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Your menu online and table QR codes

This chapter covers the guest menu: your menu on guests' own phones, at your restaurant's own address, with no app and no account. It explains publishing it, choosing how it looks, your opening hours, what guests see, the QR codes on your tables and recommending or hiding dishes. Owners and managers do this in the back office.

Before you start

• Your menu is built: see Build your menu. The guest menu is the same menu your tills use, so a price you change or a dish you mark sold out changes for guests too.
• Your role needs Publish the guest menu, QR codes and website. Owners and managers have it in a new restaurant: see Your team, roles and PINs.
• Your address and phone are in Back office › Settings › Business details. Guests see them.

#Publish your guest menu

1. In the back office, select Online.
2. Under Address, type the address guests will use, for example mesa-viva. Use lowercase letters, digits and hyphens. Sofrito tells you at once whether it is free: each address belongs to one restaurant.
3. Look at the Preview on the right. It shows the menu as a guest's phone shows it.
4. Select Publish guest menu.

Your menu is then online at an address such as go.sofritopos.app/m/mesa-viva. Under Link you can copy it, open it, or download its QR code for your window, flyers or social posts.

To take the menu offline, turn off Published. Guests who open the address then read that the menu isn't available. Turn it on again whenever you like: the address stays yours.

#Choose how it looks

Under Look:

• Tagline: one line under your name, for example "Charcoal grill and natural wines since 1998".
• Colour: your colour, used for the top of the menu and its buttons. Pick one of the colours or Your colour. Sofrito makes sure text in your colour stays easy to read.
• Lettering: Modern or Classic (a serif for your name and the menu's sections).
• Cover photo: a wide photo of the room or a signature dish. Your name sits on it.

The Preview changes as you go. Nothing changes for guests until you select Save changes at the bottom of the screen. Discard changes goes back to what is saved.

#Opening hours

Under Opening hours, turn each day on or off and set when you open and close. Select Add hours for a second period, for example lunch and dinner. A period may run past midnight, for example 19:00 to 01:00. Use these hours on every open day copies the first open day's hours to the others.

Guests see "Open until 23:00", or when you open next, worked out in your restaurant's time zone.

#What guests see

Under What guests see:

• Show prices: turn off for a tasting menu priced at the table.
• Show sold-out dishes: on, a dish you marked sold out stays on the menu as Sold out; off, it disappears until it is back.
• Prices: the menu's own prices, with your happy hours and other automatic prices, or one of your price levels.
• Languages guests can switch to: your own language is always there. Guests whose phone speaks one of these languages see the menu's words in it. Dishes keep their own names until they are translated.

Translate the menu. Once you have saved a language under Languages guests can switch to, select Translate the menu into that language. AI translates the dishes and sections that have no translation yet, in a few seconds: dishes known by their own name, such as Caldo verde or Bacalhau à Brás, keep it. Check the result in the Preview, switching its language. A translation you correct by hand is never replaced: translating again only fills in dishes added since.

Guests can search the menu, filter it by dietary needs (vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free and others you tagged) and leave out dishes with an allergen. Each dish shows its allergens in full, with a note to tell their server about any allergy.

#Table QR codes

A QR code on each table opens the menu with the table named at the top ("Table 12").

1. Under Table QR codes, select Make codes for N tables. Every table on your floor plan gets its own code.
2. Select Print table cards. Each card shows your name, the QR code, "Scan for the menu" and the table. Six cards fit on an A4 page: cut them out and put them on the tables.

New tables you add to the floor plan get a code when you select Make codes again.

What a QR code does, and what it doesn't. A table's code opens your menu, with the table's name. It never shows a bill, and it gives no one access to anything else. A guest who photographs it, or takes a card home, can read your menu and, if you turn calls on, call a waiter to that table: nothing more. Ordering takes the six-digit code your staff give the party at the table, which changes with every party.

