Set Up Your Restaurant

Everything a customer sees, and most of how your kitchen works, comes from five pages of the portal: Settings, Menu, Tables, Take Away and Receipt Format.

Settings

The Settings page opens read-only. Click Edit in the top-right corner to unlock the fields, make your changes, then click Save Changes (or Cancel to discard them). Pressing a control before you click Edit opens a "Not in Edit Mode" box that tells you so, and leaving the page with changes you haven't saved asks first: Stay or Leave Without Saving. The page is a column of cards:

• Restaurant Details — name, Restaurant URL, description, address, phone, and a photo shown at the top of your customer menu. When you choose a photo, a square frame opens: drag the photo and zoom until the frame holds the part you want, then confirm. JPEG, PNG and WebP photos are shrunk to fit the 500 KB limit for you.
• More Languages — which languages appear in the language switcher, chosen separately for Customer Apps (the menu and takeaway) and Team Apps (the portal, kitchen, staff and cashier screens). You can offer Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Arabic, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese and French; English is always available. The phone, desktop and MenuBaton Station apps are in English.
• Order Settings — Pay on Order (see Payments), Time to pay (minutes) (see Time to pay), and the order numbers and Daily reset time described below.
• Kitchen Screens — where orders go, when unfinished orders time out, and whether chefs mark dishes sold out. See The Kitchen Screens card.
• MenuBaton Station Apps — the change table password that staff type on your ordering tablets. See MenuBaton Station.
• Automatic Sign-out — see below.
• Timezone — the clock your restaurant runs on: order times, reports and printed tickets all use it, and the card shows the time there right now. Type a city or a UTC offset to find yours.
• Menu Currency — the currency used for menu prices, customer checkout and every total your team sees.
• Price Addon and Tips — automatic charges and customer tipping, both covered below.

Order numbers and the daily reset time

Every order gets a short number that your staff and kitchen call it by — #12 on the kitchen screens and tickets, T#12 on the Orders page. Numbers count up to the Highest order number (10,000 unless you change it) and then start again at 1, so they stay short. The number is only a label: a receipt link always points at the order itself, so two orders sharing a number never mix up.

Switch on Daily reset time and choose when your restaurant's day ends, on the 24-hour clock. It is used three times:

• the first order after it is number 1 again;
• dishes marked sold out for Rest of today come back on sale at it;
• takeaway pickup times are offered up to it.

If you serve past midnight, set it to when service ends, so an order at 1am still belongs to the night before. With it off, order numbers don't restart each day, and Rest of today ends at midnight.

The Kitchen Screens card

• Where orders go — Print orders for the kitchen (what every restaurant starts with), Send orders to the kitchen app, or Both. With printing only, orders don't appear on the kitchen and staff screens, and an order is completed as soon as its kitchen tickets have printed, so its customer sees it as Served from then on. See Set up kitchen printing.
• Time out unfinished orders after — 1, 2, 4, 8 or 24 hours; 4 unless you change it. It can't be switched off, and the time you choose applies to orders already waiting too. An order still unfinished that long after it was placed, or after its pickup time, is marked Timed Out: its remaining dishes count as served — its customer sees them as Served — and it leaves every kitchen and staff screen. Its kitchen ticket still prints if it hasn't printed yet. To finish orders sooner, use Complete order or Complete all orders. See When an order times out.
• Chefs can mark dishes sold out — on unless you turn it off. Off, only you and your cashiers can, and the kitchen app has no Menu page.

Automatic sign-out

In a web browser, the portal signs itself out when nobody has used it for the time you choose under Sign out after this long without activity: from 10 minutes to 24 hours, and 24 hours unless you change it. A key, click, touch, scroll or mouse movement in any tab of the portal counts as use. Changes not yet saved are lost, and the sign-in page says "You were signed out after … without activity." The desktop and phone apps don't sign out by themselves.

