What a Combo Does
A combo groups 2 or more recipes that are already placed on the same day and category of a menu into one bundle, for example a burger with its side of fries. Instead of showing as separate rows, the recipes stack together in one cell with AND between them.
A combo doesn't get its own name. It's simply those recipes, grouped.
Nutrition and meal-pattern credit update live: Gaia adds together the current nutrition facts and meal-pattern credits of every recipe in the combo each time it's shown. If you edit one of the recipes afterward, the combo's combined numbers update automatically, and you don't need to touch the combo itself.
Combos vs. Assorted Recipes
It's easy to mix these up, since both group recipes together on a menu, but they do different jobs:
Combo: items served together. A student is offered everything in it, and compliance counts everything in it. Use this for pairs and bundles, like an entree with its side.
Assorted Recipe: a choice of options. Only some options may actually be offered or served. Use this when sites have different selections such as salad bars, cereals, or muffin flavors. See Create an Assorted Recipe for how to set one up.
Creating a Combo
Open the week you want to edit. See Building and Publishing a Menu for how to navigate to a menu.
Select 2 or more items already on the menu: click the first item, then hold Ctrl and left-click each additional item, the same way you would for Copy to. They need to already be in the same category column (for example, all under "Entrees") on the same day.
Right-click the selection and choose "Create Combo."
The items now display together in that cell, stacked with AND between them.
Combos carry over automatically when you copy a day or week, or when the week repeats on a cycle. You don't need to rebuild them each time.
What You Can (and Can't) Combo
Any 2 or more recipes already in the same day and category column can be combo'd. There's no limit on how many items you can bundle together.
Items in different category columns can't be combo'd. If "Create Combo" is greyed out when you right-click, this is usually why: Gaia doesn't show an explanation, so check that everything you selected shares a day and a category first.
An item that's already part of a combo can't be added to another one. Break the existing combo apart first, then rebuild it with the new item included.
Breaking a Combo Apart
Click the combo to select it. A small broken-link icon appears on the right edge of the cell; click it to split the combo back into its original separate items.
Breaking a combo apart is all-or-nothing. There's no way to remove just one item without splitting the whole thing apart and rebuilding it.
Combos and Publishing
Creating or breaking apart a combo on a week that's already published doesn't change what schools and families see right away. Like any other menu edit, it's saved to a new draft of that week, and the change only goes live once you publish the week. See Building and Publishing a Menu for how publishing works.
Compliance and Production Records
Because everything in a combo is offered together, Gaia's menu compliance check adds together the nutrition and meal-pattern credit of every recipe in it, as if a student took all of them. Keep that in mind before combining two full options that aren't really meant to be served together, since it will overstate what's actually credited for that day.
On the production record, each recipe in a combo is still tracked on its own. School staff enter planned, prepared, and served counts per recipe, the same as for any other menu item. However, the meal total only counts the maximum of the components in a combo, not the total of all the components.