Create and publish your first menu

This tutorial builds one real, publishable menu from an empty menu type: a small category structure, one complete item, and a signed-out check that a guest sees what you expect. Do it once with a single dish before importing the whole card — every mistake you find here would otherwise be repeated dozens of times.

Allow about twenty minutes. You need the setup assistant completed, one menu type enabled, and one dish photo ready.

1. Choose the menu type and plan its sections

Open the menu type you will publish first — À la carte menu is the usual choice — and write down its sections on paper before touching the screen: Starters, Main courses, Desserts, and so on.

Keep the first structure small. Three to six categories is enough to prove the menu works, and categories are easy to add later. Fenómenus supports one level of nesting, so a Wines by the glass group can sit under Wines, but nothing deeper than that.

2. Create the categories

1. Open All categories under your menu type.
2. Type the first section name into New category name… and select Add new.
3. Repeat for each section.
4. Drag the categories into the order guests should read them.
5. To nest one under another, drag it slightly to the right until it indents.
6. Select Save changes and wait for All changes saved.

The screen warns you with You have unsaved changes whenever the tree has been moved but not saved, and it asks you to save pending changes before adding or deleting another category. Save often; the order stored here is the order the public menu uses.

3. Create one item

1. Open All items under the same menu type.

2. Select Add New — or, on an empty menu, Create your first item.

3. Enter the dish name as the title. Write it exactly as it should appear on the menu, with the capitalization you want guests to read.

4. Fill in the item fields. On a Spanish-language installation they carry their Spanish names:

   Field	Meaning	Advice
   Galería	Photo gallery	One good photo beats three weak ones. Leave it empty if you have no photo yet.
   Vídeo	A YouTube or Vimeo URL	Optional. Nothing is uploaded; paste the link.
   Subtítulo	Subtitle	Use it for a short qualifier, not a second name.
   Descripción	Description, always visible	Ingredients and preparation, in one or two lines.
   Descripción larga	Long description, expanded on demand	Origin, story, technique — anything a curious guest would want.
   Precio ración completa	Full portion price	The main price.
   Precio media ración	Half portion price	Leave empty if the dish is not served in half portions.
   Precio unidad	Unit price	For items sold by the piece.

   A wine list, a cocktail list and a beverages list show their own price fields instead — glass, bottle, Magnum, Benjamin, shot — because they are served in different formats.

5. In the side column, tick the category the item belongs to.

6. Tick the allergens that apply. Take this seriously; it is guest-facing food information, not a tag.

7. Select Publish.

An empty price field and a zero price are not the same thing. Leave a format empty when it is not offered, and only enter 0 when the item genuinely costs nothing.

4. Understand what happened on save

Two automatic behaviors help, and it is worth knowing they exist:

• If the item has photos in Galería but no featured image, the first gallery image becomes the featured image.
• If you publish an item without choosing a category, it is assigned to the first available category of that menu type. If the menu type has no categories at all, a category named after the menu type is created and used.

Neither replaces a deliberate choice. Assign the category yourself so the item lands in the section you intended.

5. Place the item in the list

Back on All items, the new item appears under its category heading.

1. Drag it to the position it should hold within its section. Wait for Order saved successfully.
2. If it is a house specialty, select its star to feature it.
3. Check the price shown on the row. Prices can be corrected here without opening the item.

If the item shows up under Uncategorized Items at the top of the screen, it has no category and guests will not see it. Assign one from that panel.

6. Add the rest of the section

Repeat step 3 for the remaining dishes of that one category. Two shortcuts save time:

• Duplicate an item when the next one shares most of its fields, then change what differs.
• Use Bulk create/update when you have the dishes in a spreadsheet already. Copy the cells and paste them into the table, in the same column order as the table headings, and assign a category before saving.

Finish one category completely before starting the next. A section that is done is easier to review than five sections that are half done.

7. Verify as a guest

1. Open a private browser window, so you are signed out.
2. Visit the public menu for that menu type.
3. Check the category order, the item order and every price against the printed card.
4. Confirm no draft item is visible.
5. Open the same page on a phone and read it at arm's length. If a description needs pinching to read, shorten it.
6. If the site is multilingual, repeat the check in each published language.

An administration screen that says the change was saved is not proof that guests see it. The signed-out check is.

If something is missing from the public menu

Next

With one menu working end to end, produce its QR code and test it on a real phone: Test your first digital menu.