Build your menu

The Menu page has two tabs: Items and Categories. It opens in view mode: you see every dish and can mark one sold out, but nothing else changes until you click Edit at the top of the page. Edit brings the + Add button and each row's Edit and Delete, with Save and Cancel in its place. Nothing you add, change or delete reaches your menu until you click Save; Cancel throws it all away.

1. Click Edit, open the Categories tab and click + Add Category to create groups such as Starters, Mains, Drinks, clicking OK after each. Sort Order decides the order they appear in for customers.
2. Switch to the Items tab and click + Add Item. Give the dish a Name, an optional Description, a Price (greater than 0, in your menu currency), a Category, an optional Image and a Sort Order, and click OK.
3. Click Save at the top of the page to put it all on your menu.

Dish photos. Choosing a photo opens "Choose the part customers see": a 4:3 frame, the shape customers see on the menu and when they open the dish. Drag the photo and zoom until the frame holds the part you want. The photo is shrunk to fit the 200 KB limit for you; Adjust reopens the frame while you are still editing.

Type in Search items to find a dish. Click a column heading — Name, Category, Price, Available or Sort Order — to sort the list by it, and click it again to reverse. Sorted by Available, the dishes in stock come first, then the sold-out ones in the order they come back.

Every change you save is live for customers the next time they open the menu — nothing to reprint. Deleting a category leaves its dishes in place; they simply become uncategorised and still appear on the menu. A dish you no longer serve at all is simply deleted.

Sold out

When a dish runs out, click its Available cell — In Stock, in green — and choose For 4 hours, Rest of today or Until I turn it back on. The cell then says when it comes back. Customers still see the dish, greyed out, and no one can order it; a customer who already had it in their cart is told so when they confirm, and it is taken out of their order. Click the cell again and choose Back In Stock when it is back.

• All Sold Out marks every dish sold out at once — to close early, say. It asks "For how long?", and dishes already sold out get the same time. All In Stock puts every dish back on sale. Both ask before they do anything.
• Sold out works in view mode, and your cashiers can do it too, from the Menu page of their own apps. So can your chefs, while Chefs can mark dishes sold out is on in the Kitchen Screens card.

Tables, counters & QR codes

On the Tables page, click + Add Table and give each physical table a Table Name (for example Table 1 or Window Seat A) and a Capacity. Every table takes orders as soon as it is saved.

Each table row then gives you:

• ↓ QR Code — download the table's QR code as an image. Print it and put it on the table. Scanning it opens your menu with that table already selected.
• Open Link — open the same menu yourself to check how it looks.
• Edit / Delete — rename or remove the table. Past orders from a deleted table are kept and shown as "Deleted Table".

+ Add Counter adds a counter: a place where customers order on a MenuBaton Station tablet, give their name, and pay before the order goes to the kitchen. A counter is used only on Stations, so it has no QR code. Tables and counters together count towards your plan's table limit.

Your general menu link — the menu with no table attached — is on the Dashboard, with a Copy button. Use it on your website or social media: it opens your takeaway menu, so people can browse and order takeaway from wherever they are. On a phone the menu shows two dishes to a row, and on a computer it fills the screen with more.

Take Away

The Take Away page holds your takeaway QR code, two buttons for a rush — Pause and Kitchen busy — and your Pickup times. Your cashiers have the pause and busy buttons too, in their own apps.

Take away QR code

One QR code for the whole restaurant: ↓ Download QR and print it for your counter or window. Customers who scan it order exactly as they would at a table, and when they press Confirm they give their first name and last initial — the order is filed under their name instead of a table number, so you know who to call when the food is ready.

Pause take-away orders

For a rush you can't keep up with: Pause 30 min, Pause 1 hour, Pause for the rest of today or Pause until I turn it back on. Each asks first. While paused, your takeaway link still shows your menu but takes no orders, and customers read "Take-away orders are paused right now." Orders already placed are not affected. Take orders again ends the pause early.

