When to use Auto Menus

Auto Menus is a new TallOrder feature that is controlled via Settings in the TallOrder Admin Portal. We have been listening to client feedback and working hard to simplify aspects that some users find cumbersome to deal with.

The regular TallOrder menu system works well for hospitality businesses, who may need to have Active Menus, menus that are being developed for the coming season or even different menus for different locations. One can even have different item prices per menu and items may appear more than once on the menu if desired.

For retail businesses or even hospitality businesses that want to run on a simpler menu model, we have introduced Auto Menus. When enabling Auto Menus (will be on by default for Retail type businesses going forward), the Department structure is used as a ‘menu’ structure. 

A department may have up to four levels of sub-departments E.g., Personal Hygiene / Hair Care / Haircare for Men or Alcoholic Beverages / Wines / South African / Red Wines.  Products must belong to a department and sales are summarized by department. 

When using Auto Menus, there is no need to manage Headings and Menus. Whenever you ‘Publish’ your Menu Headings are formatted automatically according to your Department structure and the products sorted alphabetically within the department, is published automatically to the POS devices. 

You can control which items are allowed in your Auto Menus via a new product flag: Allow in Auto Menu.  This flag can be customised per location. By default, an Auto Menu includes all Active products except hidden products flagged as Ingredient Only and Modifier Only items. 

Hospitality businesses could start out with Auto Menus if their departments are the same as their menu layout. E.g., a Coffee Shop menu may have departments called Bakery, Breakfast, Lunch and Drinks with Caffe, Hot, Cold and Iced as sub-departments under Drinks. Such a departmental structure could work well for Auto Menus and that would be a very simple and fast-import to get set up and going.

The Coffee Shop could. later convert to regular TallOrder menus and get more control over their menus by simply changing the Auto Menu setting. The structure previously generated by Auto Menus can now be customised manually.

The Auto Menu setting can be found in Admin under Settings / Tenant Settings / POS / General as ‘Automatic Menu Structure’ with Yes or No switch.