topic Menu Availability in Restaurant Operations

Menu Availability

Sdaniel — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 19:51:25 GMT

Hi everyone,

We’re working on a new menu tailored for commuters, especially since we have a few locations near train stations. We plan to promote this menu through our branded mobile app and offer a promo code for customers who order from it. The menu will be available exclusively from 7 AM to 9 AM, Monday through Friday.

We’re currently using Online Ordering Pro and thought time-based ordering rules would help us manage this. However, after testing, it seems these rules aren’t quite achieving what we need. Specifically, we want to ensure availability during those times while allowing customers to pre-order ahead of time, such as the night before. Our business hours are 7 AM to 2 PM, but we’d like customers to be able to start placing orders as early as 5 PM the evening before.

Currently, when I set the availability rules, the items only appear on the online ordering page during the designated hours. We want to find a way to let customers place orders ahead of time while still respecting the availability window.

Any suggestions on how we can make this work within our system?

Re: Menu Availability

josh212 — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 20:58:01 GMT

The best way to do this would be through the catering and events module. You can create specific special menu's that have their own stie etc. You can also change availability and allow pre-orders

Re: Menu Availability

Sdaniel — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 21:23:11 GMT

Unfortunately, we don't have Toast catering and events, but that's good to know! we'll definitely keep that in mind! 🙂

Re: Menu Availability

rcmck — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 21:33:26 GMT

Could you maybe just use the regular menu availability based on time? It would be really easy if they allowed multiple time slots for availability but that is still not an option. You could potentially just make a copy of the special menu, one for the night before, and another for the morning. Set one menu as available from 5pm to 7am, and the other from 7am to 9am, not very elegant but I think it would work.

Re: Menu Availability

ashokr — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 14:46:10 GMT

You mean as a menu-based availability. But that still doesn't provide a way to give discounts based on pickup time I suppose. If what you are suggesting works, albeit not elegant its as elegant as it gets 🙂

Alternately as I had suggested earlier, i they can have an option to pick the pickup time or order time as the condition for a discount/coupon that might make it all flow well. (But a new feature and might take a while before it shows up)

Re: Menu Availability

Sdaniel — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 19:12:14 GMT

It honestly would be ideal if we could set multiple time slots, but I understand that is not possible right now. Luckily, we are just starting this roll-out with 1 location as a test, so we may decide that the current availability setting is ok.

Thanks so much for the insight! 🙂

Re: Menu Availability

Sdaniel — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 19:14:19 GMT

I think we have the discount part figured out, but the part I can't quite make work is allowing guests to order off that specific menu the night before, but keeping the availability settings, since the menu will only be visible during the availability window.

Re: Menu Availability

Sdaniel — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 23:58:17 GMT

Thanks to everyone who shared their insights! I figured it out, and it turns out it was much simpler than I originally thought. Essentially, the menu works in conjunction with the guest’s scheduled order. The commuter menu will only appear if the order is scheduled within the menu’s set availability window. If the order is scheduled outside of that time frame, the menu will not be visible. I did some testing, and no extra set up needed aside from changing the menus availability.

Re: Menu Availability

au79teahouse — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 00:20:22 GMT

Thank you for sharing it! It will come in handy if we ever need to do something like that.

Re: Menu Availability

Sdaniel — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 00:27:08 GMT

Absolutely! Here's a quick video showing what that looks like for us: Commuter Menu - Scheduled order.mp4

*I'm in Hawaii time, but the restaurants are in Illinois and Georgia, so you'll see some unusual pickup times in the video due to the time zone difference.

Re: Menu Availability

josh212 — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 00:33:08 GMT

i thought you wanted visibility all the tme which is where catering and events would come into play.

If you did want timeslots however an interesting spin would be through through toast tables experiences and prepayments. Which allows prepayments for certain items or "experiences," capped at a certain amount per 15 minutes with capacity and turn time rules in place. Which almost sounds like something that would potentially work

Re: Menu Availability

Sdaniel — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 18:35:45 GMT

Thanks so much for the insight! I was able to figure it out, luckily no extra setting adjustments needed, time availability works with scheduled ordering based off the time they place the order for a future pick up. We're using this as an initiative to push app usage and also promote our new commuter menu. From the discount perspective, we're sending out an email blast with a promo code to use at checkout via the app.