Kitchen busy

For a rush that doesn't need takeaway stopped: while busy is on, every pickup time offered is 15 or 30 minutes later — choose which in the When busy: box — so new orders give the kitchen more time. Turn it on with Busy for 30 min, Busy for 1 hour, Busy for the rest of today or Busy until I turn it off, and off with Turn busy off; each asks first. Orders already placed keep their times, and busy changes nothing while pickup times are off.

Pickup times

Switch on Pickup times (click Edit on the card first, and Save after), and every takeaway order gets a time to collect it. Customers see it in their cart before they order: Ready for pickup at about 12:30, or, with Pay on Order on, a list that starts with As soon as possible (about 12:30) and lets them choose a later time — full slots stay in the list, greyed out. Customers can also leave a phone number, so you can reach them about the order. Your team sees the time on the order, as Pickup 12:30, and on the kitchen ticket.

• Slot length — 15 or 30 minutes.
• Orders per slot — how many takeaway orders one slot takes (5 unless you change it). A full slot sends the customer to the next one. Dine-in orders don't count, so leave room for them.
• Minimum wait (minutes) — the shortest time from ordering to pickup (20 unless you change it); see below.
• Pickup hours — for each day of the week, on the 24-hour clock. Every day is all day, 00:00 to 23:59, until you change it. Add hours adds a range, × removes one (a day with none has no pickups), and Use Monday's hours every day copies Monday to the whole week. Each range can take its own Max per slot — fewer at your peak; leave it empty to use Orders per slot.
• Pre-order tickets print — As soon as ordered, or from 10 minutes to 2 hours before pickup (30 minutes unless you change it). The order is on the kitchen screens at once either way. Until its ticket prints, the Orders page says when it will — Kitchen Print at 18:00 — and Force Kitchen Print prints it sooner.

Pickup times are for today only: today ends at your daily reset time, or midnight. Late in the day, customers may read "There are no pickup times left today." With Pay on Order off, customers can't choose a time: each order gets the first one with room.

Why the earliest pickup can be half an hour away

The earliest pickup time is the time the customer orders, plus your Minimum wait (minutes), rounded up to the start of the next slot. Slots start on the hour and then every Slot length: at :00, :15, :30 and :45 with 15-minute slots, or at :00 and :30 with 30-minute slots. A slot that starts before the minimum wait is up is skipped, even if it is only a minute early.

With a minimum wait of 20 minutes and 15-minute slots:

So the wait is never shorter than your minimum wait, and can be up to one slot longer: 20 to 35 minutes here, or 20 to 50 minutes with 30-minute slots. It is later still when that slot already has its Orders per slot (the order goes to the next slot with room), when the order comes in before your Pickup hours start, or while Kitchen busy is on.

To offer earlier pickups:

• Lower Minimum wait. At 10 minutes with 15-minute slots, customers wait 10 to 25 minutes.
• Choose 15-minute rather than 30-minute slots.

Click Edit on the card before you change them, and Save after. Orders already placed keep their pickup times.

Receipt Format

What every receipt says above and below the order — company name, address, contact number, email, website, extra text and a footer — printed, on the MenuBaton Station screen, and in the PDF a customer saves. It is set in the Restaurant Portal only; see Decide what every receipt says.

Price add-ons & tips

Both live at the bottom of the Settings page (click Edit first).

Price Addon — automatic charges applied to every order, such as GST or a holiday surcharge. Click +, name the add-on and choose a method:

• Times a percentage — the value is in hundredths of a percent, so 30 adds 0.3% and 1500 adds 15%.
• Add a fee — the value is whole currency units, so 10 adds 10 to the order.

Add-ons apply one after another, top to bottom, so their order matters — use the ↑ and ↓ buttons to arrange them. You can have up to 10.

Tips — switch tipping on and add up to five percentage buttons (each a whole number from 1 to 100) that customers see at checkout. Turn on Client input own tips to also let them type their own tip, as a percentage or a fixed amount. The tip is calculated after all price add-ons — see How an order total is built.