Manage your menus across locations and sales channels
Who is this article for?
About multi-menu management
With multi-channel menu management, you can control where your menu is sold across your POS, online ordering and kiosks all from one place.
Buyer-facing organisation: Control how items appear to customers on all sales channels.
Channel visibility: Determine which items show up on restaurant POS modes, online ordering, kiosks and delivery apps.
Time-based availability: Set when items are sold throughout the day.
Location-specific offerings: Control what’s available at different business locations.
Before you begin
Items must be added to a menu and menu groups to appear on customer-facing channels. Even if you’ve assigned an item to a channel in your item library, it won’t show up on Square Online Ordering, ordering profile or kiosks until it’s added to a menu and menu group.
Changes to menu management
If you’ve been using Square for a while, you may notice some changes to how menu management works. Here’s what’s new and what’s changing:
- Your customers won’t see any changes to how your menu appears online, or on kiosks.
- All your existing items, modifiers, variations and menu structure remain intact.
- Categories continue to be used for reporting and kitchen routing
- Location and sales channel management is now managed in menus: Instead of using categories and items to control what appears on Square Online, ordering profile and kiosks, you’ll now use menus.
- One place for all channels: Manage your quick-service, full-service or bar mode POS, online ordering, kiosk, and delivery app menus all from menus.
- Menu groups replace display organisation: What you may have organised as categories for buyer-facing purposes are now called menu groups.
- Items must be in menus: For items to appear on buyer-facing channels (except Square Online Shop All template), they must be assigned to a menu.
- We created menus based on your existing channel setup (eg ‘Online Menu’ for Square Online).
- We converted your buyer-facing categories into menu groups.
- We moved any uncategorised items into an ‘Items’ menu group.
- We preserved all your printer routing and reporting categories.
- Categories page: You can still access categories for reporting and kitchen routing, but you can no longer assign categories to buyer-facing channels (except Square Online Shop All template).
- Item management: When creating new items from the item library, you’ll need to assign them to a menu, and menu groups for them to appear on customer-facing channels.
- POS display groups: Continue to work for restaurant POS layout – no changes to existing functionality.
- No action required: Your menus are already set up and working – you can continue operating as normal or explore the new multichannel features when you’re ready.
- Troubleshoot: If you are using iOS or Android POS devices and only want to see POS menus on your POS, you’ll need to update your app. If your app is not updated, you may see menus for all of your sales channels on your POS.
Menu management for different types of businesses
- POS integration: Your restaurant POS layout will continue to sync with your menus – what you organise in menus will appear the same way on your POS devices.
- POS display groups: If you used display groups previously, these remain available for advanced POS layout control alongside menu groups.
- Full control: Manage all of your sales channels from one place.
- Flexible options: Use menu groups for simple, unified management or continue using display groups for complex POS arrangements.
- Online focus: Menus primarily control your online ordering, kiosks and delivery apps.
- POS layout separate: Your in-store POS layout is still managed separately through categories and items.
- Upgrade option: If you want unified menu management including POS layout, consider adding a restaurant mode (quick-service, full-service or bar mode) to your account. Learn how to Create and assign modes.
- Restaurant sales channels: Your food and beverage channels (quick-service, full-service or bar mode POS, online ordering, Cash App profile and kiosk) are now managed through menus.
- Retail sales channels: Your retail channels (all other POS modes and Square Online shop all template) continue to be managed through categories and items.
- Square Online Shop All: If you use the Shop All template on Square Online (which shows both restaurant and retail items), you’ll still use categories to control what items appear.
Understand menu groups versus POS display groups
For sellers using quick-service, full-service or bar modes, you can use both systems together – POS display groups for advanced POS layout control and menu groups for unified sales channel management. Review the differences between menu groups versus POS display groups.
- Purpose: Primary way to organise items for menus across all desired sales channels. Unless you have specific POS layout needs, this is recommended.
- Sales channels: Work across your POS, Square online ordering and kiosks.
- Sharing: Each menu group belongs to one specific menu and cannot be shared across multiple menus or within a menu.
- Purpose: Designed specifically for organising POS layout in quick-service, full-service or bar modes. POS display groups do not show up on your menu in the Square Dashboard. Display groups are used to optimise POS layout speed for staff as POS display groups can be shared within a Menu. For example, I have sides as a standalone group, but I also want sides to show up within my mains menu group on POS.
- Sales channels: Display groups only appear on your restaurant POS, not on other channels (online ordering and kiosks).
- Sharing: Can be shared within a single menu if you have duplicate groups that you want to use on your POS.
Sharing capability
- Menu groups: Cannot be shared between menus or within a menu. If you want the same grouping in multiple menus or in multiple places in a menu, you’ll need to create separate menu groups.
- POS display groups: Can be shared within a single menu, allowing you to reuse the same grouping in different parts of your POS layout.
Sales channels
- Menu groups: Control visibility across all your sales channels (POS, online ordering, kiosks) if desired.
- POS display groups: Only appear on your restaurant points of sale – they do not affect online ordering and kiosks.
Menus list view
- Menu groups: Show up within the menus list view on the Square Dashboard and on your restaurant points of sale.
- POS display groups: Show up on your restaurant points of sale, not within the menus list view.