Vendor-neutral
Nothing in ORDER depends on Eighty-Six at runtime. The schema is a file; the validator is a library.
Open Restaurant Data Exchange Reference (ORDER)
ORDER is an open standard for moving a restaurant’s data between platforms. It describes what a restaurant actually runs on — the rooms, the tables and where they sit on the floor, the service periods and turns that make them bookable, the menu, and optionally the reservations — as a single JSON document that any platform can read or write.
It exists because nobody standardised the operational restaurant. schema.org describes a menu beautifully and has no word for a table. Industry menu-sync specs describe a menu for a point-of-sale and stop there. ORDER covers the parts a restaurant would actually need to take with them when they leave.
No personal data by default
The core module contains zero personal data — publish it, diff it in git, hand it to a competitor.
Free SEO structured data
Every ORDER document projects to schema.org JSON-LD. Adopt ORDER, get search-engine markup for free.
Rules, not slots
ORDER carries the recurring rules. Materialised availability is a derivation, and the spec defines it.
Modules
Section titled “Modules”ORDER is split into two modules so that personal data is opt-in.
| Module | Contains | Personal data |
|---|---|---|
core |
profile, hours, branding, rooms and floor plans, tables, table groups, service periods, turns, closures, menus, labels | None |
reservations |
bookings including guest name, email, and phone | Yes |
A document declares what it carries:
{ "order_version": "0.1", "modules": ["core"] }Because core carries no personal data, a core-only document is safe to publish. A document containing reservations must declare the reservations module — the reference validator rejects one that does not.
Where to go next
Section titled “Where to go next”Why ORDER existsThe gap in the existing standards, and why we did not simply adopt one.
The specificationNormative requirements — the document, its entities, and its rules.
Schema referenceEvery field, its type, and whether it is required.
ExamplesComplete documents you can copy and validate.