Menus

The Menu page is your menu builder — the place where you write down everything you serve: your categories, your dishes, their prices and the little labels that flag what is spicy, vegan or gluten free. Whatever you build here is exactly what your guests see on your booking page, so this is where your public menu really comes to life. This page gives you the lay of the land: how a menu is put together, how to run more than one menu at once, how to import a menu from a link, and how your menus turn into the menu guests browse online.

Before you begin

The menu builder is the Menu page in the left navigation. Available on plans that include the Menu builder. You need the View menus permission to open it; adding, editing, importing and deleting menus each need the matching menu permission. As the restaurant owner you have every permission by default; employees only see this page once you grant it to them.

How a menu is organised

A menu is a simple stack of building blocks. Understanding the layers makes everything else here easier:

• Menu — the whole thing, with a name like Lunch Menu or Drinks. Most restaurants start with one menu; you can add more (see below).
• Category — a section of the menu, such as Starters, Mains or Desserts. A category can also hold subcategories — for example a Beers category split into Draft and Bottled.
• Dish — a single item inside a category, with a name, an optional description, a price, an optional photo, and any labels you attach.

So the shape is always Menu → Categories → Dishes, with subcategories as an optional middle layer. You build from the top down: create a menu, add categories to it, then add dishes inside each category.

The Menu page: actions along the top, category tabs, and your categories and dishes below.

The menu builder at a glance

Open Menu from the left navigation and you will find these controls:

• Add Category — create a new section of the menu. Once a category exists, an Add Dish button appears inside it for adding dishes.
• Manage Labels — build the reusable tags you attach to dishes (for example Spicy, Vegan, Gluten Free, or the numbered EU allergens).
• Import from link — read an existing menu straight off a website with AI, so you do not have to type it all in. Covered below.
• Add menu note — pin a short note to the menu, such as a cover-charge line or an opening-hours reminder.
• Translate everything — if your restaurant has more than one language switched on, this fills in translations for your whole menu automatically.
• Configure menu page settings — a shortcut to the booking-page settings that decide how the menu is shown to guests. This is the bridge between building your menu and displaying it, and it is explained at the end of this page.

Below the buttons is a row of category tabs: an All tab that shows every dish, plus one tab per category. Click a tab to focus on just that category — handy when a big menu gets long. Each tab carries a small badge with the number of dishes it holds.

Tip

The category tabs are just a filter for your own editing view. They do not change anything your guests see — the public menu always shows every active category and dish.

Working with more than one menu

Some restaurants run several menus at once — a Lunch menu, a Dinner menu, a separate Drinks list. When you have more than one menu, a menu switcher appears at the top of the builder, above your categories. Each menu is its own tab, showing a book icon, the menu’s name and a badge with how many top-level categories it has.

The menu switcher. Each tab is one menu; the pencil renames it and the trash icon deletes it.

Here is how it works:

• Switch menus — click a tab to select it. The categories and dishes below update to show that menu. You are always editing one menu at a time.
• Rename a menu — click the pencil icon on a tab, type a new name, and save. (Needs the edit-menus permission.)
• Delete a menu — click the trash icon on a tab and confirm. This is permanent and removes the whole menu with all its categories, dishes and prices, so use it with care. (Needs the delete-menus permission.)

There are two ways to end up with more than one menu:

1. Turn on Multiple Menus mode on your booking page and add menus there — see How your menus appear on the booking page below.
2. Use Import from link and choose Create new menu, which adds the imported menu alongside your existing one.

Caution

Deleting a menu cannot be undone. If you only want to take a menu offline for a season, it is safer to leave it in place and control what guests see through the booking-page display settings, rather than deleting it.

Importing a menu from a link

If your menu already lives on a website or a PDF-style menu page, you do not have to retype it. Import from link reads the page with AI and turns it into categories, dishes and prices you can review before anything is saved.

1. Click Import from link at the top of the Menu page.
2. Paste your restaurant’s website or menu URL into the Website or menu URL box and click Read menu. Reading the page can take up to a minute.
3. Review what it found. You can edit any price, add or remove variants (for example a Glass and Bottle price), and tick which allergens each dish carries. Items the AI was unsure about are flagged Low confidence so you know where to double-check.
4. Choose how to save it — see the two modes below — then click Import menu.

Importing a menu from a link. Paste a URL, then review and fine-tune everything before it is saved.

When you save, you get two choices (the second only appears if you already have a menu to overwrite):

• Create new menu — adds the imported menu as a brand-new menu, alongside anything you already have. You give it a name (it suggests Imported Menu).
• Replace existing — overwrites one of your current menus with the imported one. You pick which menu to replace from a list. This wipes that menu’s existing categories and dishes and cannot be undone.

Tip

Importing is a starting point, not the finished article. After it saves, look through every category — fix any prices, tidy descriptions, and attach your labels. The review step warns you about anything it read with low confidence.

Reordering menus, categories and dishes

Order matters — it is the sequence guests read top to bottom. There are three things you can reorder, and they live in two places:

• Dishes — inside the builder, each dish has up and down controls to move it within its category.
• Categories — inside the builder, each category has up and down controls to move it within its menu (and subcategories move within their parent).
• Menus — the order of whole menus is set on your booking page, not in the builder. Open the booking-page Menu settings (the Configure menu page settings shortcut), and in Multiple Menus mode use the up and down arrows next to each menu. That order is what guests see, and it also sets the order of the tabs in the menu switcher.

How your menus appear on the booking page

Everything you build here is content; how it is presented to guests is a separate choice you make on your booking page. From the Menu builder, click Configure menu page settings, or open Booking Page, go to the Pages tab and choose the Menu sub-tab. There you will find:

• Menu Only — a switch that shows only your menu on your homepage and hides the booking form and landing-page content. Perfect if you use Eighty-Six mainly as a digital menu.
• Menu Mode — how the menu is structured for guests. There are three modes:
  • Single Menu — one long, scrollable menu with every category and dish. The classic layout, and the right choice for most restaurants with a single menu.
  • Category Navigation — guests first see category cards, then tap one to browse its dishes. Good for large menus.
  • Multiple Menus — separate menus for different occasions (for example Breakfast, Lunch, Drinks), each with its own categories and dishes. This mode is a premium feature; when it is on, a Menus manager appears where you Add Menu, rename, reorder and remove your menus, each with its own name, description and image.
• Navigation Template — when you use Category Navigation or Multiple Menus, this picks the visual style of the navigation (for example a button list, an icon grid or image banners).

Menu Mode on the booking page. Multiple Menus is where you add and reorder whole menus.

The short version: build your menu on the Menu page, decide how it looks on the booking page. If you only ever have one menu, Single Menu mode is all you need and you can ignore the switcher entirely. If you turn on Multiple Menus, that is where new menus are created and ordered — and once you have more than one, the switcher shows up in the builder so you can edit each in turn.

A quick checklist

1. Add your categories, then add dishes inside each one with prices and any labels.
2. Reorder categories and dishes so they read the way you want, top to bottom.
3. If you serve several menus, turn on Multiple Menus on the booking page and add them there.
4. Choose your Menu Mode on the booking page so guests see the menu the way you intend.

Related

Your booking pageChoose how your menu is displayed to guests.

Roles, permissions & plansWhat your plan unlocks and what your role lets you edit.