DineKit Changelog

The listening-again release — a support ticket and an 11-minute YouTube review set the agenda: a settings-wiping bug is dead, DineKit lives in the normal WordPress menu, and every menu can carry its own look.

• Restyling no longer wipes your settings. Changing anything in the Design Studio could silently reset your currency to £ and blank your restaurant address. Saving one setting now leaves every other setting exactly as it was.
• DineKit lives in the normal WordPress menu. Hover DineKit in the sidebar and every screen is there, with icons, one click from anywhere in WordPress — filtered by your role and your venue’s business type. Inside wp-admin the app no longer draws a second menu of its own.
• Every menu can carry its own look. Lunch as a clean list, Christmas as a dark poster — while menus you haven’t styled keep following your house style. The Design Studio opens with a picker: your house style, or one menu.
• Section photo sizes. Click a section photo in the Design Studio and choose Short banner, Standard or Full image — a huge photo no longer swallows the menu.
• Colour by badge. Click a badge in the Design Studio and Seasonal, Must try and friends each get their own tone instead of all wearing the accent — on every template, including the dark ones.
• A pressable Save & close. The dish and team-member windows autosave — and now also carry a Save & close button for anyone who doesn’t trust a form without one. It saves anything half-typed immediately, then closes.
• You can change your order on a phone. Checkout lines now carry minus/plus and Remove at every screen size, totals update as you tap, and what you typed into the form stays put.
• Smaller fixes. Photo cards fill edge to edge on every template; letters typed into a price box now say so (“Numbers only — like 8.50”) instead of quietly vanishing; the Settings save message shows once, not twice; and the review-request consent wording now actually appears on the booking form, the way UK soft opt-in is supposed to work.

The stops-fighting-you release — a blank menu now starts you off instead of staring back, long menus stay manageable, and DineKit says hello when you install (and asks why, if you ever leave).

• A blank menu starts you off. One screen with three ways in: add your first dish, set up Starters/Mains/Desserts in one tap, or import a spreadsheet. Search, the spreadsheet tools and the section adder stay out of the way until you have something to manage.
• “Add dish” follows you down a long menu. A small floating bar with your dish count and the button, which retires when you scroll back to the top.
• Renaming a section is finally obvious. Every group shows a pencil next to its dish count — tap it (or the name) and the field opens ready to type. Enter saves, Esc cancels.
• “Your dishes”, not “Unsectioned”. The group of dishes that aren’t in a section now has a human name — and explains that naming it turns it into a real section.
• The dish window tells you when it’s saved. “Saving…” while your typing goes in, then “Saved — safe to close”. No more guessing whether you can shut it.
• A hello when you install. Twenty minutes after switching DineKit on, your site sends you one short note from the person who builds it, with a direct address to reply to. One email, once — never on a staging or local copy.
• Deactivating asks why. One optional dialog, anonymous unless you ask to be contacted, with an offer of help on the answers we can do something about. Skipping sends nothing at all.
• Fixed: adding a dish and closing the window without typing anything no longer leaves a nameless dish on your menu and your public page — it’s simply binned.

The listening release — every headline here started as a request from someone actually running a kitchen: photos and video on your menu sections, whole looks in one tap, and a spreadsheet import that can’t bite you.

