Menus and versions

A published recipe does not reach a kitchen on its own. A menu is the thing a location pulls from, and a version is a snapshot of that menu you can change without disturbing what the line is currently reading.

Menus lists each menu with its active version. Create menu adds one.

Versions, and why they exist

Open a menu and press Manage to reach versions, items and store availability.

Each version has a label — Launch, Summer, Q4 — a date range shown as 2026-08-17 → open, and a state. The one in force is marked LIVE.

The point of a version is that editing tomorrow’s menu never touches tonight’s service. Build a new version, add and remove items freely, and the line keeps reading the live one until the new version’s start date arrives.

• New version creates one. Give it a start date and it activates then; a version with no end date runs until something replaces it.
• Edit changes a version’s label and dates.
• Archive retires a version but keeps it, so you can see what was being served on a given date.
• Delete removes it outright. Prefer Archive for anything that was ever live — deleting throws away the record of what the line was told.
• Rename on the menu itself changes the menu’s name, not a version’s.

The menu’s own page shows the live version with a note that matters: “Brand-standard version. Individual stores may pin a different version or drop/add items.” — see What each store serves.

Items on a version

Under Production items, pick from published recipes and + Add item. Only published recipes are offered: a draft cannot reach the line, so it cannot be put on a menu that would promise it.

Each item can carry a section, and the menu view groups by section for Front of House. Sections are checked in per menu — “Check the section to make it available to this menu” — so a section you use for dinner does not clutter a breakfast menu. A new brand sees No sections yet.

Prep items are assigned separately

Prep items is its own list: “The prep (building blocks) this menu’s line needs on hand — shown on the kitchen Prep tab for this menu.”

This is deliberately not automatic. The preps a location needs to have ready are not simply “every prep used by every item” — that would bury a prep list under things already made in bulk, or made off-site. You choose what the Prep tab shows. Grouping follows each prep’s own tags rather than the menu’s sections.

A menu with none reads “No prep assigned yet — add one below”. See Prep.

Checking your work

The menu’s own page has a Front of House / Heart of House toggle, which is the quickest way to see what each audience will get from the same version before a single cook opens it.

⚠ A menu being live is not the same as a location being able to open it. That is a separate switch, and the menu page will tell you when it is off — see Menu access.