Menus

Menus lets you build structured menus — set lunch, à la carte, evening, pre-theatre, breakfast or custom — out of ordered categories (Starters, Mains, Desserts…) of items. Each item carries its own allergen information and optional dietary tags, and every menu has its own allergen matrix you can export as a PDF for front-of-house or inspections. Find it in the sidebar under Production → Menus. Available if the Menus module is on for your account.

Menus are optional: if you just need a flat allergen list for your products, the Allergens page does that on its own. Items you add to menus automatically appear on the Allergens matrix too, grouped by menu and category.

Creating a menu

1. Select New Menu in the top-right corner.
2. Enter the Menu Name * (e.g. “Spring À La Carte 2026”).
3. Pick a Menu Type tile — Breakfast, Set Lunch, À La Carte, Pre-Theatre, Evening or Custom.
4. Optionally add a Description and set the Active switch (active menus are the ones currently in use).
5. Select Create Menu. You’ll land in the menu editor.

Each menu card on the Menus page shows its type, a category breakdown (e.g. “Starters (5) · Mains (3)”) and a status dot — green for active, grey for inactive.

Categories

Inside a menu, items are grouped into ordered categories.

• Select Add Category in the top-right and name it (e.g. Starters, Mains, Desserts).
• Use the ↑ / ↓ buttons on a category header to reorder it, the pencil to rename, and the bin to delete it (deleting a category removes its items too — you’ll be asked to confirm).

Adding items

Select Add item at the bottom of a category. There are two ways to fill the item in:

Manually

Enter the Item Name *, optional Description and Price, pick any Suitable for dietary tags (Vegetarian, Vegan, Halal — ticking Vegan automatically ticks Vegetarian), and tick the allergen tiles that apply, exactly as on the Allergens page.

From a recipe

If you use the Recipes module, the Start from a recipe picker at the top of the form searches your recipes. Selecting one:

• Pre-fills the item’s name and price from the recipe.
• Suggests allergens by matching your recipe’s ingredient names and details (e.g. “wheat flour” suggests Cereals with Gluten; “soybeans” suggests Soya). A panel explains exactly which ingredient triggered each suggestion.

Important: suggested allergens are a starting point, not a guarantee. The matching is based on ingredient names only — you are responsible for verifying that every allergen is correctly marked before using the menu.

Items sourced from a recipe show a small fork icon and track how their allergens were set:

• Derived from recipe — the allergens match what was suggested.
• Overridden — you’ve changed the allergens by hand; they differ from the recipe suggestion. A Re-sync allergens button restores the suggested set.
• Unlink detaches the item from its recipe entirely so it behaves as a manual item.

If the linked recipe changes later, the item shows a red Recipe updated badge — open it and re-sync to refresh the suggestions.

The per-menu allergen matrix

Use the Items | Allergen matrix toggle at the top of the menu editor to switch between editing and the matrix view. The matrix lists the menu’s items grouped by category — so it reads the way the menu reads — with all 14 allergens as columns. Select Export PDF to produce a printable, category-banded allergen matrix for that menu, ideal for a front-of-house allergen folder.

Menus and the Allergens page

Items from your menus are automatically pulled into the main Allergens matrix (read-only), labelled by menu and category, so a single matrix and PDF can cover everything you serve. Filter pills on the Allergens page let you narrow the matrix to one menu, all menus, or only standalone items. To edit a menu item from there, selecting it takes you to its menu’s editor.

Roles

Auditors can open menus and view the matrix but cannot create, edit or delete anything.