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Build a menu

This is the full path from an empty menu to something a guest can order. It assumes you have a restaurant already — if not, start with Open your first restaurant.

Everything here happens in Management → Menu.

1. Create your top-level groups​

Start with the groups a guest would recognise as sections: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Drinks, Desserts.

Keep the top level small. Depth is cheap; a wide top level is what makes a till slow to use during a rush.

2. Add items​

Open a group and add items to it. For each item you set at minimum:

  • Name — what prints on the chit and shows on the till
  • Price — the fallback price (see How a menu is structured)
  • Sales category — what this item counts as in reports
  • Course — when it should fire, if you run coursing
Name it for the kitchen, label it for the guest

The kitchen-facing name and the guest-facing name do not have to match. A chit that reads BURG-MR NO PICKLE is faster to read on the line than Classic Cheeseburger, medium rare, no pickle.

3. Attach modifier groups​

A modifier group is a question. Attach one to an item and the till will ask it before the item can be added to the check.

  • Required modifier groups must be answered. Use for genuinely necessary choices — cook temperature, protein choice.
  • Optional modifier groups can be skipped. Use for add-ons.
  • Minimum and maximum selections control how many answers are allowed.

See Modifiers for the detail.

4. Decide pricing​

If every item's own price is correct for every path, you are done. If the same item should cost different amounts in different groups, set a pricing strategy on the group instead of duplicating the item. See Pricing.

5. Decide when it is available​

A group can be available only at certain times — Breakfast until 11am, Happy Hour between 4 and 6. See Scheduling.

6. Decide where it is offered​

An item can be on the till but off your website, or vice versa. See Channel visibility.

7. Publish​

Menu edits are not live until you publish. Publishing pushes the menu to every till, your online ordering page, and any connected marketplace.

Publishing reaches marketplaces too

If you have delivery marketplaces connected, publishing sends them your menu as well. An empty or mis-scoped menu is read by marketplaces as delist everything. Check Marketplaces before your first publish with an integration live.