Menus sell your products organized into specific groups called product types. If you have not read about Product Types and Product Templates yet, it is important to understand those concepts first unless another person in your organization is managing them for you.

At a minimum, a Menu has a Title and one or more Product Types configured. Once it has at least one associated product type, the calendar editor will show select boxes (drop downs) with the available product templates, prices, and a single checkbox to offer the product per day or per month.

Product Selections

You may customize the pricing and product titles (for writable product templates), but if you have setup your product templates correctly in advance then the single checkbox is usually all that is needed.

1. Navigate the calendar to the month you need to edit.
2. Using the select boxes, or the per-day editor below the calendar, select the product templates that should be offered with the checkbox next to the product title.
3. If the product template is not a Read-Only template, the editor will suggest a product title that may be edited. Note: This feature mostly exists for schools that have a 3 to 5 meal plans per day that change every day. It is recommended to set up all product templates correctly in advance as Read-Only templates.
4. Adjust the pricing if necessary for the Regular, Reduced, and Free price levels. Note: If either Reduced or Free are not enabled for the product type, the menu editor will warn you with visual clues. The changes may be saved, but they will not be offered to the customer as long as those price levels remain disabled on the product type.

Note: Menu changes occur in real-time. Consider making your menu edits when a month is not yet available on the frontend or outside of your peak ordering hours.

Going Live

Mealsite has settings that control when products are available to purchase. You may manually open and close entire months by setting the Start Month and End Month configuration. The Days Advance and Cut-Off Time configuration determine which products in a month should no longer be available to purchase.

These settings allow you to control when customers see your complete menu and when it becomes too late accept orders–right up to the last day or even a specific hour on the serving day–that stills give enough time to process cancellations and prepare the food.

Changes to Menus After Receiving Orders

Try to make changes to your menu sparingly after it has gone live and your first orders have been received. Mealsite will not automatically revoke those existing purchases, so manual edits will be necessary. Also, changes to an order that contains products no longer available will result in canceling those products when the order resaves, because Mealsite will see it as an invalid selection.

Orders Submitted With the Wrong Grade

Sometimes parents select the wrong grade when placing an order, which might interfere with your reports. You can use the order editor to change the grade as long as the change does not effectively result in a menu change.

Because Mealsite uses the school and grade to select the menu, and the menu may have completely different choices and pricing, a grade change that effectively requires a menu change is denied by the editor. The work-around is to cancel the order and resubmit it via the backend with the correct grade.