How platform products are identified

You rarely need to see an identifier — the screens show names — but knowing how the platforms identify products explains two things you will meet: why a differently spelled product at one location is "a different product", and why a mapping can occasionally show a long code instead of a name.

Toast

Toast gives every menu item, modifier group and modifier two identifiers: one for the copy at a particular restaurant, and a multi-location ID that is the same for that product at every restaurant in the group. Gorilla Dash maps on the multi-location ID, so one mapping covers every location — including ones that add the product later. Toast gives this ID to every item, brand-wide or not, which is why the reach chip, not the ID, is how you tell a master product from a local one.

ezCater

ezCater has no identifier that crosses locations — each location's menu is its own list. Without one, every product would need a mapping per location, thousands of rows. So Gorilla Dash builds a brand-wide identifier from the product's name: lower-cased, punctuation removed, size abbreviations spelled out, and the size after a bar — so "Bread Box" becomes ezcater:bread box|. Two locations that spell a product the same way share the identifier and one mapping covers both.

When a mapping shows a code instead of a name

A mapping points at an identifier. If no location's platform menu carries that identifier any more — the product was renamed or removed on the platform, or the mapping was typed in before the menus were mirrored — the screens have no name to show and fall back to the identifier itself. Such a mapping is stale: it cannot attribute anything. Unmap it and map the product again from the platform's current list.