By Artem Korsakov ·
In short: A digital menu should describe a specific version of a dish: portion, price, ingredients and permitted add-ons. Add-on rules are set in advance. The unavailable items list checks availability again at checkout for a cart that has already been assembled. A price should have one primary source. The menu is tested on a few real dishes together with the employee who takes orders.
A restaurant’s digital menu helps people choose a dish when the ingredients, portion, price and available options are clear. Photographs and categories create the foundation, but for ordering you also need to define which add-ons are compatible and whether the offer is current. Incomplete rules are usually discovered only when a cart is being processed.
That is why it is useful to start menu development with a few real dishes and a conversation with the person who takes orders. They will help distinguish a valid choice by the guest from a comment the kitchen cannot fulfil automatically.
A card should describe a specific version
A name unites a dish, but different sizes and configurations may be sold. If portions have different prices and weights, these values need to be linked. You cannot show a photo of the large portion, the price of the small one and leave the difference only in a note after the order.
In a hypothetical café, soup is available in two sizes. The guest should first choose the size or clearly see the default option. The cart and the message to staff must keep this choice. Otherwise the correct price on the card will not help the kitchen understand what exactly to prepare.
Clarify who approves the information about ingredients and restrictions. The developer can provide the fields and a way to update them but should not determine the characteristics of a dish on their own. If special information matters, its content and checking are assigned to the venue’s responsible specialists.
Add-ons come in different types
- An optional add-on increases the price at the guest’s wish.
- A required option, such as the base of a dish, is chosen before checkout.
- A mutually exclusive choice allows only one value.
These rules should be shown in the interface before ordering: explaining them afterwards is too late.
For a hypothetical pasta, the guest chooses one base and can add cheese. If some combinations are not prepared, the restriction needs to be set in advance. A free-text comment field does not replace defined options and does not mean that the kitchen undertakes to fulfil any request.
Check the number of add-ons and how they relate to portions. Increasing the quantity of the same dish does not always mean the same configuration. Sometimes a person needs two items with different options, which cannot be merged into one line without keeping the details.
The unavailable items list is responsible for availability
A unavailable items list is the list of dishes or components that are temporarily unavailable. There are several ways to handle it:
- hide the dish entirely;
- keep the card with a label;
- prevent adding it to the cart.
The choice depends on the task, but the visitor should understand the status before sending the order.
Checking a cart that has already been assembled is especially important. A guest may have added a dish before an employee switched off its sale. At checkout, availability needs to be checked again according to the agreed rules and a clear action offered. An order that is known to be impossible to fulfil must not be accepted.
If an add-on runs out, it is not always necessary to switch off the whole dish. However, maintaining the availability of every component is more complex than manually switching off an item. For a small menu you can start with simple management, as long as an employee keeps the offer up to date. How such decisions affect the budget is covered in the article “How much does a restaurant website cost”.
How to keep prices up to date
Assign a primary source for the price and a procedure for publishing changes. If the price is edited independently on the website and in a separate system, discrepancies become a matter of time. For data exchange, you need to define the update delay and what to do when transmission stops. What happens to an order next is covered in the article on orders from a restaurant website.
How to test the menu before launch
Take a dish with options, a dish with add-ons and a temporarily unavailable item. Order each one from a phone, change the quantity, go back to editing and compare the total with what the employee sees. Then change the price and availability between adding to the cart and confirming.
To discuss the trike_dev digital menu, prepare a small agreed set of dishes together with the selection rules. Such an example will show the required model better than a large collection of photographs. It is worth starting to take orders only after checking the whole chain from the card to the kitchen.
Частые вопросы ### What to do with the price in an old cart?
This is a separate rule that is explained to the visitor before confirmation. A silent change to the total makes ordering harder and complicates the operator’s work. If the price needs clarification, such a model cannot be presented as a final purchase at the stated amount.