AI menu creator

Go from a blank page to a fully populated menu with a prompt.

How it works

1. Describe the menu — e.g. "Gastropub lunch menu — 4 categories, British classics, mains £14–18, a couple of veggie options per category". Optionally pin the number of categories and items per category. Or upload an existing menu — up to 6 files (8 MB each): JPEG/PNG/WebP photos or PDFs are read in order as pages of one menu and transcribed faithfully (names, descriptions, prices and categories exactly as printed, never inventing items, with allergens captured only where the menu states them), and CSV/Excel exports from other platforms are mapped column-by-column — you can mix both, e.g. a photo per page plus a price export. With files attached, the text box becomes optional guidance notes ("just the lunch pages").
2. Watch the draft stream in — categories and items appear as they're written. Stop at any time; whatever has arrived is kept for review.
3. Review and edit — everything is editable before anything is saved: rename the menu, edit any item's name/price/description, allergens, may-contain and dietary tags (vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free…), delete items or whole categories, or Regenerate a single category (the AI rewrites just that category to fit the rest — and stays grounded in your uploaded menu if you provided one). If anything goes wrong while generating or applying, the problem stays on screen — with which items to fix — until you dismiss it; it never flashes past as a toast.
4. Apply — pick the channels (defaults to none, so the menu is created off — recommended until you've checked it on the till preview). The draft commits through the same pipeline as CSV import: existing products with matching names are reused, changed details create a new product version, and the whole thing lands in one transaction.

Good to know

• The AI is grounded in your tax categories, currency and prep stations, so drafts apply cleanly. You need at least one tax category first (Tax page).
• On Apply, prices are tidied automatically — a value like 12.50, £12.50 or 1,299.99 is accepted and converted for you. If an item genuinely can't be imported, the panel names which item and what's wrong (e.g. "Category 2 'Mains', item 3 'Steak pie' — price") so you can fix just that row, rather than a generic error.
• Nothing is saved until you hit Apply — closing the panel discards the draft.
• Set the schedule (days/time window) afterwards from the categories panel's Edit schedule.
• Drafting is rate-limited to a handful of generations per 10 minutes per organisation.
• Each draft uses AI tokens from your organisation's monthly allowance (a typical draft is ~40–100 tokens). If you're out of tokens the panel says so and pauses until the next monthly allowance — see AI tokens.
• Server setup: the API needs ANTHROPIC_API_KEY (and optionally ANTHROPIC_MENU_MODEL); without it the button reports that AI drafting isn't configured.