Add-ons & options

Add-ons let a customer customise an product — extras, choices, preferences. You build a group once with its own options, prices and rules, then attach it to as many products as it applies to, so one group is maintained in one place even when it appears on thirty products.

Where to find it

Dashboard → Network → Outlets → (your outlet) → Menu Builder (/outlet/manage/:outletID/menu-builder) — Admin, Co-Admin — outlet staff can manage add-ons from the partner app where permitted

Variants or add-ons?

Two mechanisms, and choosing correctly keeps both your catalog and your reports clean.

	Variants	Add-ons
The customer picks	Exactly one	None, one, or several — by your rules
Typical use	Size, portion, base	Extras, choices, preferences
Effect on price	Sets the price	Adds to it, or does not change it
Example	Small / Medium / Large	Extra cheese +1.00 · No onions

The rule of thumb: if the product cannot exist without the choice, it is a variant. If the choice sits on top of it, it is an add-on.

Getting this wrong is the commonest catalog modelling mistake, and it shows up in reporting — variants report as the product sold, add-ons report as extras attached. Model sizes as add-ons and you lose the ability to see which size actually sells.

Building a group

A group is a named set of related options. For each one you decide:

• The options inside it, each with its own name and price. Zero is a valid price: “no onions” costs nothing and matters enormously to the kitchen.
• Required or optional — must the customer choose, or may they skip it?
• How many selections — a minimum and a maximum.

Then attach it to every product it applies to. Because the group is shared, correcting a price or adding an option updates every attached product at once.

Four shapes cover almost everything

Group	Rule	Options
Choose your sauce	Required, exactly 1	Garlic · BBQ · Hot honey
Extras	Optional, up to 5	Extra cheese +1.00 · Bacon +1.50
Preference	Required, exactly 1	Rare · Medium · Well done, all free
Make it a meal	Optional, up to 1	Side and a drink +4.50

A forced single choice, a capped multi-select, a free required preference, and an optional upsell. Start with these before inventing anything exotic — complex option rules are hard for customers and harder for kitchens.

Patterns by vertical

Food is the obvious case: toppings, sides, cooking preferences.

Retail uses options for anything configurable that is not a separate product — gift wrapping, engraving, an extended warranty.

Supermarkets use them for substitution preference and for quantity or packaging choices that do not warrant their own product.

What the customer sees

Groups appear in the order you set, with required ones first and clearly marked. The price updates live as they choose, so nobody is surprised at checkout.

Long option lists are where customers give up. If a group has more than about eight options, that is usually two groups, or an product that should have been two products.

Availability

Add-on groups and individual options can be switched off, with a timed re-enable, just like an product. That is how you stop selling an extra you have run out of without pulling the products that carry it — see Availability.

Staff can do it from the partner app, so the person who discovers the shortage is the person who fixes it.

Keeping option data healthy

• Reuse groups; do not clone them. Two “Toppings” groups become two different prices within a month.
• Review prices when product prices change. Add-on prices are set once and then forgotten, and they quietly stop covering cost.
• Delete what you no longer sell. An option nobody has chosen in six months is noise on a screen a customer is trying to read quickly.
• Watch the kitchen’s view. Every option you add appears on a ticket. A group with twelve options produces tickets nobody can read at speed.

Related: Building your catalog · Availability · Order lifecycle · Customer Experience