Building Your Menu
We've got videos and articles to help you through the process. Follow these steps and you will have a beautiful menu!
Although we suggest to get the most out of your system you go through every article when you get a chance, we have put together this roadmap of articles and videos that we feel are most critical for a basic setup.
Before you start, you may wish to Disable Thr!ve Online Updates. This is a feature that automatically syncs menu changes to your online system. However when you are first building your menu it is easier to build it all, then import it to the online system. Turn this back on when your menu is complete and set up online so further changes will import.
Navigate to Manager Home > General > Store Setup.
There is a checkbox that reads “Update Thr!ve Online Automatically When Items Change”. UNCHECK this box.
1. Setup Taxes and Printers
Tax Structure: Manager Home > Tax/Tender/Cash > Tax Structure
There is a dropdown called “Tax Structure” The system is automatically set up with one structure that is inactive until you configure it. Make sure you have a tax structure set up so you can apply it to all departments as you build your menu. If you add it later, you must manually apply the taxes to every category individually.
Printers: Manager Home > Config > Printers
We suggest you set up your printers early in the game so you can default which printers to print to when setting up your categories. All articles on printers can be found here.
2. Creating Your Departments/Categories/Items:
Thr!ve uses a system of Departments, Categories and Items to keep your menu organized. Here we've summarized the most important steps for set up. You can see all articles on these sections here to learn more about advanced features.Departments: Are used to group items that share the same sizes, may share modifiers, and logically belong together for reporting purposes. Common departments include Appetizers, Salads, Pizzas, Sandwiches, Entrees, Drinks, Desserts, Etc.
Categories: Help you organize items within the department. Most departments will have at least 2 categories - 1 for the items that people order (such as sandwiches) and 1 for the modifiers (such as ham, cheese, etc.). Since you can set defaults for many category attributes, some people like to create multiple categories for different priced items ("regular" toppings and "gourmet" toppings for instances). Also keep in mind that if you are using online ordering, categories will help organize what your customers see, so you may want to group "Meats", "Cheeses", "Veggies" or "Breads" vs "Wings" into different categories.
Items: Are of course the lowest level and can be either something ordered by a customer directly or a modifier (such as salad dressing or mayonnaise).
Create Departments: Manager Home > Items
Thr!ve automatically comes with the first department entered just as an example. Keep in mind, Thr!ve’s print order is based off of hierarchy in this Items List. The items from Department at the top of the list are always going to print at the top of the kitchen receipt. (You can resort these if needed)
- Setting Up Departments
- Setting Up Fractions - If you sell pizza or wish to allow customers to order half and half of specific items you can set up your fractions while you're setting up departments. If not, then skip to Create Categories.
Create Categories: Manager Home > Items
Once you have set up your departments, you will need to add categories to those departments. Departments typically will have 2 categories, items and modifiers (toppings). Also, while you're in the category sections, you can setup your inclusions, requirements, pricing and printing defaults for that category.
- Setting Up Categories
- Setting Up Pricing - Basic
- Pricing For Modifiers/Toppings
- Topping Based Pricing (only used if the additional per topping price varies based on the total # of toppings, i.e. toppings 1-2 are free, 3-4 are $1.00, 5+ are $.50)
- Inclusions Setup
- Creating A New Requirement
- Adding A Requirement To An Item
- Item / Category Printing Setup
Setting Up Your Items: Manager Home > Items
Items go inside the categories. These will be the actual items that you will add to your menu later.
We recommend that you create items in the "modifier" or "topping" type categories first, so they will be available to use when setting up your menu items.
Tip: Remember, you can only share items within the same department. So, if you've got "Salami" as a pizza topping, you'll also need to add it as a sandwich topping. This is because different departments have different size & price configurations.
3. Build Your Menu:
Now that you have configured everything; it's time to get creative and build your menu! All articles on building and managing your menu can be found here.Menu Tabs: Start by creating and configuring menu tabs, this is done in Manager > Config > Menus
Buttons:
Once you have created all the tabs you want on your menu, you can start making buttons for your items.
- Basic Buttons
- Multiple Buttons (Auto Generate)
4. Configure Messages:
Messages are a quick and easy way to communicate on a ticket without having to type in a request or direction, as well as not affect the price of an item. For example, "No Mayo" or "Gate Code Required".5. Configure Your Coupons/Discounts:
Although this is not a necessity to going live, if you plan on offering special deals frequently; it's a good idea to check and make sure your coupons and discounts are in order. All articles and videos on special pricing can be found here.Now that you have configured everything and you're happy with your menu, let's start testing it! Play around on your menu, see if your setup works best for your daily workflow. Now is the perfect time to make tweaks if you find that something is not working for you. Don't be worried about filling your system up with test data, you can call your account manager when you are ready to go live and we can reset your system to clear out the data and start fresh.
Got questions you can't find the answer to here? Let us know so we can improve the help system!