Menu categories

Forty dishes in one long list

A menu without sections is a scroll. The guest looking for dessert passes every grill on the way, and the one looking for a soup gives up before the soup.

Paper solves this with headings, and then freezes them: a seasonal section printed in June is still on the card in October.

Sections that move with the season

Categories are the headings of your menu and they are yours to change between publications. Add a summer section in May, move it to the top, and remove it in September; the dishes inside it go with it.

The guest gets the same headings as jump links at the top of the page, so a phone screen behaves like a table of contents instead of a scroll.

How it works

Create a category Give it a name. It joins the end of the menu and can be moved.
Put dishes in it A dish is added to a category in one step: name, price, currency and declared allergens together.
Set the order Move categories into the order you want. The position is stored per menu, and no two categories can hold the same slot.
Rename without losing anything Renaming a category keeps its dishes and its position.
Remove a section Deleting a category deletes every dish row inside it. The dishes are not moved elsewhere, so move them first if you want to keep them.
Publish Guests see the new headings and order with the next published version, not while you are still arranging them.

What it does

Jump links for the guest: Every category becomes a link at the top of the guest menu that scrolls to its section. The links are plain anchors and work without scripts.
One order, kept exactly: Category positions are unique within a menu, so the order you saved is the order that is published; there is no tie to resolve.
The same dish in two sections: A dish that belongs in Breakfast and in All Day can be listed in both. Its name, description and allergens are written once and shared.
An empty section says so: A category with no visible dish shows a short note to the guest instead of a blank heading.
Categories in the spreadsheet: The export writes the category name on every dish row, and the import rebuilds the sections from that column.
A record of adding, renaming and removing: Creating, renaming and removing a category is written to the menu audit trail with who did it and when.
Sections read from a photo: When a menu is read from a photograph, the draft you approve arrives with its sections already grouped.

What you need

At least one category to publish	A menu cannot be published with no category, and publishing refuses a category with a blank name.
Permission to manage the menu	Owners, managers and editors arrange categories. The kitchen role cannot.
Nothing else, and no plan	Categories are part of the free journey.

What it does not do

No sub-categories A category holds dishes, not other categories. Grills cannot contain Lamb and Chicken as nested sections.
No hidden category A dish can be hidden; a category cannot. To keep a section off the menu, hide its dishes or remove the section.
No picture or description on a category A category is a name. It has no photo and no text of its own.
No timed sections A category cannot switch itself on at breakfast time. That job belongs to menus: a branch can hold several menus that hand over by the hour.
Order changes are not recorded Moving a category up or down is not written to the audit trail. It changes dozens of times while a menu is arranged, and nobody asks who did it.
Category names are not translated A heading is written once, in your language, and the guest sees it as written.

Questions owners ask

What happens to the dishes when I delete a category?

They are deleted with it. Move them to another category first if you want to keep them.

Can I hide a whole section for the winter?

Not as a section. Hide the dishes inside it, or remove the section and bring it back from a spreadsheet later.

Can one dish be in two categories?

Yes. It is listed in both and edited once.

Does the guest see the categories in my order?

Yes, both as headings and as jump links at the top of the page.

Can a category have its own photo?

No. Photos belong to dishes.

Sections cost nothing

Categories, dishes and publishing are part of the free plan.

See the plans