Building a menu
Menus are built in Stampede from your Square items, under Ordering › Menus. Start from your Square categories, import a printed menu, or build one section at a time.
When you'd use it
When opening table ordering or collection, adding a seasonal or late-night menu, or setting up a food hall where several kitchens share one menu.
How it behaves
Menus, Items and Modifier Groups live in the Ordering section of Stampede. Items arrive from your Square catalogue with their modifiers, and a menu decides which of them guests see, in which section and when. Old links to these pages under Bookings redirect.
There are three ways to start. Generate from Square turns your Square catalogue into a draft menu, with categories as sections and their hours carried over; you name it and create it as an inactive menu ready to edit. The importer reads a menu PDF or photos of its pages, picks out dishes, prices and allergens, matches them to your catalogue, and you check each row before it becomes a menu. Or build it section by section from the product picker.
A menu can go three levels deep, such as restaurant, menu and course, and each section chooses whether guests scroll one page or pick from cards. Sections can hold sub-sections, which guests see as labelled groups under the heading. In the editor you can move a product to another section, or merge a whole section into another, without adding items again.
The product picker offers only what the menu’s venues sell, based on Square, and one checkbox adds every product shown. A Square sync tells you what changed at each venue. A venue with no Square catalogue yet can connect Square from the Products page and sync its items straight in. See what syncs with Square.
A menu item can be a set menu whose choices are the dishes. Guests pick a dish for each course, in table ordering, booking pre-orders and on the booking page, and staff see every course listed. Suggestion rules work at category level, such as burgers suggesting the bar, and pricier suggestions get their own row in the basket.
Each menu sets its own colours, card shape and hero photo. In a food hall each vendor’s section wears its own brand, and the menu can shuffle its vendors for each guest so nobody always holds the top slot, with any section kept in place.
Configuration and options
- Generate from Square
- A draft menu from the Square catalogue, categories as sections, hours carried over, created inactive.
- Import from PDF or photos
- Dishes, prices and allergens read from a printed menu, matched to the catalogue, checked row by row.
- Levels
- Up to three, such as restaurant, menu and course.
- Section layout
- Per section: one scrolling page, or cards to pick from.
- Sub-sections
- Labelled groups under a section heading.
- Move and merge
- Move a product between sections, or merge one section into another.
- Product picker
- Only what the menu’s venues sell, with a checkbox to add everything shown.
- Set menus
- An item whose choices are dishes, picked course by course.
- Suggestion rules
- Category-level pairings, with pricier suggestions on their own basket row.
- Look
- Colours, card shape and hero photo per menu; a brand per food-hall vendor.
- Vendor shuffle
- Food-hall vendors in a different order for each guest, with any section pinned.
Good to know
Generate from Square creates the menu inactive, so guests see nothing until you switch it on.
Items stay linked to Square: change an item there and the change syncs across.
Allergens read from an imported menu are a starting point. Check them against your own allergen records before the menu goes live.
Menus used for group pre-orders are built the same way.