Restaurant and branches
What this is for
Understanding which level a setting lives at. Get this wrong and you'll change something in one place and wonder why it didn't apply somewhere else.
The how-to is in Setting up your restaurant and Adding branches. This page is the map.
Two levels
Restaurant is the business. One name, one logo, one set of customers, one plan.
Branch is a location. Its own menu prices, tables, staff, printers and hours.
Even with one location you have both — you just never notice the distinction.
What's set at restaurant level
Change these once and they apply everywhere:
- Restaurant name, logo and contact details
- Currency, and how money is formatted
- Timezone, and date and time formats
- Taxes and service charges
- Customers — a regular at one branch is known at the other
- Staff roles and permissions
- Email settings
- Notification switches
- Payment gateways
- Your plan and billing
- Theme and appearance
- Languages
What's set per branch
Each location sets its own:
- Branch name, address and contact details
- Opening hours and operating shifts
- Menus, categories, items and prices
- Areas and tables, and their QR codes
- Reservation rules and slots
- Order types
- Printers and kitchens
- Delivery zones and fees
- Staff assignment — who works where
- Delivery executives
- Kiosks and POS terminals
- Stock, suppliers and purchase orders
- Reports
The one that catches people
Menu prices are per branch. A city-centre site and a suburban one can charge differently for the same dish, which is usually what you want — but it also means adding an item in one branch doesn't add it to the other.
When opening a second location, Copy from another branch duplicates menus, categories, items, modifier groups and item modifiers from an existing branch. Far faster than rebuilding, and it keeps the two consistent from the start. See Adding branches.
Working in the right branch
Staff belong to a branch. Someone working across two needs access to both, and switching between them is itself a permission — Change Branch.
Before you conclude something is broken on a multi-site account, check the branch. It's the answer more often than anything else:
- A report showing nothing.
- A menu item that "disappeared".
- A table that isn't in the list.
- A printer that's suddenly missing.
Closing a restaurant temporarily
Restaurant Open/Close controls whether you're accepting orders at all, and it works three ways:
| Mode | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Auto | Follows your operating shifts. |
| Manual start/stop button | A control in the top bar you press. |
| Manual open/close time | A fixed window you set. |
The manual button is the one to know about. Pressing it stops orders, reservations and payments from every channel at once — POS, customer site, QR ordering, kiosk.
Use it when something goes wrong mid-service: the kitchen is swamped, a supplier didn't arrive, the fryer died. It's much better than letting orders keep arriving for food you can't cook.
Restodesk asks for confirmation before closing or reopening, and says plainly what it will do.
Good to know
- Deleting a branch takes its data with it. Deactivate instead.
- Adding a branch may depend on your plan. See Your plan and billing.
- Superadmin — a user with no restaurant — administers the platform itself and is out of scope here.
- Some settings are cached. If a change doesn't appear, sign out and back in.