Item categories
What this is for
Categories are the sections of your menu — Starters, Mains, Sides, Desserts, Wine, Soft drinks. They're how a waiter finds a dish on a busy POS screen and how a guest scrolls your online menu.
Before you start
Create your menu first — a category belongs to one. See Creating a menu.
Adding a category
- Go to Menu › Item Categories.
- Select Add Item Category.
- Enter the Item Category Name.
- Choose which menu it belongs to.
- Save.
Getting categories right
This is the part that decides whether your POS is fast or frustrating.
Match how your staff think, not how a chef would file it. "Sides" is a better category than "Accompaniments". "Soft drinks" beats "Non-alcoholic beverages".
Aim for 5–12 categories. Fewer and each one is a long scroll; many more and finding the category becomes the slow part.
Split drinks up. Wine, beer, spirits and soft drinks as separate categories is almost always faster at the bar than one big "Drinks".
Put the busy ones first. Category order drives what appears first on the POS and the QR menu — set it in Menu › Menu Organizer.
Renaming and deleting
Renaming is safe; the items stay put.
Deleting asks you to confirm, because the category's items lose their section. Move the items first if you're reorganising rather than retiring.
Good to know
- A category belongs to one menu. If you run brunch and dinner menus that both have Starters, that's two categories with the same name — one per menu.
- Categories are per branch.
- Category names show to customers on your ordering site.