• Sections can now have a photo and a video. A photo/video button on each section in the Menu Builder puts a banner image, a short video (YouTube, Vimeo or an uploaded file), or both under that section’s heading on your public menu — show the smoker working while people browse the BBQ section.
• One-click looks. A new panel above Templates applies a whole style in one tap — template, layout and photos together. Launching with three: Gallery (photo-first cards), Classic list and Chalk wall. More get added as real venues suggest them.
• Your spreadsheet export now holds the whole menu. The CSV gains ID, Published and Image URL columns, and hidden seasonal dishes are included too — so what you export is everything, not just what’s on show.
• Importing a spreadsheet can no longer duplicate or lose dishes. Dishes match by ID first (so you can rename a dish in the spreadsheet), hidden dishes update in place instead of doubling up, a Published column of yes/no shows or hides dishes in bulk, and an Image URL sets the dish photo. Importing never deletes anything.
• Sections now belong to their menu — and are properly optional. Deleting “Starters” on one menu no longer deletes it from every other menu, two menus can each have their own “Starters”, and a café with six dishes doesn’t need groupings at all: a flat menu renders and orders as a clean list. Add sections later if the menu grows.
• Dropping a dish into a menu’s section now puts it on that menu. No more building a menu that still looks empty because the dish had the section but not the menu — the section is the intent, so the dish joins the menu automatically.
• “Unsectioned” can be named into a real section. Click the bucket’s name at the bottom of the builder, type “Starters”, and it becomes a proper section with all those dishes already in it.
• Menu cards hardened against theme and page-builder styling. On Bricks, Elementor and friends the card grid could lose its row spacing and push the dish photo away from the card’s edge. Fixed — and the 1/2/3-column picker now actually wins on photo cards, still collapsing politely on phones.

The design release — a click-to-style Design Studio, seven venue-matched menu templates, a grown-up dietary filter, and an ordering page that finally wears your brand.

• The Design Studio. Design & Preview is now a visual editor: click any part of the live menu preview — a section title, a dish name, a price — and style exactly that element from the panel beside it. Per-element text sizes are new, matching elements light up as you work, and edits appear instantly with autosave.
• Seven menu looks, one click apart. Every template got a designer’s pass and a clear job: Signature (modern restaurants — the new default for fresh installs), Maison for fine dining, Counter for fast-casual, Noir for evening and cocktail menus, Bistro for pub classics, Fresh for cafés and brunch, Mono for minimalists. The Fraunces display font ships inside the plugin. Existing venues keep the template they chose.
• The dietary filter grew up. Picking filters reads unmistakably (green tick fill for “show only”, red cross fill for “avoid”), a live “Showing 8 of 14 dishes” counter answers what filtering did, and the compact dropdown is now a proper multi-select with allergen icons, count badges and one-tap clear.
• Order Online wears your brand. The ordering page picks up your accent colour and corner rounding from the Design Studio automatically, so the reading menu and the ordering page finally match.
• Write your own text messages (SMS still beta). Every SMS trigger has a “Customise message” editor with placeholders like {name}, {venue} and {time}, a live preview and a one-text character warning. On a paid Twilio account, UK venues can send from their restaurant’s name — no phone number needed. Twilio’s cryptic setup errors now explain themselves in plain English.
• Fixes. Deleting a menu section no longer white-screens the admin (it asks first, and its dishes stay, just ungrouped); venues with “&” in their name send clean texts; and the opening-hours widget no longer vanishes on dark backgrounds.

One guest book across bookings, orders and loyalty, order-ahead for later in the week, a live Orders board, manager till fix-ups — and text messages through your own Twilio (beta).

