How do I build set menus and deals?

Group dishes into set menus and deals with one bundle price, supplements, step-by-step picks and prices by how many a guest picks.

Part of How do I build my menu and share it with guests?. This part covers set menus and deals: what they are, building one step by step, and one deal with several prices.

Set menus & deals (Pro and above, or Order & Pay)

The Menu page's Set menus & deals tab (beside Dishes at the top) is the ONE place to make a set menu — never build one as a dish with choice steps (the dish form's choices step says so: "Making a set menu?" with a Use Set menus & deals button that takes you here). Set menus & deals come with the Pro plan and above (the plans with pre-orders) or an Order & Pay product; a plan without them sees the tab locked with how to get it, and a venue with only Your website doesn't see the tab. Here you bundle existing dishes into one price: a course-based set menu ("Christmas Day — Adults", "3 courses for £25"), a simple bundle ("burger + any drink £15") or a pick-several deal ("any 3 for £15" — set a slot's Guest picks count above 1) — one engine covers all three. For the pick-several kind there's a shortcut: Build-your-own deal pre-shapes a pick-any-3, whole-category deal for you — choose the section and the price and it's ready to save. When a guest picks several from one slot they can choose the same dish more than once by default; switch on Each pick must be a different dish to require variety.

The editor's last step, Where and when, answers three things separately:

• Where it shows — on your menu page: At the top of your menu (the default), Inside a category (announced as a compact chip under that category's heading, with a small "Part of …" marker on each of its dishes), At the top and in its category (one set menu, two cards — guests pay the same wherever they tap it), or Hidden — only where you pick it (never on your menu page).
• Where it can be ordered — tick Order & Pay (guests order it at the table, or for collection or delivery) and/or Pre-orders (guests choose it when they pre-order for a booking, on any day pre-orders are on). Tick neither and it's offered only on the special dates whose pre-order menu ticks it — see special dates. If a special date ticks it, the editor says so ("Also offered on: Christmas Day (special date)"). A place your plan no longer includes stays listed while it's ticked, so you can untick it.
• When it's available — optional day-and-time windows; no times means always available. Order & Pay checks the time now; a pre-order checks the booking's own day and time.
• Only on these dates — optional: click + Add dates for a first day and, if it runs longer, a last day (up to 6 ranges, each up to 92 days) — a festive menu 1–24 December, Christmas Day's own menu on the 25th. No dates means every day. On other days it isn't on your menu page and can't be ordered in Order & Pay, and a pre-order only offers it for a booking on one of its dates. The list reads it back ("Only 1–24 Dec 2026").

A shown set menu that can't be ordered in Order & Pay still appears on your menu page, view-only: tapping it shows what's in it — each course's dishes with their allergens and dietary marks — and where it can be had. A hidden set menu that isn't ticked for Order & Pay never reaches your public menu at all, and neither do the dishes of a hidden category it's built from — an unreleased Christmas menu stays unreleased.

In Order & Pay (only for venues with Order & Pay): every shown set menu or deal ticked for Order & Pay (except one priced by how many they pick) has an Apply automatically switch, on by default — a guest whose basket contains dishes that fill it gets the deal price even if they never tapped the card, always in the guest's favour, folding the dearest qualifying dishes into the bundle. Switch it off and it only applies when a guest taps the card and picks their dishes. A hidden one ticked for Order & Pay always applies by itself there. For example, with "3 cocktails for £15" and four cocktails at £8, £7, £6 and £5 in the basket, the £8 + £7 + £6 become the £15 bundle and the £5 one stays full price — the guest pays £20 and the basket names the deal with the saving shown. An automatic apply only ever happens when it makes the order cheaper.

Deleting the only dish a set menu picks for one of its courses warns you the same way, naming the set menu and the course; until that course has a dish again the set menu isn't offered, and its row on Set menus & deals says so ("Not offered: Main has no dishes").

