Getting Started: Menu Items

For a high-level overview of the various components of an eHungry.com menu, click here.

Menu Items

Menu items are things like "Ham Sandwich" or "Cheese Pizza". They are the "things" that your customers can order from you.

In order to provide the most flexibility, the eHungry.com system allows you to specify a variety of configuration options for each menu item you create.

To get started creating a menu item, you will have needed to already created your menu times and categories. If you have not, you should do that first and then come back to creating menu items.

Creating your first Menu Item

Some of the things you need to specify when creating a menu item are pretty obvious: display name is just the name of your menu item. Description is a brief one paragraph narrative that you may optionally add to each item.

Here are the rest of the items you should configure for each of your menu items:

• Minimum Preparation Time - Since some things take longer than others, you can specify that any particular menu item requires more time to prepare than your default setting for your restaurant location(s). For example, if you said in your restaurant location setup that all delivery orders require 10 minutes for every $20.00, and an order is for $40.00, then that order will require at least 20 minutes. This means that the earliest time a customer can choose to have that order delivered to them is 20 minutes from the time they place the order. However, if you have a menu item that has a minimum preparation time of one hour, and your customer selected that item as a part of his or her order, then the system will instead use one hour as the minimum time for this particular order.


• Minimum Number Required to Order - Set this number to anything greater than zero. It defaults to "1", but if you want to require that customers order more than that to add it to their cart, you may do so. If you check "calculate per-item instead of per-order", then the system will only take into account a particular configuration of a selected menu item. This just means that if your customer were to choose a hamburger, and it required at least 5 to order, then with this box checked, he or she would need to select at least five of that burger just to add it to his cart. Otherwise (by default) he would just need to have at least five in his entire order by the time he checks out.


• Categories - You may add each menu item to one or more categories that you have previously created. You don't have to add your items to a category at the time it is created, but uncategorized items will never be displayed to your ordering customers.


• Shown/Hidden - Items can be shown or hidden from customers and from logged in managers.


• Item can be ordered - If you want to show the item, but not allow it to be selected for ordering, check "No" for this option.


• Taxable - You can specify whether your menu item is subject to tax calculations.


• Show pizza options - If you are a pizza restaurant, you probably have lots of pizzas with lots of topping choices. A common requirement is to allow those toppings to be added only to the left half, right half, or entire pizza. To show those choices for each add-on that is assigned to this menu item, set this option to "Yes".

Menu Item Prices

Menu items in the eHungry.com system do not necessarily have just one price. For each menu time that you have previously created, you may provide up to six (6) prices for your menu item. For example, when your customers are in the "Lunch" menu, they will see only the "Lunch" prices. If in the "Dinner" menu, they will see only dinner prices.

Prices consist of a name, which is required and a value, which is also required. Price names are things like "Small", "Medium", and "Large". If you have only one price for an item and you don't know what to call it, just use the name of the menu item itself, since the name is required.

Menu items needs to have at least one price in a menu time to how up at all in that menu time. If you don't want an item to show up in a particular menu time, do not give it any prices in that menu.

Menu Item Images

You may upload up to three (3) images for each menu item. Images must be in JPEG, GIF, or PNG format and be saved in the RGB color space. Examples of image types that will not work are Photoshop documents, PDF documents, or Adobe Flash animations. Please do not upload those as the system will reject them.