Items & Categories

Learn how to set up and manage your menu items and categories in Puree.

Understanding Master Categories

Items are organised into five master categories: Menu Items for food, Equipment for plates, cutlery, and serving equipment, Beverages for drinks and beverage packages, Miscellaneous for other items, and Venue Items (available if the venue module is enabled).

Each master category contains custom categories and items. For example, within Menu Items, you might create categories like Baking, Sandwiches, Savoury, Entrees, Mains, and Desserts.

Managing Categories

Categories organise items and control how they appear in quotes, online forms, and menus. Note that when using Menu Headers (which only apply to the Menu Items master category), items are grouped by the menu header rather than by category. For more details, see our article Categories vs Menu Headers: Understanding the Difference. To manage categories, navigate to the relevant master category (such as Menu Items), then click Manage to open the Menu Organisation page. Click + Add Category to create one, and use Edit or drag-and-drop to rename and reorder them.

The order of your categories determines how they appear in quotes. For example, you might place breakfast items at the top, entrees, mains, and sides in the middle, and desserts at the bottom.

For guidance on how to name and structure your categories, see our article How to Name Your Menu Categories.

Category Display Names

Each category has a Name and an optional Display Name. The name appears internally and on quotes. The display name appears on online order forms and menus.

For example, a category named “Buffet Mains” internally can have a display name of “Mains” for online pages.

Default Commentary

Each category has a default commentary field — a block of text that appears under the category’s heading, above its items, on your quotes. It seeds every new quote that uses the category and can be tailored per quote. This is customer-facing and shows on quotes only — it never appears on dockets, reports or menus. For full details, see our Menu & Category Commentary help page.

Working with Items

Items are the individual products or services within each category. On the items list, click + New Menu Item to create one, or Edit on any row to change an existing item. A slide-over panel displays the item details.

Items can be reordered by dragging and dropping. The order determines how items appear in quotes.

When you have many items across multiple categories, use the search button to quickly find items across all categories without clicking through multiple categories.

Deleting Items and Categories

There is no delete button on a menu item, and that is deliberate. When you want an item off your menu, you make it inactive instead.

Why Puree does not delete items

A quote is not a photograph of your menu. Every quote you have ever sent still reads from the item it was built from, and so does every chef docket, count sheet and sales report behind it.

Deleting an item would not just take it off next week’s quotes, it would reach back into the ones you have already sent: lines would lose their options and dietary codes, dockets would stop describing what the kitchen actually made, and the reports that tell you what sold would stop adding up.

Deactivating gets you the result you wanted, which is never having to see the item again, without disturbing any of that.

Making an item inactive

Find the item on the items list and click Edit. Under Visibility & Display, untick Item is active and save.

To retire several at once, use Bulk Edit Items at the bottom of the items list and untick the Active box on each row.

What changes when an item is inactive

The item disappears from every place you pick items:

• the item picker when you build or edit a quote
• your online order form
• your online menus

Everything that already exists is untouched. Quotes carrying the item still show it, still price it, and still print it on the dockets. Nothing a customer has already received changes.

Bringing an item back

Nothing is thrown away, so an item can return whenever you want it. On the items list, switch on Show inactive items, find it, edit it and tick Item is active again. It comes back with its price, photo, dietary codes, options and docket names exactly as they were.

This is what makes deactivating the right tool for a seasonal menu. A summer dish goes inactive in March and comes back in November with nothing retyped.

When Puree will not let you deactivate

Two things hold an item in place, and Puree names which one when it stops you:

• It is inside a bundle. Take it out of that bundle’s contents first (see Menu Bundles below).
• It belongs to a package. Take it out of the package first, covered on our Packages help page.

In both cases something else on your menu is still assembled from this item, so letting it disappear would leave that bundle or package with a hole in it.