If a card was copied or swapped. Select Replace all codes, then select it again to confirm. Every old card stops opening a table at once (it opens your menu without a table), and you print new cards.

#Calls from tables

Turn on Guests can call a waiter and ask for the bill under Table QR codes, and select Save changes. The page a table's code opens then shows two buttons: Call a waiter and Ask for the bill.

• Your tills and handhelds chime and show, for example, "Table 12 asks for the bill", with On my way. A new Calls section lists every call, how long it has waited (red after three minutes), and who is on their way.
• The guest's phone says what is true at each moment: The team has it, then Someone is on the way once someone taps On my way, then Done. If no one confirms it, the phone tells the guest to ask a member of staff; it never says a call was answered when it wasn't.
• A table has one call of each kind at a time: tapping again joins the call already made. A call nobody acts on goes after 15 minutes.

For your team's side, see Table service.

#Orders from tables

Under Table QR codes, choose how guests order under Ordering from the table, and select Save changes:

• Off: guests read the menu and order from your staff.
• Staff accept each order: guests send orders from their phones. Each waits under Calls until someone accepts it; then it goes on the table's check and to the kitchen.
• Straight to the kitchen: each order goes on the table's check and to the kitchen at once.

At the table:

1. A server opens the table as usual. The check shows its code, for example 929 437: read it out or show it to the party. Each check has its own, so a party seated while another is still paying gets a different code.
2. Guests open a dish on the page their table's QR code opens and choose its options, how many and a note for the kitchen. The basket shows an estimate at your menu's prices.
3. The first time a phone sends an order, it asks for the table's code. After that it orders without it, until the party leaves.
4. The phone says where each order is: Waiting for the team to accept it, then Being prepared, Ready, on its way to you and Served. An order you decline says so, and why.

What guests can't do:

• See prices of what the table had, or the bill: a phone shows its own orders and the table's dishes with where each one is. Your till prices every order as it prices any other, whatever the phone showed.
• Order after they leave. When their check is paid (or merged into another), their phones can order nothing more, and the next party has a check and a code of their own. A photo of the QR code orders nothing.
• Guess the code. Ten wrong codes make that phone wait 10 minutes, and many wrong codes at a table make everyone there wait; a new code on the check lets the party in at once.
• Flood you with orders. A table sends at most a dozen orders in a quarter of an hour.
• Order what's sold out. A guest who tries is told which dishes or options can't be ordered now.

For your team's side, see Table service.

#Recommend or hide dishes

Under Dishes on guest pages:

• Select the star to recommend a dish. Recommended dishes show first, with their photos, under Recommended.
• Select the eye to hide a dish from guests, for example a staff meal. It stays on your tills and in your reports.

Nothing here changes the menu your staff use.

#On a Sofrito Hub

On a restaurant's own Sofrito Hub, the guest menu answers on the restaurant's network only, so phones on mobile data can't open it. To put your menu on the internet, publish it from Sofrito Cloud (go.sofritopos.app): it is the same restaurant, and the menu follows what the hub sells, sold-out dishes included.

Calls from tables work too: Sofrito Cloud keeps a guest's call and your hub picks it up within a few seconds, with its sync, so your tills ring as usual. If the hub is offline, the guest's phone says the call hasn't reached the restaurant yet, and after 15 minutes that it didn't reach it: ask your guests to call a member of staff while the internet is down.

Orders from tables work the same way. The table's code comes from your hub, and Sofrito Cloud only learns enough to check it. Your hub picks each order up with its sync, puts it on the check once, and tells the guest's phone where it is. An order that doesn't reach the hub within 15 minutes is never made, and the phone says so.

#Troubleshooting

• "Another restaurant uses this address": choose another address, for example with your town: mesa-viva-maputo.
• A guest sees an old price: guest menus check for changes every minute while they are open. Ask the guest to reload the page.
• A table card opens the menu without the table: the codes were replaced after it was printed. Print the cards again.