Linking Menus/Categories

V5 Question
1

I wounder if anyone has a solution for this;

Hotel has 3 main menus, lunch, bar/afternoon and dinner menu.
Would be nice to have these menus show during the service times however drinks will remain consistent through the day.
I was thinking of setting 3 menus for lunch, afternoon and dinner however this would mean duplicating the drinks categories (draft, wine, bottles etc) over the three menus.

Anyone think of a way to avoid the duplication?

I was thinking it would be cool if menus or categories could be linked ie;

Menus
Drinks [A] (Draft, Wine, Spirits, Bottles etc categories)
Lunch (Starters, Mains, Desserts, Sides, Specials - categories)
Afternoon (Bar Menu, Sides, Afternoon Specials - categories)
Dinner (Starters, Mains, Desserts, Sides, Specials - categories)

Menus (Grouped)
Lunch (Drinks[A] & Lunch menus)
Afternoon (Drinks[A] & Afternoon menus)
Dinner (Drinks[A] & Dinner menus)

Does that make sense?
Am looking to keep menu maintenance down and ensure categories for drinks stay identical between food times.

2

Not a bad idea, but in interim, simply set up a single instance of each Menu:

Drinks (contains only Drink items)
Lunch (contains only Lunch items)
Afternoon (contains only Afternoon items)
Dinner (contains only Dinner items)

Make a button under Ticket or Ticket Row 2 to toggle between Drinks menu and one of the other Menus depending on time of day.

3

That’s nice idea but wouldn’t work in my perticular situation - I didnt get detailed enough as in fact the bar menu is available all day and the sides are the same all day so would still mean many duplicate menu items over the muntiple menus :smile:

Was mainly an idea, if nothing comes of it lunch and dinner will most likely be menu catagories with starter/main/desert sub-menus :smile:

4

How about only creating 3 menus that you can live swap between, and only have the drinks menu accessed by a button like @QMcKay suggested. This way you have the drinks menu always available without the duplication, and you can automate the swap of menus at specific times or create a toggle button that switches menus on the go.

So really, you still create 4 menus, 3 will either be toggled by a trigger button or automated via specific time periods, and have the drinks menu just sitting underneath the ticket which can be access anytime.

5

Is there an echo in here? LOL, that is pretty much exactly what I was shooting for in my explanation.

6

Inspite of the previous suggestions I had a though for a possible method of achieving this idea although would likely require to major rework of the menus system…

What if menu categories were defines seperatly to menus?

Ie you setup menu categories like draught, bottles, mains, starters etc in one tab then built a menu using those categories allowing categories to be used within multiple menus.

I expect and understand that idea would likely require too greater database amendments to support back compatibility but thought was a tidy idea you might continplate in a future version…