The menu management tools are making me overwhelmingly furious!!!

[corey_akc]

Let me start by saying I'm very grateful for the services that Toast provides. I love the variety. I love the integration of everything. 

Please keep in mind when you read what I am about to say, that I have 10 years of experience building websites and designing user experiences, including for enterprise use. Also, this is me attempting to keep my chill.

The Toast admin user experience is one of the worst pieces of software I've ever used.

I find myself growling and groaning at my screen more than I have in a long time. I am constantly clicking something and ending up somewhere I didnt expect. (This is not about 'getting used to the software'. If you rely on your customers 'getting used' to something not working as expected, that is bad design). I imagine I'm not alone.

After 3 years of being on Toast, my family's restaurant is due for a overhaul. It's been managed by my father, English is his second language, and he's also a bit chaotic. So there are tons of items, modifiers, menu groups, etc. Most that should be archived are not. But even once you've archived something, nothing makes sense. Now when you read the numbers in the line below this, even I can agree there must be some form of user error, but the question I ask is why is it so easy to get to a point this chaotic?

In those three years we've somehow managed to amass (incl archived): 141 menu groups, 1303 items, 105 modifier groups, and 321 modifiers. 

My goals right now: Clean up old items/groups/menus/modifiers. Make the existing menu easier to use & understand.

I find myself asking...

1. Why can I not see what menus/groups contain an item from the item detail page?
   • I know I can go to item database, and click "view usage". But why do I have to click something extra to view it, and why isnt this info available from the item detail page? There are multiple ways to end up in an item's details. 
   • Don't say it's in the breadcrumbs, because right now I'm looking at an item that has no breadcrumbs ahead of it.
   • I actually just realized it doesn't even offer this for Menu Groups.
   • I need a database column w/ this, because I want to archive items that arent in groups, but I have to click back and forth to do it. 
2. Why does it not say what type of item I'm looking at at the top of a detail page?
   • Things often seem to end up having the same name. I'm currently looking at an item called "Lunch Specials" and I have zero clue if it's my Menu or the Menu Group of the same name. 
3. Why can I not archive things recursively? (Why cant I do almost anything recursively?)
   • If I archive a group, I would like the option to archive everything within it.
   • Menus/Groups/Subgroups/Items/Modifier Groups/Modifier Items. everything.
4. Why can I not delete things?!?!?!?!
   • Yes I am aware that deleting things will remove them from reporting. I am an adult. Give me a warning when I choose to delete something. And then let me do it.
   • Archiving is not enough. My menu database is TORTURE to navigate. 
   • I (and many people) learn by doing. So I create menus/groups/items and then decide to archive or delete them. I will not do that anymore, I'll have to just salvage them into something else. But I should have the option to just undo or delete stuff.
5. Why does archiving an item remove the items from the group?!?!
   • Does it not make sense that if I used a group once, choose to archive it (and not delete it, if I had the option), that I would want to use it the same way again in the future?
   • Because I cant recursively archive groups. I would have to go from the bottom of the hierarchy up, archiving items before their parent group, so I don't lose track of them. BUT...
   • I cant archive the item because it will remove it from the group, and so my item database remains further cluttered! 🤦‍
6. Why are archived parents showing up in the "usage" info?
   • I know I just asked for items to remain in the parents when getting archived.
   • You could at least separate them out in a 2nd group within the section.
7. Why can I not set time availability for Menu Groups?
   • You can set the time availability of a Menu. You can set time specific pricing of an item. Why cant I set a time for Menu Groups?
   • I have to create a whole new top level menu for the ONE section of our daily menu that isn't available at all times of the day.
   • I have to create a whole new top level menu for a Special Item that's only available one day a week. 
8. Why can I not change settings such as "Visible To" recursively?
   • If I change the visibility of a Menu Group, why would I not want the groups and items within it to follow the same visibility? And if it does that, why is it not indicated?
   • Why is there not a Menu Group/Item Detail level option to "Inherit visibility from parent"?
9. Why can I not filter for anything but "name" in the databases?
   • Of all the things, this one might make me want to scream the loudest.
10. Why is there no "prune items/menu" feature? 
11. There's so much more. I don't have time to post every one. Because I need to dedicate that time to needling through this menu system. If I find something that demands to be posted, I'll edit and add it. 

I know I ask "why" a lot, but I am not interested in an answer unless you have an exceptionally remarkable reason including case studies as to why it is that way. A reason that's significantly better than "because that's the way they made it" or "we found it works best this way". Because I promise you, this is not the best. 

I so desperately want to build a mockup of how I feel this should be done but I do not have the time to do that for free. It would take many days just to do a low-fi functional mockup. If not weeks, to include all of Toast's software suite. Plus, you have a massive product team who should be doing this. And I have a restaurant to run.

@mattkaplan I am sincerely sorry to bother you. But this is bad. And it extends to every single part of your software. Including xtraCHEF and Payroll. (Don't get me started on payroll). But also reporting, marketing, POS management, Employee management, etc. The question continues to be "Why?". Why is this happening on such a large scale? And why does it continue to keep happening. This is an overwhelmingly systemic issue in Toast's UX.

And I know that there's a UI refresh coming. I've tried to reach out to product leaders at Toast with no response. I am terrified that this UI refresh will not fix any of the issues I've seen with Toast's UX. And any future changes will be relegated to the next refresh 5 years down the line.

I don't believe there's a solution to this that can be offered by the community or moderators, but I earnestly welcome the surprise.  I also welcome commiseration from anyone who feels the same way.

[JamesWalters]

Way late to this thread but curious how the engagement with toast has gone regarding this topic? I find that simple database management principles are not used by toast. For example, a list of sides should be in a database table and brought into a menu item by selecting sides, not the other way around where sides can be listed multiple times on every menu item. Also, managing specials are ridiculous as I cannot run a special for a day without touching every item I want on special. This is not done by date or time which means I have to touch menu items to put on special and then again to take them off special. The simple use of database and tables would greatly improve this product.

[au79teahouse]

Do you mind to share more information on the things you find inconvenient? People in this community might have workarounds to achieve the result you wanted.