Deleting a category

Categories work differently, because a category is a heading rather than something a quote is built from. On the Menu Organisation page each category row carries one button, and which button you get depends on what is still inside it:

• Delete appears when the category is completely empty, with no items in it at all, active or inactive. This one is a real delete and the category is gone for good.
• Make inactive appears when everything inside it is already inactive. The category drops out of your quotes, online forms and menus, and the inactive items sitting in it stay exactly where they are.
• Make inactive, greyed out means the category still holds active items. Hover it and the tooltip says the same thing: deactivate the items first.

So the order of work is always the same. Deal with the items and the category follows. Deactivate every item in the category, or move them to another category, and the greyed out button becomes clickable. Empty the category out completely and it turns into Delete.

An inactive category shows a Make active button to bring it back whenever you want it.

Configuring Item Details

When creating or editing an item, you have access to configuration options that control how the item behaves throughout Puree and where it appears in quotes, online menus, and operational documents.

Item Options

Items can have selectable options — such as portion sizes or dietary variants — with optional surcharges added to the base price. Options appear when adding an item to a quote, flow through to dockets, and are available in your online store. See our Item Options help page for full details.

Basic Information

The Item is active tick box lives here too, under Visibility & Display. Unticking it is how you take an item off your menu, which is covered in full under Deleting Items and Categories above.

Each item requires a name and must be assigned to a category. Menu items can optionally be assigned to sections and departments. Learn more in our Sections & Departments help page.

Delivery Temperature and Suitability

Items can be marked with delivery temperatures: heated, chilled, or either. This information appears on chef dockets. For more details, see our Hot & Cold Delivery help page.

Items can be marked as unsuitable for delivery. These items will not appear in delivery orders but can be used for staffed events or customer collection orders.

Pricing and Minimum Quantities

Each item has a price field. The minimum quantity setting controls how many units must be ordered. On online order forms, this minimum is enforced and customers cannot order less than the specified amount. In quotes, the system shows a warning if the minimum is not met, but does not prevent you from proceeding.

Display Options and Menu Names

Items can have a menu display name that differs from their internal name. Leave this blank to use the standard name.

They can also carry a second name for the paperwork. Name on chef docket on a menu item, Name on docket on an equipment, beverage or miscellaneous one, and it replaces the catalogue name on the documents that group reaches: the chef docket, the count sheets, the consolidated docket and the driver docket. Leave it blank and the item’s own name is used. It never appears on a quote, a customer menu or an online order form, so you can name something after the shelf it lives on without a customer reading it. Packaging stickers are the one exception and keep the catalogue name, since a sticker goes on a box a customer may see.

A quote can override it for one job: click the line in the quote builder and open Docket name under the item name. The catalogue stays as it is. The same modal carries a Chef Note (menu) or Docket Note (everything else) for that line, which prints on the docket beside the name. Our article Notes and Bespoke Names for Equipment: Tell the Warehouse Exactly What to Pack works through both from the warehouse’s side.

You can control where items appear: in quotes, on online menus, and in operational documents (chef dockets, driver dockets, event briefs).

Menu Bundles

A bundle is a menu item made of other catalogue items — a platter, a boxed lunch, a hamper. The customer sees one priced line with the contents listed underneath. The kitchen sees the dishes. It is not a Packages: a package is priced per guest and shapes an event. A bundle is something you order twelve of.

Tick This item is a bundle directly under the item name, then choose what to call each one — bundle, platter, lunch box, hamper, and so on. That word is what the packing documents use: part of 2 x Savoury Filled Croissants platters on the driver docket and the run sheets. The Options & Includes section becomes Contents headed with that word. Search for each catalogue item, set how many go into one of the parent with the plus and minus buttons (whole numbers), and click Add item for the next one. Contents are one level deep: you cannot put a bundle inside a bundle, and an item that already sits inside another bundle cannot itself be ticked as a bundle.

If a content item has a delivery temperature or its own choices (bread type, gluten free), set those defaults on the bundle row. The quote builder opens with them already selected, and you can change them for that line. Leave them blank and the content item’s own defaults are used. Includes on that content travel with it onto the bundle — the words and any surcharge, always on. Dietary codes and allergens belong to the contents, not the bundle, so they print on each sub-line rather than on the priced parent.

