Menus

A menu is sections, and sections hold items. An item carries a name, a description, a price, and — where you declare them — its calories and the allergens it contains. None of that is a picture of text: it is data the software knows the shape of, which is what lets the same menu appear on a television, on a phone, and in a price list without anybody redrawing it.

This is the difference between a menu and an image of a menu. Changing a price in a JPEG means opening a design tool and re-uploading; changing it here means typing a number and publishing.

The price on the item is the company price. Where one branch charges something else, set a branch price on that item and that branch alone shows it — every other shop keeps the company price, including shops you open later.

Clear the branch price and that shop goes back to the company price. There is no third state: a branch either has its own figure or it does not.

A menu is published, not saved. Editing changes the working copy; publishing takes a snapshot of it, and that snapshot is what screens receive. Until you publish, a wall is showing what you published last, which is the behaviour you want while somebody is halfway through retyping the drinks.

The menus page marks a menu whose working copy has moved past what was published. If a menu is on screens under the campaign that is currently active, publishing pushes it to those screens as well.

A menu is chosen the same way an image is: open a screen, choose Change content, and pick it from the Menus band. Only published menus appear there, because a menu you have not published has nothing a television could be given.

The board sizes itself. Columns come from how many lines there are rather than from how wide the screen is, sold-out items are struck through rather than removed, and calories and allergens print only where you declared them.

Every branch has an address a customer can read the menu at: the branch's display address with an m in place of the d, so the shop at manda.menu/d/K7M2Q/lobby has its menu at manda.menu/m/K7M2Q/lobby. Phone menu, on the branch card, shows the address and a QR code you can print.

It shows what that branch's screens are showing, at that branch's prices. A shop with no menu on any screen shows every published menu instead, because the obligation to have a price list does not depend on having bought a television.