Get DineKit — Free

Getting Started with DineKit

How to install DineKit and get your first restaurant menu live in minutes — requirements, activation, the setup wizard, and where everything lives.

DineKit is a free, open-source restaurant operating system that runs on your own WordPress site. This guide covers everything in the v1.1 release — menus and allergens, bookings, commission-free online ordering, card payments, a full point-of-sale, staff & rota, events, guest CRM and reviews — and shows you how to get from a fresh install to a working setup.

Before you start

  • A WordPress site you can install plugins on (self-hosted or a host that allows plugin installs — not the free wordpress.com tier).
  • Admin access to that site’s Plugins screen.
  • Optional: your own Stripe account, if you want to take online payments or booking deposits. DineKit works fully without one — ordering, bookings, POS cash sales, menus and everything else run with no Stripe connected. You only need it for card/Apple Pay/Google Pay payments.
  • A rough idea of your business type (dine-in, takeaway, delivery, or a mix) — the setup wizard asks this and tailors what it shows you, but nothing is locked in; you can change it all later.

Step by step

  1. In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins > Add New Plugin and search for “DineKit”.
  2. Click Install Now, then Activate. (You can also download the zip from /download/ and upload it via Plugins > Add New Plugin > Upload Plugin.)
  3. Activation launches the first-run setup wizard automatically. Answer the business-type question (dine-in, takeaway, or both) — DineKit uses this to show you only the relevant menu items to start with.
  4. When the wizard offers to create your menu, order and booking pages for you, let it — it drops ready-made pages onto your site using the DineKit block/shortcodes, so there’s nothing to build by hand.
  5. You’ll land on the DineKit dashboard, where a “Getting started” checklist walks you through the first real setup tasks (see below).
  6. Add your menu items and the 14 UK allergens against each dish — see Building your menu and Allergens.
  7. Set your Opening Hours (Restaurant > Opening Hours in the DineKit menu) — bookings and ordering availability are both driven from this.
  8. Turn on the modules you need: bookings, online ordering, the POS, staff rota, events, and reviews. Each has its own guide linked at the bottom of this page — work through them in whatever order matches how you run service.
  9. If you want card payments or deposits, connect your Stripe keys under Integrations — see Take card payments.

Everything DineKit can do today

All of the following is free, live in the current release, and runs on your own site — there’s no per-order commission and no plan to upgrade to:

  • Menus & QR codes — unlimited menus and sections, dish photos, print-ready QR table cards. See Building your menu.
  • All 14 UK allergens — Natasha’s Law-ready allergen tagging per dish, plus a printable allergen matrix. See Allergens.
  • Opening hours — one source of truth that drives both booking availability and ordering hours.
  • Table bookings — a drag-and-drop floor plan, joinable tables, live availability, a waitlist, and optional deposits through your own Stripe account. See Take table bookings.
  • Commission-free online ordering — eat-in QR order-at-table, takeaway and delivery with your own zones and fees. You keep 100% of every order. See Set up online ordering.
  • Card payments — on your own Stripe account, with Apple Pay and Google Pay, for both order payments and booking deposits. See Take card payments.
  • A full POS — order pad, open tabs, split bills, cash and card-present payments (Stripe smart reader or pay-by-QR), tips, X/Z cash-up reports and manager-PIN voids/refunds. See Using the POS.
  • Staff & rota — staff records and roles, a weekly rota with cost preview, holiday requests, and a live “are we staffed?” dashboard. See Staff and rota.
  • Events & pre-orders — group bookings with a shareable link where each guest pre-orders and flags their own allergens ahead of time. See Events and pre-orders.
  • Guest CRM — repeat-visit tracking, VIP tags, and allergy/dietary notes carried across bookings and orders. See Guest CRM.
  • Reviews & retention — automated, compliant post-visit review requests and win-back offers. See Reviews and retention.

What DineKit deliberately doesn’t do: it isn’t a diner-discovery marketplace (it won’t bring you new customers the way a booking network does), it doesn’t supply delivery drivers, and there’s no branded mobile app — it’s a toolkit that runs on the site you already own.

Where to find everything

Once activated, DineKit adds a single DineKit item near the bottom of your WordPress admin sidebar. Everything else lives inside that one screen, in its own left-hand navigation:

  • Home — your dashboard: today’s covers, orders and revenue, plus the getting-started checklist.
  • Reports — trends and top dishes over time.
  • Bookings and Floor Plan — the booking diary and your table layout.
  • Orders and Take Order — the kitchen order board and the POS order pad.
  • Events, Guests and Reviews — pre-order events, the guest CRM and review requests.
  • Staff — people, rota and holiday requests.
  • Menu Builder, Design & Preview, QR Code and Opening Hours — everything to do with your menu.
  • Integrations — your Stripe keys.
  • Emails, Access Control, Activity and Settings — notifications, staff permissions, an audit log, and general settings.

Only business-type-relevant items show up at first (a takeaway-only setup won’t be cluttered with booking screens) — but nothing is hidden for good, so switch business type in Settings any time your operation changes.

The first-run setup wizard

The wizard appears automatically the first time you open DineKit after activating. It asks what kind of business you run (dine-in, takeaway, or both) so it can tailor the admin menu to what you actually need, and it offers to auto-create the WordPress pages you’ll need for your menu, online ordering and bookings — using DineKit’s own block and shortcodes, so they work out of the box. Every choice the wizard makes is just a starting point and can be changed later from Settings. If you ever want to run it again — for example after switching business types — ask whoever manages your site to reset it (it’s a single stored option).

Your getting-started checklist

The DineKit dashboard (Home) shows a “Getting started” checklist that tracks your real progress, not just clicks — each item ticks itself off once the underlying setup actually exists:

  • At least one menu item added.
  • Opening hours set.
  • A table added to your floor plan.
  • A booking taken.
  • Your menu page created.
  • Online ordering switched on.
  • Your order page created.
  • Your booking page created.
  • Stripe connected.

Work through it at your own pace — it’s a guide, not a gate, and every feature works whether or not you’ve ticked every box.

Tips

  • You don’t need Stripe to start taking bookings or orders — connect it later, whenever you’re ready to take card payments or deposits.
  • If you skip the wizard’s auto-created pages, you can always add the DineKit block or shortcode to any page yourself later.
  • Print your QR table cards once your menu is in good shape — they double as the entry point for order-at-table.
  • Each admin screen inside DineKit has its own short guided tour on first open (look for “Got it” / “Don’t show tips”) — use those alongside this guide for screen-by-screen help.
  • Everything in DineKit is free and self-hosted on your own site — there’s no subscription, no per-order commission, and no feature paywall.

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