Categories

A category is a group of products, Starters, Mains, Drinks, whatever organization makes sense for your menu. Every product belongs to exactly one category.

Creating a category

From the Menu screen, use New category at the bottom of the page. Give it a name; availability defaults to visible all day, every day, until you narrow it.

Availability windows

Each category can be limited to specific days and specific hours:

• Toggle any combination of days on or off, a lunch category might only run Tuesday through Sunday, for instance.
• Turn off full day to set a start and end time. A late-night category could run from 22:00 to 02:00, the window is allowed to cross midnight.

Availability is set per category, not per product or per variant. Everything inside a category shares its window; there’s no way to make one product within a category available on different hours than its siblings.

A short summary of each category’s current window (its days and hours) shows next to its name on the Menu screen, so you can see your whole schedule at a glance without opening each one.

Time zone

Those hours are interpreted in your restaurant’s time zone, set once in Settings under General. A late-night category running 22:00 to 02:00 means your restaurant’s actual local time, not whatever time zone a browser or server happens to default to, so it’s worth double-checking that setting is correct before relying on availability windows: an unset or wrong time zone is the most common reason a category shows or hides at the wrong moment.

Previewing what guests will see

The Menu screen includes a time preview: pick a day and time, and the menu redraws to show exactly what a guest scanning a table would see at that moment. This is the fastest way to check a window is set up right without waiting for it to actually be that time.

Reordering categories

Categories appear to guests in the order you set. Use the reorder control (a shuffle icon on the Menu screen) to open a picker and move a category above or below another, or straight to the top.

Editing or removing a category

Open a category’s edit icon to change its name or availability window at any time, changes apply immediately. Removing a category removes the products inside it from the visible menu as well, consider moving products to another category first if you want to keep them.