Editable restaurant menu

I’m looking at creating an editable menu for a small restaurant. Is my best bet to try and get each section of food (starters, mains, desserts, etc) into their own single markdown stack and present it that way?

It limits styling a bit. I know there are nice-looking price list stacks but I’m thinking it might get tedious to try and set up a TCMS field for starter1-title, starter1-description, starter1-price, etc.

I didn’t get the sense that they want to mess with pdf creating and file uploads (as I know Webdeer has a restaurant project he released recently).

I havent used GSheet from Weavium but this may be a good use case? Any other suggestions?

https://www.phpjabbers.com/restaurant-menu-maker/

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Unless you can find a restaurant employee who understands Markdown, then I would avoid Markdown. Markdown is a geeky input method not fit for general use. I have created quite a few restaurant CMS systems and most restaurant users struggle with capitals.

If the end user is happy with centre justified text with a price at the end of each line, then any CMS text system will work.

If the client wants a right justified price column then things get a bit more complicated. I have used the excellent Foundry table stack which uses a local csv file to display the table. This method has some weaknesses in that users can create unsuitable csv files, disobey the naming convention, etc…

I still favour using a PDF download because the restaurant takes ownership of the information and most will already have a PDF menu as their working document. The only downside of using PDF menus is that the file size can grow huge with the inclusion of print size images, etc., but setting an upload size limit should focus their mind and stop huge documents being uploaded.

One other thing to consider and one which can be a source of revenue, is for you to take over the updating process for a set number of updates per year for a recurring fee. You will probably spend less time actually doing this updating than the time it would take to setup, build and test certain CMS sytems.

NOTE:
f the menu is to be used to convey safety information such as allergy information , then you as the web creator could be held liable for creating a content system that does not display the latest CMS update.

As the CMS creator you should create a written agreement that the content is the restaurants responsibility, with the client IMHO, because any CMS system may fail and it is beyond your control.

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Save the menu as a PDF and embed it in the website using WebYep CMS (use the included PDF stack).

The benefits of this method include:-

  • Most word processing programs (that restaurants typically use to write menus) can save files as PDF. Pages, Word, OpenOffice etc.
  • It would preserve all the original styling, fonts, colouring and formatting. No danger of things like tables or indentation breaking.
  • They would be able to include their logo, hyperlinks, contact details, allergy advice and other information.
  • Ability for them to login to the website to easily upload a new PDF menu at any time, without bugging you every time it needs changing.
  • Website users can view the embedded PDF in the page or download it for later.
  • All self contained ‘in house’. Zero dependencies on any outside services, third-party APIs or other stuff that is prone to breakage, hidden fees or being taken away from you.

Essentially the exact same menu they are printing off to put in the menu holders on the tables could be published on the website with WebYep. I see RW users using WebYep for this purpose all the time. Simple, safe and reliable.

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Every time I see this post I have to look twice. Turns out it’s not a bizarre question about ‘Edible restaurant menus’.

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Ha, you may want to patent that idea