Step 3: Create Menu Categories
After you've created a menu for your online ordering site, you can begin adding menu categories to the menu.
What is a Menu Category?
A menu category is how menu items are organized into groups. Most often, menu categories are grouped by types of food, like appetizers, pizza, or beverages. You will need to create at least one menu category before you can create any menu items.
Menu categories can belong to one or more menus. You're also able to control when a category is visible to the customer. (If you want to "hide" a category, you can simply click the "Shown" button to the right under Status and it will become "Hidden")
In your online ordering console, you can create a menu category by selecting "Restaurant Manager" from the main menu in the top black bar, and then selecting "Menu Categories" under the "MENU SETTINGS" heading.
Scroll to the bottom of the next page and click the "+ Add New Category" button.
Menu Category Fields and Options
Let's walk through the details you'll need to provide for each menu category.
Display Name
Select a name that will appear on the "Menu" page of your online ordering site, such as "Appetizers" or "Beverages".
This is how the menu category display name will appear to your customers:
URL Tag
This is what will appear as a part of your online ordering site's website address. For example:
order.onlineorderingurl.com/classic-pizza/order/lunch/appetizers
NOTE: You can have duplicate display names for a menu category, but make sure to use a Private Tag for any duplicate names (info below). For example, if you have multiple locations, and the appetizer items are different at each location, you could create a different menu category with the display name "Appetizers" for each location. However, the URL tag must be unique. For example, you could add the location to the URL tag, like this:
order.onlineorderingurl.com/classic-pizza/order/manhattan/lunch-manhattan/appetizers-manhattan
order.onlineorderingurl.com/classic-pizza/order/brooklyn/lunch-brooklyn/appetizers-brooklyn
Private Tag
This is an optional field that would create a tag that is only visible to you in your Online Ordering Console to differentiate between similarly named categories.
For example, if you have a different "Specialty Pizza" category for different locations, you could add the location name to the Private Tag field.
Description
This description will appear to the customer once they have selected this menu category. This is an optional field that can be used to explain details about a category if desired.
Belongs to
Each of the menu times you've created will appear here as options for where your menu category can appear. Select the appropriate categories.
Note that you'll need to select at least one "Belongs to" menu here, otherwise the system will not let you proceed. If you don't want the menu to show on the user side, then leave all the "Currently Shown at" boxes unchecked.
Currently shown at
Each of the locations you've created will appear here as options for where your menu category can appear. Select the appropriate location(s).
Note that you'll need to select at least one location here, otherwise your menu category won't show up. You can also use this as a way to 'hide' a category by leaving all locations unchecked.
That's it! Next, you can begin adding the food items to your menu.