Show something without selling it

Some of what you offer is real but not orderable in advance. The bar list at the venue. The cake the customer buys from the bakery next door. A note about parking that people need to read before they get to the summary. An info-only category is where those live: a step in your calculator that customers see and read, but cannot add to their order.

How to make a category info-only

• Log in to CaterWay.
• Open Products from the menu on the left, then the Categories tab.
• Open a category to edit it, or create a new one.
• Switch on Info-only (not orderable).
• Save.

Products in that category now appear as a read-only list with their prices. The customer can read them and cannot select them.

An empty one is useful too

This is the part nobody guesses. Leave an info-only category with no products in it and the customer gets a step showing just its name and description, which makes it a good way to say something in the middle of the flow. House rules, a delivery note, a word about the season.

Add products to it later and they appear as a showcase list underneath that text, still not orderable.

Photos

An info-only category can carry up to five photos of its own. On a computer they sit beside the text, on a phone underneath it. The first one is the big photo, and tapping any of them opens it full size.

These photos belong to the info page, not to the products, so this is the one place a category gets a gallery of its own. An orderable category does not have them, because each product card already carries its own picture.

Write the note yourself

Under the photos is Note above the list. Left empty, the customer sees CaterWay's own line, "Available on site, these items can't be pre-ordered", translated into every language you have on.

That default is fine for a bar list and wrong for plenty of other things. If these items are paid for at the counter, or ordered from your host on the night, or free, say so in your own words. What you write is what the customer reads.

Volume discounts

Apply volume discounts is off by default here, and deliberately so. Items on an info-only page are usually sold at the venue rather than by you, so quietly applying a guest-count discount to them would tell the customer something untrue about what they will pay.

Turn it on only if this category really is priced like the rest of your catering.

Good to know

• Products in an info-only category cannot be offered as suggested add-ons either, since nothing here can be ordered. The add-on picker says so when you try.
• The category still shows an Info only badge in your own product list, so you can see at a glance which ones are read-only.
• Prices still show. Info-only means not orderable, it does not mean secret.