There are a number of ways to organize a fixed price menu. However, we would like to standardize this so that all fixed price menus are transcribed in the same format moving forward. This applies to all menu versions as of July 24th, 2019.
A: Prix fixe options should be transcribed as items, as opposed to being hidden away as extras.
How is this done? Example scenario below!
Root Category: Prix Fixe Menu
Category: Prix Fixe
Category description: Tonight’s Offerings. Three Courses. Choose one option per course
Item: Prix Fixe - $39.00
Item description: Tonight’s Offerings. Three Courses. Choose one option per course
Category: Appetizers
Item: Grilled Little Gem Caesar - $0.00
Item: Ratatouille Soup - $0.00
Category: Pasta
Category description: Consider adding one of our pastas to your meal - 10 supplement
Item: Three Cheese Ravioli - $10.00
Item: Mushroom Risotto - $10.00
Category: Mains
Item: Miso-Glazed Black Cod - $0.00
Item: Coffee-Rubbed Pork Loin - $0.00
Category: Desserts
Item: Polenta Cake - $0.00
Item: Chocolate Mousse - $0.00
Note: As you can see above, you should make the prix fixe not only a root category, but also the first category inside that root category, and the first item within the subsequent category.
Tip: Read the menu instructions carefully. Note that the customer was instructed to "choose one option per course" and that there are three courses. After reading the menu categories, we can guess that "Pasta" is not one of the three courses. It is an optional addition for the price of a "10 supplement". Therefore, the pasta dishes are an additional $10.00 instead of $0.00.
TAKEAWAYS
Restructuring the prix fixe menus in this way is helpful to the client so they can see all the different meals as items. Transcribed the traditional way, the client would have to expand each item and look at the list of extras to see the meal options.
Not all prix fixe menus are the same, therefore not all guidance for how to handle prix fixe menus will be the same. This article should help standardize most of the menus, but many will still need to be handled on a case-by-case basis.
Please see the article here for the different ways you can handle a menu with multiple subcategories. This article is helpful for prix fixe menus with a structure that falls outside of the above example.
Please see the article here for where prix fixe and catering menus fall in the order of categories.
Do I have to transcribe all these categories and items if they are already listed elsewhere in the menu? Short answer: yes. Long answer: see this article.
What is a prix fixe menu? See the article here to gain further insight into how prix fixe works.
Feel free to message us on Intercom the next time you encounter a prix fixe menu and we're happy to walk you through it!