Setting up for the first time

A brand-new Tavorly is empty, and an empty dashboard is a bad first screen — every number on it reads zero and none of them tell you what to do. So the first thing a brand admin sees is a card: Finish setting up Tavorly, with a counter like 2 of 6 done.

It leads with the next step — its name, why it matters, and a button straight to it — because six equally-weighted buttons is how a checklist becomes wallpaper. Completed steps are struck through above; later ones sit below with a quiet link.

The six steps

They are a path, not a list, and the order is the point: each one exists so the next is possible.

1. Add your locations — “Menus and recipe viewers are assigned per location, so this comes first.” Nothing else can reach a kitchen until the kitchen exists. → Setting up your locations
2. Write your first recipe — “Production recipes and preps both live here.” → Writing a recipe, or bring your whole book in at once with an import
3. Build a menu — “A menu is how recipes reach a location — group them into a version you can publish.” → Menus and versions
4. Publish to the line — “Nothing reaches your kitchens until a recipe is published.” → Getting a recipe onto the line
5. Set up a recipe viewer — “Enrol the tablet your cooks will actually read from.” → Enrolling a recipe viewer
6. Invite your team — “Authors, approvers and managers each get only what their role needs.” → Inviting your team

It is measured, not ticked

No step is ever marked done by hand. Each one is a count of what actually exists in your brand — locations, recipes, menus, published recipes, enrolled devices, people. Do the thing and the step completes itself.

That has two consequences worth knowing:

• You cannot get it wrong. There is no dismiss button to press by accident and no saved progress to fall out of step with reality.
• A step can un-complete. Close your only location and “Add your locations” opens again — which is correct, because the thing it was tracking is no longer true.

The order is a suggestion, not a gate

Nothing is locked. You can invite your team first, or enrol a tablet before writing a recipe. The sequence is the order that avoids dead ends, not a wizard.

The one genuinely awkward ordering: enrol devices last. Signing a device in replaces whatever session that browser held, so doing it early from your own machine signs you out mid-setup. See Signing in.

Then it disappears — for good

Once all six are done the card is gone, permanently. There is no dismiss state stored anywhere, so it cannot come back stale or be re-triggered by a later change.

If you were expecting it and do not see it, your brand is already set up. The usual surprise is “Invite your team” completing on its own — which simply means a second real person now exists in your brand.

From then on the dashboard is the operational screen it is meant to be. See Your dashboard.

Getting your recipes in is the big one

Steps 1 and 3 through 6 take minutes. Step 2 is the real work, because it means your whole recipe book. Read Getting your recipes in before typing anything by hand — a structured spreadsheet import will do a book far faster and more accurately than re-keying it.