Introduction
We have spent two years on developing the Digital Menu in Menumiz! A restaurant food menu on paper looks simple and you may wonder what the big deal is in making it digital, but the fact is here that there is no standard way of making a food menu, each restaurants may do it differently and the requirement for a menu varies restaurant to restaurant. It was a challenge to find a way for computers to understand what may happen in a food menu and at the same time, keep it as simple as possible for the user to work with a digital menu.
Most of the digital menus in the market are actually a shopping card for e-commerce designed for retail , not specifically for a restaurant, hence the UIUX looks like eBay or Shopify! Our engineers in Menumiz dedicated months and months to research and design an exclusive platform to create digital menus and present them to your customers on mobile. Menumiz digital menu is the most advance yet simple digital menu ever in the market, it is all wizard based for restaurant managers and social media looking UI for the customers to use and order from.
Basics
There is a misunderstanding about food menu among people in most of the places, people refer to menu as a dish or food whereas menu is a list or collection of foods available to order, not the food itself. It will be confusing when you add a menu in the system and you expect it is a burger! But a menu is just like a folder or album to hold meals and food list.
Menumiz digital menu follows the three level concept: Menu, submenu and items
Items:
There are three categories of Items in Menumiz digital menu:
1: Main dish or main item
This is actually the meal or an item which is sold individually , e.g.: A burger , A pizza, A pint of beer
2: Free Sidelines
Should the main item come with free sidelines (French fries, soft drink) , then those free sidelines must be under sidelines
3: Add-ons
Add-ons are extra items offered under a main dish which are not free.
NOTE: Sidelines and Add ons are not presented individually as a separate menu to your customers, they always come under a main dish. Should you need the same items available individually, then you have to create them as a main dish too. For instance, a coke might be offered as free sideline under a burger or pizza, but if your customers just wants to order a single coke ( A la carte ) only , then you need to have it available as a coke under a main dish category too.
Submenu:
Submenu is like a sub-folder which contains above items. e.g.: Pizza, Grill, Beverages, Kids menu
Menu:
A menu ( Main Menu ) is a main collection of a few submenus. E.g.: Lunch menu, Dinner menu,
NOTE: Free sidelines and Add ons have default menu and submenu in the system reserved for them. You no need to take care of or categorise them manually.
Menumiz digital menu three level concept
Where to start?
As you learnt above, items are independent from menus and submenus. You can add items while yet having no menu and later assign them to each submenu as you wish or vise versa, you can create menus and submenus and then add items to them. However, the best approach to work with a digital menu is :
1: Add all free sidelines or Add-ons you may need first
2: Add and manage all your dishes / items ( they belong to no submenu yet and have tagged as No Submenu) , assign any free sideliens or add-ons under each as you wish
3: Create your menus and submenus
4: Assign dishes / items to each submenu as you wish
NOTE: Waitstaff shall have access to all items regardless of having a submenu or not in TSO ( Table side order ) or Order Management modules under “ All Items “. Hence, should you have no menu or submenu yet, the waitstaff is able to see items and get orders from customers verbally and enter into the system.
NOTICE: Items must be under a submenu to be visible in your guests devices ( QR code order ) , Items cannot be directly under a menu and skip the submenu. If you want to have some dishes/items available in TSO under ALL ITEMS but not offer them directly to your geusts on thier mobile, then you should NOT asisgn any submenus to those dishes or items.
NOTICE: IF you have a menu with no submenu, then the system will hide this empty menu
NOTICE: A dish / item could be under multiple submenus at the same time. for instance a burger could be under launch menu/ main AND dinner menu / grills. By deleting it from a submenu, it is just unlinked from that submenu, the item is not deleted actually from your digital menu unless you delete it directly from the item control box.