Toast Community

www · ‎11-17-2024

I am a Multi-Location Management (MLM) user.

I have successfully created a new version of my Menu for another location.

Now I want to add a new "Menu Group" to both locations.

https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/versioningAtTheMenuGroupAndModifierGroupLevel.html

Here's my issue:

1. Create a new "Menu Group" in Location-A's Menu.

2. Create a version of that new "Menu Group" and target Location-B.

3. The new "Menu Group" is created, but does not appear on Location-B's Menu. The menu group is essentially orphaned.

Am I missing something?

Thanks for any advice or suggestions!

nbunda · ‎11-18-2024

MLM versioning is tough. When it comes to versioning an entity, keep in mind that EVERY change within a version of a menu entity will only ever be seen by that version's target.

If Location A has a menu, and that menu's target is Location A only, then Location B will never see any groups you add to Location A's version of that menu. Even if you target that newly created group to Location B, it still only exists in Location A's version. Kind of silly, but you get the hang of it. Essentially, once you make a version of an entity, it needs to be modified within that version; not any parent/parallel versions.

Because of this, first make sure your restaurant group structure is set up and nested properly. My general rule of thumb is to always work in the highest level version of a menu entity as much as possible (hence, the "Parent" version for the entire restaurant group), and only ever version something out at the lowest required level. Generally speaking, the fewer versions of anything that you have to deal with, the better. Secondly, when you start to play around with versions, you pretty much always want to be working in the "Advanced Properties" page so you can make sure you're catching all the changes you need to make.

I can help you with your setup, but could you give a little more info about why you're looking to version out your menus for these two locations? The more reasons you can think of, the better! (Just for an example: It could be that you didn't need to version your menu, but rather just your menu groups. Or it could be that you don't need to version anything at all, but rather just create a copy and re-target that copy).

Feel free to shoot me a DM too.

Nick Bunda, Community Ambassador
Anderson's Frozen Custard
Buffalo, NY

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www · ‎11-24-2024

Hi Sayra,

Thanks for your comment!

Yes, our setup is very similar to yours and it was working well until we had one store that had a slightly different menu.

Imagine your Georgia store did not have Egg Dishes, and instead had "Cheese Dishes."

For the "Cheese Dishes" Menu Group, you could target "Georgia" only, but then for the "Egg Dishes" Menu Group, you would need to create another Location Subgroup that excludes Georgia.

At the time I felt this would be confusing so I decided to just create a Version of the "Main Menu" and manage it that way. (Meaning the new Version of the Main Menu targets a single store only).

Everything was working well until I needed to add another "Menu Group."

There is no way to add a "Shared Menu Group."

Instead, I need to add two Menu Groups with the same name. And since the Menu Groups are no longer connected, I need to add/remove items twice.

Sdaniel · ‎11-25-2024

Hi! Yes, I can see why that would become difficult. We do have different subgroups that allow us to accomplish this, but we don't have a single location that has its own menu group. It works well when it's just menu items having a single location target.

While creating location groups was confusing at first, I have found that it is the best way to maintain a single main menu, but still being able to modify when we have slightly different menu items.

Sayra Daniel, Community Ambassador
Egg Harbor Cafe
Mililani, Hawaii

Toast Community

Is it possible to add an Existing Menu Group and not Copy it?