Porter lets you add standard information to menu items using Square's "Custom Attributes."
Sometimes you want to provide your customers with standard information for some or all of your menu items. For example, maybe you want to display the calories for each item on your menu or ABV for each of your beer offerings. Maybe you want to tag specific items as "Gluten Free" or "Vegetarian." Good news...Porter makes this easy by using Square's built-in "Custom Attributes" functionality.
The Custom Attribute name and specific value for each item is displayed in a standard format on all of your Porter menus.
Here's how to do it...
Using your Square dashboard on a computer
- Log in to your square account at squareup.com.
- Navigate to the "Items > Custom Attributes" section of your dashboard.
- Press the blue "Create custom attribute" button.
- Enter a name for the custom attribute you want to display for multiple items. (Important Note: the name will be displayed on your Porter menu exactly as you enter it here AND we automatically add a colon (":") to the end of the name you type. For example, if you type "Calories" this will appear on your Porter menu as "Calories:"
- Select the appropriate "Attribute type." (See below for helpful hints on which to select.)
- Press the blue "Add" button.
- Navigate to your "Item Library" and select an item for which you want to display information related to this custom attribute.
- Scroll down to the "Custom Attributes" section and click the "Add custom attribute" link.
- Select the custom attribute you want to add from the drop-down list and enter the specific value for this particular item in the "Value" section; select a pre-set Value from the available options if the "Attribute Type" is set to Selection; or, set the Value to "True" if you want to display this particular attribute. Press the blue "Add" button and then the blue "Save" button at the top right of your screen.
Important notes:
- Porter does not recognize custom attributes added for specific variants. Please be sure to add the custom attribute at the item level.
- You can add as many custom attributes as you want and apply any or all of these to as many of your menu items as you'd like.
- There are four types of custom attributes from which you can choose. Each is useful in different situations:
- Text - Allows you to freely enter any text for individual items. This is most useful for entering descriptions that are unique for each item such as product source information.
- Selection - You set up pre-determined values when you create this type of custom attribute. Then, when you apply this type of custom attribute to individual items, you select from amongst the pre-existing options. This is most useful for standard attributes such as "Gluten Free" and "Vegetarian" for dietary notes. This is also the best type of custom attribute to use in establishing subcategories within your Porter menu. See here for more information on creating and using subcategories.
- Toggle - The value for this type of custom attribute is either "false" (by default) or "true" per item in your catalog. If this type of custom attribute is applied to an item and set to "true," Porter will display the name of the custom attribute and "Yes" on your menus. This type of custom attribute can be used for indicating specific types of cuisine or beverages such as "Alcoholic" or "Vegetarian."
- Number - Values for this type of custom attribute are limited to numbers when applied to specific items. This might be most helpful when displaying attributes such as "calories" or "Number of Wings", which are always a number.
And, here is what custom attributes look like when displayed on your Porter menu...
