Menu Manager — building an orderable menu

The Menu Manager is the single place where you turn a printed menu into items guests can actually order — from Lucy in chat or from the new /room-service page in the guest portal. Every published item is also a real WooCommerce product behind the scenes, so it flows through standard checkout when a folio isn't open.

Where to find it

There are two paths into the Menu Manager:

wp-admin → Menu Manager (top-level item with the food icon, around position 58 in the sidebar).
From the listing edit screen: open any property in Listings → Edit and use the "Room Service Menu" box on the right sidebar. The "Manage menu items →" button takes you straight in with that listing pre-selected.

The dashboard at a glance

[ Listing dropdown ]   [ Refresh ]

┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Extract from PDF or photo (AI-assisted) │
│   [Choose File]  [Extract items]        │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘

┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Add item                                │
│   Name | Description | Price | Category │
│                                  [Add]  │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘

┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Menu items (44)                         │
│   beverage (37)                         │
│      ICED | COCO BLACK MAGIC  $7.43 ... │
│      HOT | LATTE              $5.14 ... │
│   main (3) ...                          │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘

The items list is grouped by category. Each row has inline Edit / Delete controls and a status pill: green "Available" or grey "Hidden".

Adding an item manually

Pick the property in the Listing dropdown at the top.
In Add item, type the name, a one-line description, the price (in USD), and choose a category.
Click Add. The item appears immediately in the list below, grouped under its category.

The dashboard auto-creates the matching WooCommerce product with:

product_type = menu_item
_price and _regular_price set from your price
_menu_item_id and _menu_item_listing_id postmeta linking back
Status publish (or private when "Available" is unchecked)
Catalog visibility hidden — items are ordered through the chat or the /room-service SPA, not the public WooCommerce shop.

Editing or removing an item

Edit — opens an inline row editor. Change name, description, price, category, prep time, or toggle "Available". Save commits both the menu row and the backing product in one go.
Delete — removes the menu row and trashes the WC product. You can always recreate the item later (it gets a new id).

Dietary tags & prep times (optional but useful)

You can flag items as vegan, vegetarian, gluten_free, dairy_free, spicy, or contains_nuts (adjustable later). Prep time in minutes shows up next to each item in the SPA — useful for "what's quick?" flows.

Menu groups & service hours

Most properties run more than one menu — a Cafe Menu in the morning, a Dinner Menu after 5pm, a Mini Bar that's always open. Menu groups let you mirror that on HiLucy. Each group has a name, an optional short description, and a service window (start + end time, or "always open").

How it works

Groups appear above the items table in the Menus & service hours panel.
Add a group with Add menu at the bottom of the table. Name it ("Cafe Menu"), then either tick Always open or set a window ("07:00 → 11:00").
Move items into a group from the items table's Menu dropdown. An item with no group stays always-orderable.
The list shows a status pill — "Now serving" (green) or "Closed" (grey) — that refreshes every minute so you can see at a glance which menus are live right now.

Cross-midnight windows

A "Late Night" menu that runs 22:00 → 02:00 is recognized as cross-midnight: the panel shows "open until 02:00 the next day" so you know the window did not get inverted.

What guests see

Guests always see every group on the /room-service page so they can browse the Dinner Menu at 9am. But:

Each group header shows a "Now serving · 7am–11am" or "Closed · Opens at 5pm" pill.
Items in a closed group have a greyed-out Add button with a tooltip telling the guest when the menu opens.
If a guest already added an item that has since gone out of window, the cart highlights it in amber and blocks checkout until they remove it.
If the guest tries to order through Lucy out-of-window, the API returns a clear error and Lucy passes it through ("Mole Tacos is only available 5pm–11pm — want to pick something else?").

Listing timezone

Service hours are evaluated against the listing's timezone, set in the property's HiLucy admin (_hilucy_timezone postmeta) and falling back to the WordPress site timezone. Make sure each property has its correct local TZ — otherwise "now serving" will be wrong.

Deleting a group

Deleting a group does not delete its items. The group's items have their menu_group_id set back to NULL (they become always-orderable), then the group row is removed.

Best practices

Keep names short. They're the largest text on the card. Save flowery adjectives for the description.
Use one-line descriptions that list 3–6 ingredients. Lucy uses these directly in chat.
Toggle availability rather than deleting items that are temporarily out — your guests' menu history stays linkable.
Edit prices in the dashboard, not the WC product. If you edit the WC product directly, the menu row will go stale.

Next up: AI extraction — how to skip the typing.

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