How do I stop food orders when the kitchen is closed?

Set one kitchen hours range — outside it food can't be ordered, while the categories you tick (drinks, for example) stay orderable.

If your bar stays open after the kitchen shuts, Kitchen hours stops food orders on their own — drinks keep flowing. It's one simple range, deliberately lighter than per-category serving times: outside it, guests can't order food from any ordering channel — at the table, collection or delivery — and only the categories you tick as exceptions (drinks, for example) stay orderable.

Setting it up

On Settings → Order & Pay (the gear at the top right of the Orders screen opens it), find the Kitchen hours card in the Go live section:

• Switch on Grey out kitchen dishes outside kitchen hours.
• Set Kitchen opens at and Kitchen closes at — your venue's local time. A close time earlier than the open time runs past midnight.
• Tick the categories that should stay orderable when the kitchen is closed — typically your drinks categories. Everything unticked counts as kitchen food.

Outside the range, kitchen dishes show on the menu greyed out with an honest "kitchen's closed" note — guests can still read the menu, they just can't add those dishes to an order. The times are re-checked when the guest pays, so the kitchen closing mid-browse still holds — and it holds for collection and delivery orders too: an order for a later time can't sneak kitchen food in while the kitchen is shut.

Kitchen hours vs serving times

They work together:

• Kitchen hours is the blunt instrument — one range, everything not ticked as an exception.
• Per-category serving times (Settings → Menu and stock → Serving times) remain the fine-tuning tool — a lunch menu served 12:00–15:00, a late-night snacks category, and so on.

A dish must pass both: inside kitchen hours and inside its own category's serving windows.

Related: How do I set up and run Order & Pay? · Collection and delivery · How do I build my menu? · Why is there no order button on the menu page?