Use the Menu Cleanup Tool

In this Article:

• Menu Cleanup Tool Overview 
• How the Menu Cleanup Tool Works
• Limitations & Other Considerations
• Run a Menu Cleanup

Menu Cleanup Tool Overview 

The Menu Cleanup tool is a feature that helps you identify and archive unused menu groups, items, modifier groups, and modifiers within your menus. Running a menu cleanup can help you archive menu elements that are not currently used within a parent element, such as menu groups that have been removed from a menu, or items that have been removed from a menu group.

Note: Menu elements in Toast can never be fully deleted. Archived items can still be found within Items database, if Show Archived is selected. Learn more: Use the Items Database to View and Manage Menus.

In order to use the Menu Cleanup tool, you must have the 4.23 Menu Audit & Cleanup permission. Search for “menu cleanup” in the Toast Web search bar to access this page.

If your business uses Toast Multiliocation Management (MLM), you'll need to have access to each location and the entire restaurant group, and you'll also need to have the 4.23 permission at each location. 

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How the Menu Cleanup Tool Works

• The Menu Cleanup tool searches for and finds elements that don’t have a parent (e.g. a menu group that isn’t part of any menu). 
  
  • It doesn’t matter if a menu item is out of stock or not visible to any ordering channels - the only items that will be identified by this tool are those items which are not used in any menu group.
• When you archive a menu element, like a menu group, it will not archive the elements within it (the individual menu items in this case). 
  
  • That way, if you archive an unused menu group but some of the items within it are used elsewhere in your menus, you don’t have to worry about the items being accidentally archived.
  • This means that if you archive a menu group, you may end up with additional items that don’t have a parent group and need to be cleaned up. You can run the Menu Cleanup tool multiple times to address this. Detailed instructions are included below.

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Menu Cleanup Tool: Limitations & Other Considerations

• If you have seasonal or rotational items that you intend to bring back in the future, consider creating a separate menu (e.g. “Seasonal - Do Not Delete”), making the menu not visible to any ordering channel, and adding the items there so they aren’t included in a menu cleanup. 
  
  • Note that if you archive a menu item during a menu cleanup, any modifier groups linked to that item will then be considered “unused”, and can then also be archived by running another menu cleanup. If you restore the item later to add it back to your menus, you will have to manually add the modifier groups & modifiers back to the item.
• Once you begin a menu cleanup, you cannot cancel the action. Even if you close the page, the menu cleanup will continue to run in the background.
• Running a menu cleanup can take a long time. Follow the steps recommended below to optimize this process if you haven’t done a menu cleanup in a while. 
  
  • If an error occurs and your menu cleanup needs to be restarted, all elements will need to be selected again. A partial archival will not occur when a menu cleanup fails.
• If your restaurant is part of a multilocation group: The Menu Cleanup tool does not archive versions of any item if that item is used elsewhere.
  
  • You cannot target a single location for the Menu Cleanup tool. The Menu Cleanup can only be run for all locations in a restaurant group at once.
• If your restaurant uses xtraCHEF, the Menu Cleanup tool can help remove items and modifiers that are no longer in use from the Mapping Screen. 

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Run a Menu Cleanup

If you’re running a menu cleanup for the first time (or the first time in a long time), we recommend running one entity at a time, and saving menu groups for last. This is the fastest way to clean up your entire menu, since archiving menu groups, items, and modifier groups will result in additional unused elements that also need to be cleaned up.

Follow these steps to clean up all unused menu elements:

1. Search for “menu cleanup” in the Toast Web search bar to access the Menu Cleanup tool. 
2. Select Run Cleanup Report and allow the report to process. Always do this before processing a cleanup to ensure that the report is pulling the most up-to-date information.
3. Clean up your unused menu items first.
   
   1. Select the magnifying glass icon to see a list of all unused items in the report. 
   2. If you have an item you don’t want to archive (for example, a seasonal item that you plan to bring back), open your menu editor and add that item to one of your menus. Save and publish your changes, then come back to the Menu Cleanup tool and run the cleanup report again.
   3. Select the checkbox next to Unused items to select all items, and then select Process cleanup.
4. Clean up your unused modifiers next. This will include any modifiers that are now unused because you archived the menu item it was attached to.
   
   1. Select Run Cleanup Report.
   2. Select the checkbox next to Unused modifiers to select all items, and then select Process cleanup.
5. Clean up unused items again. After you clean up modifiers, the report will generate a list of the item references associated with those archived modifiers.
6. Clean up unused modifier groups.
7. Clean up unused modifiers again (to capture modifiers that were part of the archived modifier groups).
8. Clean up unused items again.
9. Clean up unused groups.
   
   1. If you have a large number of unused groups, consider selecting 20 to archive at a time to reduce processing time and the chance for errors to occur.  
10. Continue until there are no unused menu elements remaining.

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