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The menu wizard

The menu wizard is the guided flow that takes you from a fresh signup to a live ordering page. It runs the first time you reach the console and you can return to any step from the menu editor afterward.

Before you start

You sign up self-serve with a card. Signup creates your restaurant and your owner account in one step and drops you straight into the wizard. Have these ready:

  • Your restaurant name and the branded URL slug you want (for example joes-tacos). The slug becomes your public ordering address and must be unique.
  • Your menu, even a rough version. You can refine prices and descriptions later.
  • Optional product and logo photos.

Step 1: Create categories

Categories are the top-level sections of your menu, for example Tacos, Sides, and Drinks. They become the sticky category tabs on the customer portal.

  1. Add a category with a name and an optional description.
  2. Repeat for each section of your menu.
  3. Drag categories to set their order. The order you set here is the order customers see.

A category can be hidden. A hidden category and everything in it disappears from the customer portal while staying in your console, which is useful for seasonal sections you are not serving yet.

Step 2: Add products

Inside each category, add the dishes you sell.

For each product set:

  • Name and description.
  • Price. Prices are stored in exact minor units (for example cents), never as rounded floating-point numbers, so a 9.99 dish is always exactly 9.99.
  • An optional photo, uploaded to media storage and shown on the menu card.

Drag products within a category to control their display order.

Step 3: Add modifiers (optional)

Modifiers let a customer customize a dish. CounterFire V1 supports one tier of modifiers per product, which covers the common cases without overwhelming the line.

Each product can have one or more modifier groups, for example Size or Extras. A group is either:

  • Single select, where the customer picks exactly one option (for example a Size group with Small, Medium, Large).
  • Multi select, where the customer can pick several options (for example an Extras group with Guacamole, Extra cheese, Jalapenos).

Each option carries a price delta in minor units. The delta can be zero (no charge), positive (an upcharge), or negative (a discount for removing something). The customer portal and the server both compute the cart total from these deltas, so the price the customer sees is always the price you set.

Step 4: Review and publish

The wizard shows a preview of the menu as customers will see it. When a product or category looks right, it is published. Anything left hidden stays off the public portal until you publish it.

When you finish the wizard your onboarding is marked complete and your branded ordering URL is live.

After the wizard

Everything the wizard does is also available any time from the console menu editor:

Edits take effect on the customer portal within seconds. The public menu is cached for fast loads and the cache is invalidated automatically whenever you change the menu, so customers always see your current menu without a stale window.