Every menu you display is a Menu post under Steuard → Menus. This guide covers creating one, building a Manual menu by hand, and the Layout, Display, and Overrides settings every Menu post carries with it.
The Menus screen #
Go to Steuard → Menus.
- Click Add New Menu to start a new menu.
- Click an existing menu's title to edit it. The Type column shows whether each menu is Toast, Manual, Composed, or Combined.
Choose a menu type #
A new Menu post starts with the type chooser. Pick one and it is locked once the menu is saved—create another Menu post if you need a different type later.
- Toast displays one menu from a connected Toast location. Choose the upstream menu from the Toast menu dropdown; its sections and prices stay synchronized on your refresh schedule. Requires a Toast connection under Menu Options → Connections.
- Composed builds one menu from sections and items on your other Menu posts or directly from a Toast location. See Creating a Composed Menu.
- Manual is a menu you enter by hand—the rest of this guide.
- Combined displays several Menu posts stacked or as tabs. See Displaying Multiple Menus as Tabs.
Building a Manual menu #
The editor gives you a title field and a Menu Sections & Items builder.
- Name the menu — this is the heading diners see.
- Menu Sections & Items holds your content. Each section (Appetizers, Entrées, …) has an optional description and a list of items. Every item can have one price or a price-by-size list and, under Details, a description, calories, an image, and tags. Use the Vegan, Vegetarian, Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Nut-Free, and Spicy preset buttons to add common tags with one click. You can also start typing in the tags field and select an existing tag from the suggestions. Learn about menu item tags opens Menu Item Tags and Dietary Labels in a new tab. Drag the handles to reorder sections, items, and size rows.
- + Add Section adds another section; + Add Item adds a dish to the current section.
- Click Preview menu at any time to inspect the form exactly as it stands, including changes you have not saved. Switch between Desktop and Narrow to check both widths. Closing the preview does not save or publish anything.
- Click Update (or Publish) to save. You can preview a draft, but it must be published before it can be selected for a page.
- After publishing, the shortcode hint below the builder shows this menu's ID ready to copy — for example
[steuard_menu id="33"]— with a Copy shortcode button.
For Glass/Bottle, Small/Large, pour sizes, currency symbols, cents, and zero-price behavior, see Menu Prices, Sizes, and Currency.
Layout, Display, Overrides & Design #
Below the builder, the Layout, Display, Overrides & Design box holds the settings that travel with this menu everywhere it is displayed. Change them once here; every block, shortcode, and classic-editor placement of this menu uses the saved result. A live preview beside the fields re-renders through the real front end as you change options.
Layout #
- Style — Featured (centered headings with price leaders, one to three columns), Basic (a compact classic list), Trattoria (a centered single-column fine-dining style with letterspaced headings), or Pub (a warm two-column paper-menu style).
- Default columns — one, two, or three columns for every section in the Featured layout. Single sections can override this on the Overrides tab.
- CSS class — extra class names added to this menu's wrapper element wherever it is placed, for theme styling. Separate several with spaces.
Display #
- What shows — show or hide the menu title, item descriptions, prices, item images, tags, and calories. Tag style chooses pills, plain text, icon only, or icon-only pills for the tags that do show.
- Prices — always show cents, hide the currency symbol, stack the price below the description (Basic layout), and what to do with items priced at $0.00.
- Sizes — tidy size labels, the size price display style, and how parenthetical size notes appear.
- Appearance — override the site-wide colors, font, and heading font for this menu only. Cleared fields keep following Menu Options → Display → Appearance. See Customizing Menu and Review Appearance.
- Menu text — formatted text shown before and after the menu, ideal for notes and disclaimers. Links and small inline images are supported.
Overrides #
Overrides change what this menu shows without editing the source. The card summarizes what is already overridden; click Edit overrides… to open the full editor, where you can:
- Give the menu a Menu name override (used for the visible heading and structured data) and a Custom menu description. Toast menus keep their upstream name in Toast.
- Rename, reorder, or hide sections, set a section's column count, and hide a section's name or description while keeping its items (Section name shown / Section description shown).
- Hide an item, just its description, or just its price, and add or remove an item's tags.
- Use the bulk Hide all / Show all controls per section, and turn structured data off for this menu.
Clear removes every override at once.
Putting the menu on a page #
Any published Menu post can go on a page with the Steuard Menu block, the Steuard meta box (classic editor), or the [steuard_menu id="123"] shortcode. Every placement is covered in Adding Menus with the Block Editor and Adding Menus with the Classic Editor.
Here's a Manual menu rendered on a page:
