Bulk import and allergens

Allergens cannot be imported. They are not a column in the paste-in table and not a column in the export, on any menu type.

This page explains why, and what the supported workflow is for a large menu.

Why they are excluded

Allergen data is the one part of a menu a guest may rely on for their safety. Applying it in bulk from a spreadsheet has two failure modes that are unacceptable:

• a column shifted by one position tags every dish with the wrong allergens, plausibly and invisibly;
• a bulk-applied set is never read dish by dish, which is exactly the review the data requires.

The tools therefore carry titles, prices and a category, and stop there. Allergens are assigned per item, with the recipe in front of you.

The supported workflow for a large menu

1. Import the skeleton. Titles and prices, one category per batch.
2. Do not publish yet if you can avoid it. Imported items arrive published, so if the menu is new, draft them straight after the import.
3. Tag section by section. Filter All items by one category and work down, opening each item and ticking its allergens from the recipe.
4. Have a second person verify each section.
5. Publish the section.
6. Check the public menu signed out and filter by a common allergen to sanity-check the result.

Tagging is genuinely fast once you are in the rhythm — the panel is a list of checkboxes with icons — and it is the part of menu building that must not be skipped.

What "not tagged" means to a guest

An item with no allergens declared reads to a guest as an item with no allergens. There is no "not yet reviewed" state and no warning icon.

That is the strongest argument for drafting an imported menu until its allergens are done.

Duplication carries allergens; import does not

Two related behaviors worth holding together:

• Duplicating an item copies its taxonomy assignments, so the copy arrives with the original's allergens — which may be wrong for it.
• Importing an item creates it with no allergens at all.

Both need review, for opposite reasons.

Auditing what is tagged

There is no allergen column to sort in a spreadsheet, so auditing is done on the public menu:

• filter by gluten and read the result;
• filter by dairy and read the result;
• an implausibly empty menu means over-tagging, an implausibly full one means under-tagging.

Do this after every bulk import and as part of the periodic review. See Allergen review workflow.

The same applies to other content

Descriptions, subtitles, long descriptions, photos, videos, featured marks and translations are also outside the bulk tools. An import always produces a skeleton; the menu is finished on the item screens.