- Dietary Choice gives pantry members the ability to filter food options when they are placing an order based on dietary choice options defined by the pantry. To start, pantry users will need to add new ‘Dietary Choices’ to the system by going to the new ‘Dietary Choices’ maintenance page. This is accessed by going to the side-menu in the dashboard main view and selecting ‘Pantry Warehouse’.

Next, expand the ‘Maintenance’ list options in the side-menu of Pantry Warehouse and find the ‘Dietary Choices’ list option.

You will see a list of the current Dietary Choices within your system.

Clicking the “Add Dietary Choice” button in the top right-hand corner of the page will open an “Add Dietary Choice” dialog window. Here you will set the “Dietary Choice Name” which is the name of the dietary choice that members will see when placing orders, the “Help Text” which is the text that will appear when a pantry member hovers over the image icon for the Dietary Choice and you can upload an image for the Dietary Choice that will show on the side of the item when a member is placing their order. Note the dimensions of the images will need to be 35x35 pixels. You will be able to crop images to the correct size when uploading.

Once you’ve added dietary choices, you can proceed to assign these choices to food items. You do this by going to ‘Pantry Maintenance’ -> expand the ‘Maintenance’ list item -> select ‘Food Items’. When you are adding/editing a food item, you’ll notice a new section under ‘Certifications’ called ‘Dietary Choice’.

This is where you’ll add any applicable dietary choices to food items. In the example above, I’m editing a ‘Banana’ food item and giving it the ‘No Added Sugar’ and ‘Vegetarian’ dietary choice.

A new section has also been added to the member intake called ‘Dietary Choice’ where a pantry user can add applicable dietary choices for a member.

When a member places their order, a filter with the members selected dietary choices will be applied by default. The member has the choice to remove/add additional filters.

With the addition of Dietary Choices, there are two main changes made to the screen members see when they are placing orders. The first is the addition of the dietary choice icons on the food items.

The image that was uploaded for the Dietary Choice in Pantry Warehouse will show if the food item is using the associated dietary choice. Hovering over the icon will show you the ‘Help Text’ that was entered for the Dietary Choice.

Secondly, we’ve added functionality to filter the items when a member is placing an order.

Clicking the "Filter By" button shown above will allow the member to see what filter options are available as well as see which icons map to which dietary choice options.

Whenever a dietary choice is added to the filter, we add all food items that have that dietary choice selected in food item maintenance. If it is removed, all food items with that dietary choice will be hidden from the order, unless the food item is using a different dietary choice being filtered on the order. If All dietary choice filter options are removed, the order will show all available food items. As mentioned before, filters will be applied to the order automatically if the member has any dietary choices selected on their intake form.

The last thing to note about the new filter, if a pantry member has quantity selected for a food item that doesn’t meet the dietary choice filter selected, the food item won’t be removed but instead a yellow border will appear around the food item letting the member know the food item they’ve selected quantity for no longer meets the dietary choice filter they’ve applied.