Publish a menu
Publish a menu now or at a set time, send it for review first, and save changes to a menu that is already live.
On this page
Guests see a menu only once it is published and a location serves it. Until then you can build and change it as a draft. When a change reaches guests is explained in Drafts, publishing and versions; this page shows how to publish, step by step.
Change a menu's status
A menu's status — Draft, In review, Published, Paused or Archived — sits next to its name, on the menu's page and on the Menus page. What each one means for guests is in Drafts, publishing and versions.
To change it, click the status on the menu's page and choose what to do. The list offers only the moves your role allows from the current status, and none while you have unsaved changes: save or discard them first, so what you publish is what you see.
Publish now
Who can do this: Owner, Admin, and Content manager
Click the status of a draft or a paused menu and choose Publish now. The menu goes live at every location that serves it, and the publication is saved as a version — see Look back at earlier versions.
Publishing is refused when:
- a dish has no price in a currency the menu is shown in, at a location that serves it. Add it in the dish for your default currency, or on the menu's Dish changes tab or the location's Overrides tab for the others — see Prices in several currencies;
- you have not confirmed your email address yet.
Send a menu for review
If your role can edit menus but not publish them, a draft goes to review first, and someone who may approve it publishes it.
Who can do this: Owner, Admin, Content manager, and Content editor
Submit the draft
Click the status and choose Submit for review. The menu shows In review. You can still edit and save it; reviewers always see the latest version. To take it back, choose Withdraw, and it is a draft again.
Approve or reject it
A reviewer opens the menu, clicks the status and chooses Approve & publish to publish it, or Reject to send it back as a draft.
Who can do this: Owner, Admin, and Content manager
Send changes to a live menu for review
If your role can edit menus but not publish them, saving a published menu doesn't change what guests see: Send for review sends your changes to a reviewer. A banner above the builder then says Your changes are waiting for review. Edit brings the changes back into the builder to change them before you send them again, and Withdraw takes them back. Changes you make while they wait join them when you send again.
What goes to review is what the builder holds: groups, categories and dishes, their order, names and hours, and the menu's name and SEO texts. A live menu's dish changes, promotions, schedule and pictures are made by someone who can publish it: on those tabs, a note says so.
A menu has one set of changes waiting at a time. While someone else's wait, yours can be sent once theirs are decided.
Who can do this: Owner, Admin, Content manager, and Content editor
A reviewer sees the banner too, with who sent the changes. Show changes shows the menu in the builder as the changes would leave it, without changing anything. Approve puts them live as the menu's next version; Reject turns them down, and the menu stays as it is. If the live menu has changed since, so that the changes no longer fit — a dish they move has been removed, for example — approving is refused: the author can send them again, or you reject them.
Who can do this: Owner, Admin, and Content manager
Publish at a set time
On Pro and Ultimate. You choose when a draft or a paused menu goes live, and it is published on its own at that time.
Who can do this: Owner, Admin, and Content manager
Open the schedule
On the menu's page, open the Schedule tab and find Scheduled publication.
Pick the time
Choose the date and time in Publish on, on your own clock, and click Schedule.
- The date and time the menu goes live, on your own clock.
- Schedule sets it.
The tab then shows when the menu goes live, with Cancel to call it off. Until that time guests keep seeing what is live now. A menu that is in review is not published by its schedule while it stays in review, and taking it out of review — withdrawn by its author or sent back by a reviewer — cancels the scheduled time.
Save changes to a live menu
On a published menu, the save bar tells you that saving publishes your changes. Each save is the menu's next version, so you can always see what guests were shown before.
- A category renamed for this menu only, not saved yet.
- Discard drops every unsaved change.
- Save changes publishes them as a new version.
Some changes do not wait for the save bar: the serving schedule and the changes to dishes for this menu have Save buttons of their own, and promo banners and recommended dishes are saved as you make them. On a published menu they reach guests straight away.
How soon guests see it
Guests who open the menu after you publish see the new version, and a menu already open on a guest's phone updates itself — see How fast changes reach guests.