Build a set menu or deal, step by step (Pro and above, or Order & Pay)

• Click Add a set menu or deal. It's built in four short steps, then a Review. Step one, The set menu or deal: its Name, an optional guest-facing Description, and an optional Who’s it for? word ("Adults", "Kids" — up to 24 characters) used when guests choose one each: "2 adults' set menus · 1 kids' set menu". Leave it empty and the name is used.
• What’s in it: add up to 6 slots — one per course or choice ("Starter", "Main", "Any drink"). Each slot works one of two ways:
• Hand-picked dishes (the default) — pick its dishes from your real menu (searchable, grouped by category, up to 40 per slot). Picks are references, never copies — a dish's price, description, photo, dietary badges, allergens, choice steps and VAT rate all ride along, and renaming a dish updates the set menu too. A hand-picked slot needs at least one dish before you can save.
• A whole category — the slot offers whatever is in the category you choose, kept up to date automatically: the perfect shape for "any 3 small plates for £15". A dish you add to that category later joins on its own — the dish's save screen tells you so, names the deal and offers a tick-box to keep the dish out. Dishes kept out are listed on the slot ("Kept out of the deal"). Category slots don't carry supplements, and if the category is emptied or deleted the deal simply stops being offered until you fix it.

Give any hand-picked dish an optional Supplement £ — "+£4.00 for the steak" — charged on top when it's picked. A chosen dish's own priced choices also add on top.

• Price: one Bundle price — what guests pay instead of the chosen dishes' own prices (from £0.30 up to £2,000), per person for a set menu. Or switch on Priced by how many they pick (below).
• Where and when — where it shows, where it can be ordered and when it's available (above). Leave Live on, check the Review and press Add. The live/pause switch on the list stops it instantly whenever you need to.

A few rules worth knowing: a sold-out dish drops out of its pick-lists automatically, and if a slot ends up with no available dishes the whole set menu stops being offered until you fix it. Automatic promotions never apply to set menus & deals. A promo code the guest types CAN come off deal prices in Order & Pay while the Promo codes can be used on deal prices toggle (Settings → Order & Pay, on by default) is on; a code limited to certain items never touches a deal (see How do promotions, deals, rewards and gift cards work together?). If you've set dish VAT rates, Order & Pay receipts, the daily sales email and the per-item sales CSV split the bundle price across the chosen dishes' rates (in the CSV, one row per rate — "Steak Night (20% VAT portion)"; if any chosen dish has no rate, the VAT cells stay blank rather than guessing).

One deal, several prices — priced by how many they pick (Pro and above, or Order & Pay)

Some menus print the same offer at more than one size — "3 small plates £14.99 · 5 for £19.99 · 7 for £25", or a set menu at 1/2/3-course prices. That's one deal with a price ladder, not several deals. In the deal's editor, switch on Priced by how many they pick: the single bundle price steps aside ("Set by the tiers below") and you list tiers instead — each tier is a number and its price, Add another tier takes you up to six. What the numbers count depends on the deal's shape:

• One slot (a pick-several deal): the tiers count dishes picked from that slot. Guests pick a number that matches a price — the picker shows the choice plainly ("Pick 3, 5 or 7") with a running count, and the price shown is always the matched tier's. A number in between can't be added; instead of showing a wrong total, the picker says what reaches the next price.
• Several slots (a courses set menu): the tiers count courses. Every course becomes optional — a guest who doesn't want a starter taps Skip this course — and the number of courses they keep sets the price.

On the guest's menu a tiered deal prints its whole ladder ("3 for £14.99 · 5 for £19.99 · 7 for £25") on its card and on its category chip — never just the smallest price. The order line, the guest's receipt and your sales figures all use the matched tier's price, with any supplements and priced choice steps added on top exactly as on a single-price deal.

Three rules worth knowing:

• Bigger tiers must cost more. Each tier's count and its price must both go up — a ladder where 5 costs the same as (or less than) 3 is refused when you save, and the menu importer refuses to draft one from a photo for the same reason: it's a money-losing typo, not a real menu shape.
• A tiered deal never applies automatically. With several prices there's no single tier a basket could honestly be folded into, so the Apply automatically switch doesn't appear on a tiered deal — guests choose the deal, and their number, themselves.
• A tiered deal can't be hidden while it's ticked for Order & Pay. Hidden there means it applies by itself, which a tiered deal never does, so the editor won't let you combine the two. A hidden tiered set menu offered only where you pick it — on a special date's pre-order menu — is fine.

Availability windows work exactly as on any other deal — a lunchtime-only "3/5/7 plates" deal is fine, and outside its times the card shows its times and can't be started. And when the menu importer reads a printed offer with several pick-count prices, it proposes it as one tiered deal with the full ladder shown for you to accept — see How do I check the dishes a menu import read?.

Related: How do I build my menu and share it with guests? · How do I add dishes and choices to my menu? · How do I set up ordering at the table? · How does pre-ordering work for large bookings?