Digital Menus
How to Handle Sold-Out Items on a Digital Menu
On a digital menu, a sold-out dish should be marked the moment the kitchen runs out, it should be impossible to order, and it should come back as soon as it is available again. Most restaurants are better off showing it as "sold out" than hiding it: guests who came for that dish learn why they cannot find it, and the menu does not seem to change under their thumbs. What matters most is speed — a dish that is sold out in the kitchen but orderable on the menu creates a disappointed guest and an awkward trip back to the table.
Show it or hide it?
| Approach | Good for | Downside |
|---|---|---|
| Show it, marked sold out | Signature dishes, daily specials guests ask about | Takes a little space on the menu |
| Hide it | Long menus, dishes off for weeks | Guests may think it was removed for good |
For a dish that will be back tomorrow, show it as sold out. For one that is off until next season, hide it or remove it, and bring it back with the season.
Mark it fast
- One switch per dish, reachable on a phone in the kitchen or at the pass.
- Anyone on shift who is allowed to can change it — not only the manager.
- If you count stock, let the count mark the dish sold out when it reaches zero.
- Agree a signal: the kitchen calls it, one person switches it.
Make sure it cannot be ordered
Hiding the button is not enough: a guest may have added the dish to the cart before it ran out. The order itself should be refused for a sold-out dish, with a clear message, so the guest can choose something else before the order reaches the kitchen.
Bring it back
- Check at opening which dishes are still marked sold out from yesterday.
- If a cancelled order frees stock, the dish should become available again.
- Remove dishes that stay sold out for weeks — they make the menu look stale.
Learn from what runs out
A dish that sells out often is telling you something: prepare more of it, or raise its price. A useful number is how many guests opened a dish while it was sold out — the demand you could not serve.
Using these numbers is part of restaurant menu engineering.
Sold-out dishes in Thmenu
In Thmenu, staff mark a product sold out — and back — in the panel, or stock tracking does it when the count reaches zero, sends staff a push notification and puts the dish back if a cancellation returns the stock. On the guest menu the dish stays visible, dimmed and labelled "Sold Out", and it cannot be added to the cart; if a guest tries to order it anyway, the order is refused. The panel shows how many dishes are sold out right now, and the Menu performance page lists the dishes guests opened while they were sold out. Sold-out dishes are also left out of the menu's structured data for search engines.