Managing Duplicate Menus for Dine-In & Takeout

[Isaac1]

Looking for Ideas and Solutions

Hi Toast Community!

I'm currently facing a challenge with managing two identical menus for Dine-In and Takeout, and I'd love to hear how others are handling similar setups.

To better manage dining-option-specific configurations, pricing, and accurate costing, we've created two separate menus that are essentially deep copies of each other. While the items share identical names and nearly 99% of their configurations, they are completely separate objects in the Toast backend.

The Challenge:

Whenever we update our menu, add a new item, configure modifiers, or assign modifier groups, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify which item or group belongs to which menu, especially when browsing the item database or using the "Add Item/Modifier" options within the menu editor.

Since both menus contain identical item names, modifier names, and group names, it's easy to accidentally select or assign an object from the wrong menu. This makes ongoing menu maintenance unnecessarily complicated and increases the risk of configuration errors.

I'm curious to hear:

• Has anyone experienced a similar challenge when managing duplicated menus?

• Are there any recommended workflows or workarounds to make identifying and managing these objects easier?

• Is Toast working on any features that could improve menu organization, distinguish duplicated items in the backend, or simplify managing multiple menus with similar configurations?

P.S. I'm aware that Toast assigns a unique item number to each item, which can help distinguish between otherwise identical objects. However, these numbers aren't particularly prominent or easily accessible during the menu-building and editing process, making them less practical for day-to-day management.

Ideally, we'd love a way to maintain separate dining-option-specific menus without the operational complexity of managing hundreds of nearly identical backend objects.

I'd appreciate any insights, suggestions, or feedback from fellow operators or the Toast product team.

Thanks in advance!

[Penguin_Meg1]

I deal with this as well and I agree it's frustrating. I have to have a different menu for Online ordering, Dine in, and for a pub we deliver to up the road.  I also at one point had so many different Toast Admins helping with this and they all tried different fixes that my item database is a nightmare.

It's ugly but unfortunately naming something with a symbol has been the only real workaround for us that works.  So a pork sandwich on dine in would just say pork sandwich but an online version would have an asterisk   *Pork Sandwich . Modifiers as well have the asterisk   *pork sand MODS

[ccashion]

Couldn't you set up Dine In and Takeout as separate revenue centers and run the reports independently? That seems like a lot less work and streamlines the items in the backend. 

If you know the cost of garlic aioli for dine in is x and take out is y. It's just matter of making the adjustment for the difference at the end instead of the front lines if that makes sense.