The menu is the foundation of Next Restaurant — the one module that cannot be switched off, because orders, the kitchen display, the POS and delivery all read from it. Build it once and it publishes to every channel: the storefront showcase, online ordering, QR table ordering and the POS tile grid.

Field	Purpose
Name	The section heading on the storefront and the tab in the POS
Description	Optional intro text shown under the heading on the public menu
Ordering	Drag to reorder; this is the order guests and staff see
Image	Optional section image used by the storefront showcase layouts
Status	Unpublished categories and their items disappear from every channel

Items

Menu → New creates a sellable item.

Core fields

Field	Notes
Name	Shown on the storefront, the POS tile and the kitchen ticket
Description	Storefront only — the POS and KDS show the name
Price	The base price, before modifiers and per-location overrides
Category	Determines grouping and, by default, kitchen routing
Image	Uploaded and cropped in place — see below
Allergens	Multi-select from your allergen list
Status	Unpublished items vanish from every ordering channel

Images and cropping

The item editor uploads and crops in one step, so you don't need to prepare images beforehand. Crop to the aspect ratio the storefront layouts expect and the showcase stays visually even — mismatched crops are the most common reason a menu page looks untidy.

A separate venue gallery (under Menu → Gallery) holds photography of the restaurant itself, for the storefront gallery page. It is not attached to items.

Availability

Items can be limited to particular times — a lunch menu that stops at 15:00, a breakfast item that never appears at dinner. Outside its window an item is not offered on any channel.

Per-location overrides

On a multi-location install, price and availability can be overridden per venue. The base record stays authoritative; the override applies only where set. A dish that is £12 in the city branch and £10 at the retail park is one item with one override, not two items.

Modifier groups

A modifier group is a reusable set of options attached to items — size, extras, cooking preference, side choice. Define them once under Menu → Modifier Groups and attach them wherever they apply.

Setting	Effect
Name	The prompt shown to the guest or the server ("Choose a size")
Minimum selections	0 makes the group optional; 1 or more makes it required
Maximum selections	1 makes it a single choice; higher allows multiples
Options	Each with its own label and price delta
Price delta	Added to (or subtracted from) the item price when chosen

Because groups are shared, adding an option to "Cooking preference" updates every steak on the menu at once. Selection rules are enforced on the server as well as in the interface, so a hand-crafted request cannot skip a required choice.

A modifier group editor with its options, price deltas and min/max selection rules

Allergens and dietary tags

Maintain the list under Menu → Allergens, then tag items. Tags appear on the public menu, in the ordering flow, and on the kitchen ticket — so a cook sees the allergen on the line they are making, not just the guest at the point of ordering.

Taking an item off sale

There are three levels, from most to least drastic:

Action	Effect	Where
Unpublish	The item disappears from every channel until republished	Menu item editor
86	Marked unavailable now; returns when you clear it	POS, or the item list
Auto-86	Pulled automatically when a recipe ingredient hits zero	Requires a recipe — see Inventory

86-ing from the POS is the one a floor manager reaches for mid-service: it takes effect immediately across the storefront, QR ordering and every terminal.

Clicking a row in the menu list opens a read-only overview of that item — its pricing, modifiers, allergens, recipe (if any), per-location overrides and recent sales — rather than dropping straight into the editor. It is the fastest way to answer "what is this dish actually costing us" without changing anything.

Menu

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