Create a Menu

Before you start

Have your products ready — pulled in from an integrated till, or built by hand (Set up your products).

Create it

Go to Orders → Menus and click Create menu. Existing menus are edited from this same list.
If you run more than one till site or venue, choose which POS the items pull from. This is set at creation and can't be changed afterwards, so pick the right one now.

Set how the menu behaves

Open the menu and set the details:

Open and close times — when the menu starts and stops taking orders. Times are offsets from the performance start: -60 is an hour before, 0 is start, +60 is an hour after. So a bar menu might open at -120 and close at -15.
When orders go to the till — either batched (sent together once the menu closes) or one by one as they come in. There's no universally right answer; it depends on how your kitchen and bar work, however most customers find it easiest to send in a batch when the menu closes. Talk it through with support if you're unsure.
Who sees it — use the Criteria Builder to target the menu. Show a stalls bar menu only to customers seated in the stalls, so they collect at the nearest bar and spread the queues. See Target recipients with the Criteria Builder.
Presentation — menu image, confirmation text, and the rest. Menu images work best at a 1000×600 ratio.

Once the menu behaves the way you want, add products to it.

If it's not working

Picked the wrong POS site. The POS selection is locked after creation — you'll need to create a fresh menu.
Menu never opened to customers. Open/close times are offsets from performance start; a close time earlier than open, or an open time already in the past, means it never shows.
Wrong customers saw it (or nobody did). Check the menu's criteria against your ticketing data — Target recipients with the Criteria Builder.

Help: support@encorepro.com

A menu is what the customer sees - a grouped selection of products with its own open and close times and its own audience. This will cover creating the menu and setting how it behaves. How to add the actual products is in the next article.