What happens when a menu closes

A meal prep kitchen cooks to a deadline, so every menu on your site has a real order cutoff, unlike a store that is always open. Cutoff night can be completely hands-off: when a menu reaches its end date, your site closes ordering, tidies up, and opens the next menu right on time. Here is what happens behind the scenes, how to close a menu yourself, and how to take a late order after the cutoff.

At the cutoff

  • Ordering closes at the menu's end date and time, with nobody at a keyboard. The order page shows Orders Closed until the next menu opens, and the menu shows as inactive in your admin.
  • A menu with more than one schedule closes each schedule at its own end date. Customers can still order on a schedule that is open.
  • If the next menu is enabled and its start date has arrived, it goes live on its own. No clicks needed.

Closing a menu yourself

You do not have to wait for the end date. To take a menu out of use, open it, untick Menu Enabled and click Update. The menu stops taking orders, and its meals, dates and orders stay as they are. If it is the menu customers order from, the order page shows Orders Closed until another menu opens. Tick Menu Enabled again to bring it back, as long as no other enabled menu has the same or overlapping dates.

Late orders after the cutoff

A regular calls an hour after the cutoff, and the kitchen still has room. Force Orders Enabled opens a closed menu again, so the late order lands on that menu, with its delivery dates and the rest of its orders.

  1. Open the menu that has closed. Once a menu is past its end date (the last one, when it has more than one schedule), its page shows Force Orders Enabled in place of Menu Enabled.
  2. Tick Force Orders Enabled and click Update. The alert at the top of the page shows that orders are live on this menu.
  3. Take the order. The customer can order on your site as usual, or you can place it for them. See How to impersonate a customer.
  4. Untick Force Orders Enabled and click Update.

Keep it short, because of what it does while it is on:

  • The menu is open on your site for every customer, not only the one who called.
  • It is the only menu that takes orders. Your current menu waits, and the next menu does not open, until you untick the box. The alert on those menus says that Force Orders Enabled is set on a different menu.
  • One menu at a time can be forced open.
  • Unfinished orders are not cleared while it is on.

What happens to unfinished orders

  • A cart that never reached checkout and has no meals is removed after a short while.
  • A plan order that was not finalized is cleared a set number of hours after the new menu starts. You choose that number with the Clear Plan Pending Orders (hours after new menu start) setting on Manage Site > Settings. See How to edit admin settings.
  • Finalized orders are never touched.

See Pending orders: what they are and how finalizing works.

Let customers peek at what is coming

Switch on Upcoming Menus on the Features page and customers can browse future menus before they open, as tabs on the order page. The Upcoming Menus Order Page Visibility setting decides where the tabs show: on the whole order page, only on the first step, or not at all. It takes the sting out of "Orders Closed": instead of a dead end, customers see next week's menu and come back. See Menu page layouts: choose how your menu looks.

Keep the menus coming

Create the next menu ahead of time, or let Menu Rotation create it for you. See How to create a new menu.

Keywords: reopen a menu, extend ordering

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