How would you solve it - Collection List for Restaurant Menus

Hi,

i am creating sites for Restaurants.
So i have always one site for the menu.
I am using Collections Lists, that makes it easy to enter the dishes.

But that brings this problem with:
Lots of restaurants got Menus with lots of different categories. And i want all categories on one site in different categories.

At the moment i create a collection list for each category. But than i have to create always the layout section again again, that tooks time, cause copy & paste is not working with collection item. If you copy and paste you can not changed the list…

this is the menu i want to have on one site, just one!
menu

Creating always the layout makes me crazy at the project i have to finish right now.
This restaurant got:

  • Kind of Dish (just Name needed)
    – different groups inside “Kind of dish” (Just Name needed)
    — in each group different dishes inside ( Dish: Name, Price, credentials, nummer for Ranking)

and from that lots of.

I want to avoid creating all the again and again the sections for the dishes.

How would you solve it?
I don’t want to use the collection template site for each group, i want that the whole menu is on one site.

Any ideas?

Here is my site Read-Only: https://preview.webflow.com/preview/hasia-restaurant?utm_source=hasia-restaurant&preview=f8af11675e9d9225bc433999a683af3b
(how to share your site Read-Only link)

This is an interesting topic.
I think @vincent The CMS master may have an answer for that.

https://preview.webflow.com/preview/trm-assets-copy?utm_source=trm-assets-copy&preview=e92f1bf501de2c51af5da71e6d585013
go to menu template plage to see it in action

A little unclear on specifics but you can use the filters to limit what information is grabbed from the collection. In simplest terms create a menu collection. Make your three menu’s sushikarte, standardkarte, lunchkarte collection items.

In your suppen collection add a reference field. Link it to menus.

On your menu template page
image
Import a collection list
using the filter limit the suppen list to the current menu type

That way all of the suppen items on the menu will match the menu type and only those will be visible for the current menu.

This way you create the menu page template once and it displays all of the right items for each menu.

Hope this is clear for you. The reference fields and filters are where the true power of webflow CMS lies. Sometimes wrapping your head around the best way to set it up is worth doing in advance.

always
Jeremy

thanks Jeremy,
working with the template Site would be the best and easy way.
But the point is, i would like to have all the dishes from any group on one site.
this is the menu
i want to like enter in one page.

As you can see, he got lots of groups in groups.

Ok this gives me a better idea. Not sure why you would want people to have to scroll through all of that on one page though. That is an overwhelming menu from a customer perspective. With the web you have the ability to at least break it down into smaller chunks.

I think you will run into webflow limit restrictions though with 20 collection lists being the maximum on one page. This menu would require much more than that

If you need to have the full menu of 15 pages I’d suggest creating a nicely designed PDF that has the full menu and it’s even savable for customers.

Then break up the menu in easily searchable chunks. Each collection you create creates a template page for it so maybe there is a way you can break it down. You can easily design it where the customer doesn’t realize they are actually changing pages because it can be instant with those collection template pages.

for instance. looking at this menu
i’d probably break it down

Sushi, with an option field for all the types. to use as a dynamic selector.
But your sushi portion of the menu would use 8 collections on it’s own.

then I would make a vorspeisen collection
now there are different ways of structuring the collections and items here depending on quantity.
You could put all the Vorspiesen in one collection and then use options for Hot and cold, and then further option to the type eg. summerrolls

Or you could create a collection for warme and kalte and then option for the types and reference Vorspeisen collection.

Either way you’d be looking at 6 collection lists for your Vorspeisen portion.

Because you can’t mix static and dynamic content in a list, There is no way to avoid multiple collection lists for a menu.

And because of the sheer volume of this menu I don’t think you can put it on one webpage dynamically.

Maybe someone else has a workaround.
Before you start inputting a bunch of collections and items though I would map out how you want the collections and items to work with eachother this will help you build it faster and more efficiently. Otherwise as I have done in the past you might realize you have to redo it.

always
Jeremy

thanks Jeremy
and you are totally right.

I will break them down in bigger groups and will work with the Template site.
On the main “Menu” Site i will create big buttons with pictures and header for each group, which will open the template site.

I would like to work with a PDF, but the “Menu” Sites are the best SEO boost for restaurant sites.

1 Like

Here is how i solved it, easy and best way for all:
https://preview.webflow.com/preview/hasia-restaurant?utm_source=hasia-restaurant&preview=f8af11675e9d9225bc433999a683af3b

So you ended up forgoing creating a bunch of lists and went with the pdf’s? You could definitely recreate those smaller menus in the webflow template pages now. You’d be under the 20 collection lists. But Pdf’s are easy for customers to view and print. Glad it kind of worked. It looks great.

Jeremy