New Feature Menu Import Tool Now Live

When asked what the main reason is for not getting their menu online, many restauranteurs will simply answer "it will take too long". And that's a fair assessment, especially if you have a rather large menu. Most menu websites force you to create each item separately and this can be a rather daunting task. Up until very recently, this is the way that MenuCrunch worked as well.

However, in our continuing effort to help our customers get their menus online as easily and quickly as possible, we created our newest feature, the Menu Import Tool! We did a lot of testing and experiments to determine the best approach for this new feature and we hope that you will find the end result both intuitive and useful for your restaurant.

So, how does it work? You simply list your menu items' details, such as their name, price, description, etc. in an Excel spreadsheet template that we created. Once completed, you visit the "Import" tab of the Menu section of the website (as shown in the above screenshot), upload your spreadsheet and the system will then import all of the items listed in the document.

There are some more nuanced menu detail options included on the spreadsheet, such as sizes, options and extras. These fields allow you to add these more complex characteristics of your menu items. In order to accomplish this you must use specific formatting on these special fields. The details of the required formatting are included in the Menu Import template on the instructions tab, but we'll list some details below to help guide you through the process.

The 'sizes' and 'extras' fields have the same format requirements which look like this: size:price, size:price. Where the ":" separates the size and price and the "," separates different size options. The extras format works the same way, except you replace the size option with the extra option. So, let's say that your restaurant has two different sizes for French Fries, small and large. And they cost $4.50 and $6.25 respectively. To represent this on the spreadsheet, you would include the below in the sizes field next to the French Fries item:

small : 4.50, large : 6:25

The blank spaces above are not required or important, they are only included for clarity.

The 'options' field is a bit simpler. The format is simply to separate each option by a comma. So, let's say that Wings are one of your menu items and they come in a variety of flavors such as Buffalo, Hot Honey and Parmesan Peppercorn. Below would what you would type into the options field for Wings:

Buffalo, Hot Honey, Parmesan Peppercorn

Once again, the blank spaces above are not required or important, they are only included for clarity.

What if you get the formatting wrong? The Menu Import Tool will not import items that have incorrect formatting or missing required fields. The only required fields are: name, price and section. After the import is completed, errors will be listed on the screen for any items that were not imported, including their row number in the spreadsheet and specifically why they were not imported. That way you can go back and update these items so that they can be imported correctly.

We hope you like this new feature and we would love to hear your feedback on ways that it can be improved or enhanced to make the process even easier. So, feel free to email us or visit our contact page to submit your thoughts, thanks in advance!