

   Tip: Base the duration on the average time a patron takes to consume the item and the preparation time you have to allow for the next one.

See also:

• About Hold & Fire
• Setting up Hold & Fire operations at POS
• Holding items from the kitchen at POS
• Firing held items in checks
• Firing held items from the Kitchen screen
• Viewing the hold & fire status of items at POS
• Allowing POS operators to vary course delivery times