Ticking the box changes a few things on the item, all of them deliberate. The item-level Dietary codes and Allergens pickers disappear and anything already tagged there is cleared, because a bundle’s codes come from its contents. Any external supplier is cleared too: a bundle is assembled from your own catalogue rather than bought in. The Options & Includes section becomes the contents list, so a bundle does not offer choices of its own — put those on the contents, where the kitchen will see them. Untick the box later and the links drop away but the wording survives: the contents stay behind as plain Includes text, so nothing vanishes off existing quotes.

On the quote, the driver docket, packaging stickers and the online menu the bundle is one line, description under the name (line breaks kept), then quantified contents (2x Egg Salad Sandwich). Stickers follow that same shape — the box name, then the items listed under it — and count one sticker per box, not one per sandwich. Untick Show quantity in customer quote and the customer quote hides those prefixes as well as the parent count; dockets, stickers and your own order screen keep them. On the online order form, a content item’s own choices (bread type, gluten free) appear under that content so the customer can pick them. On the chef docket and the equipment and beverage count sheets each content is its own row, tagged (Bundle item: Lunch Box). Switching the bundle on unticks Include in chef & driver docket once, because the kitchen should prep the contents rather than a line called the platter. Recipes and food cost live on those contents, not on the bundle.

Contents are worked out from the item, not typed onto a quote. You cannot change a content’s quantity for one order — change it on the bundle and it applies from then on. Deleting the bundle line takes its contents with it, and re-saving an order rebuilds them in place, so a chef ticking one off in the kitchen keeps that when you edit the quote. Online, availability follows the bundle itself, so set the available dates, days and cutoff on the bundle rather than relying on its contents.

Bundles show a badge on the items list, and there is a Bundles filter next to the category and dietary pills. A content item cannot be deactivated while a live bundle still includes it. Options, Includes, bundles and packages side by side are in our article Options, Includes, Bundles and Packages: Which One Do You Mean?. Options and Includes setup is on our Item Options help page. Packaging labels are on our Packaging Stickers help page.

Dietary Codes and Photos

Tick the relevant dietary codes for each item (vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, etc.). These codes are displayed throughout the system. For more information, see our article Introducing Dietary Codes Feature in Puree.app.

You can add photos to items by clicking the upload area or dragging and dropping an image. Tick the box if you want the photo to appear in quotes. For more information, see our article Improved Quotes with the new Photos Feature.

Sections and Departments for Workflow Management

Sections and departments are the same thing and only apply to menu items. They provide organisational structure for kitchen operations and workflow management. For more information, see our article New Sections/Departments Feature and Kitchen Reports in Puree.app.

Examples include: pastry (sweets, baking, desserts), hot kitchen (items requiring cooking), and cold prep (salads, cold items). Logistics and kitchen reports can be filtered by section.

Sections and departments can be managed from the main menu with drag-and-drop reordering.

Bulk Operations and Efficiency Tools

To make changes to multiple items at once, use the “Bulk Edit Items” button at the bottom of the items list. This allows you to update multiple items simultaneously rather than editing them individually.

You can download a CSV file of your items for record-keeping or analysis.

Understanding the Differences Between Master Categories

Sections and departments only apply to menu items. Equipment, beverage, and miscellaneous items cannot be assigned to sections or departments.

Venue items are only available if the venue module is enabled. The process for managing items is similar across all master categories.

Set an item’s tax rate

When item-level tax is enabled, the item’s pricing area includes Tax → Tax rate. Leave it on the account default for ordinary items, or choose an additional band for an item taxed differently.

Create bands in Settings → Tax → Additional tax rates. Each band has a name and percentage; a 0% rate calculates no tax regardless of the name.

You can choose a different Tax band on an individual quote line without changing the item’s usual setting. A quote-wide Override all tax bands takes precedence while enabled.

Online forms and menus use the item’s band to explain exceptions to the default tax treatment. See Tax Rates.