• One guest book. Every guest’s bookings, orders and loyalty in one place — lifetime spend, visits and average order on the Guests screen, and opening a booking shows staff who’s walking in: VIP, allergies, visits, spend, past no-shows. The guest follows you to the till too — the order pad shows who’s at the table and their standing notes.
• Pre-orders. Let diners order for later in the week: a day picker on checkout (you choose how many days ahead; off by default), only real opening hours offered, kitchen capacity respected per day. Scheduled orders arrive held for your approval and only join the kitchen screen a set lead time before their slot.
• The Orders board is live. New orders appear by themselves with a note and a count in the browser tab; history is day-scoped and searchable by date; phone orders are taken on a POS-style pad; every order carries a “where’s it from” badge with a channel filter.
• One venue, one read. Booking statuses wear the same colours on every screen; the Take Order floor shows parties seated from the diary, warns when a free table is reserved soon, books a walk-in into the diary automatically when you start an order — and settling the bill completes the sitting.
• Till fix-ups managers actually need. Change a payment method on a settled tab (“pressed voucher, meant cash”), remove a mis-keyed amount, reopen a tab outright, or cancel an accidentally opened table — every amend permission-gated and written to the order’s history.
• Kitchen ticket notes. Firing to the kitchen now confirms exactly what’s being sent and takes a note (“allergy at seat 2 — no nuts”) that shows on the Kitchen Display and prints on station tickets.
• Rota upgrades. Edit a whole day in one drawer — split shifts with overlap warnings, copy the day to other days in one save, automatic unpaid breaks on long shifts, and day-off and sick markers.
• Text messages through your own Twilio (beta). Booking confirmations, automatic reminders, “your table is ready” and “order ready for collection”. Keys stored encrypted, raw Twilio prices, every switch off by default — labelled beta while field-testing completes.
• “May contain” allergen labelling. Declare cross-contamination traces separately from ingredients — quieter badges on every menu style, ± in the printable matrix, and diners avoiding an allergen also avoid dishes with traces of it.
• Privacy and polish. WordPress’s Export / Erase Personal Data tools now cover everything DineKit stores; a translation template ships; your venue type (café, pub, bakery…) tells search engines the right schema type. Plus fixes: a booking-popup crash, special characters (£, é) corrupting in order data, and the floor now self-heals overnight.

The till now keeps serving through an internet outage — plus bulk menu editing in a spreadsheet, per-slot order caps and repeat no-show flags.

• Keep serving when the internet drops. Open a table, add rounds, fire to the kitchen and settle up in cash exactly as normal. Everything is held on the tablet, marked “on this device”, and posts itself to your books the moment you reconnect — nothing lost, nothing charged twice. A banner shows how many changes are still waiting, so nobody closes the tablet too early. Card, voucher and comp payments pause while you’re offline, because those need a live authorisation.
• Bulk-edit your menu in a spreadsheet. Export the whole menu to CSV, change prices and descriptions in Excel or Google Sheets, then re-import. Dishes are matched by name within each section, so a re-import updates your menu rather than duplicating it.
• Cap orders per time slot. Decide how many online orders the kitchen can take in each slot so a rush doesn’t swamp the pass. Full slots are greyed out in the diner’s time picker, so they pick a time you can actually cook.
• Spot repeat no-shows. A guest who has failed to turn up before gets a red flag on their booking and on their card in Guests, so you can decide whether to ask for a deposit.
• Fixed: settling a bill now marks the table as needing bussing on the floor plan — for every payment type, not just some.
• Fixed: buttons and toggles no longer overflow the screen edge on a phone.

Staff rota levels up — role bands, on-rota holiday approvals and a contracted-hours guard — plus new public-menu display controls.

• Rota grouped by role. Chefs, servers, bar and more each get a colour-coded band so a busy week reads at a glance (flip back to a flat list any time).
• Build rotas faster. Open a shift and copy its times onto any other days for that person in one go.
• Approve holiday on the rota. Pending time-off shows above the grid with one-tap Approve / Decline, and an approved day instantly flags any clashing shift.
• Contracted-hours guard. Set someone’s contracted weekly hours and the rota shows their scheduled total, turning red if you’ve over-rota’d them.
• Menu text size & display options. Scale your whole public menu (Compact → X-large) for wall screens or phones, show filters as dropdowns, and display allergens as icons, full text or short codes.
• Fixed: menu colours apply on every layout. The Chalkboard layout no longer overrides your colour pickers — every layout now takes its colours from your chosen template plus your overrides, so the swatches match what diners see.

The live service floor plan lands in Take Order — plus on-table timers, tab timelines and per-table history.

• Run the floor from a live plan. Take Order now opens on your real Floor-Plan layout — every table colour-coded by state (just seated, nearing your turn time, over), with an on-table timer, so you see who’s in and which tables are free at a glance.
• See how long a table’s been sitting. A seated booking shows a live timer in the diary that turns amber near your turn time and red once it’s over.
• Every tab shows its timeline. When the table opened, when each round fired to the kitchen, when it was served, and how long the food took — settle “how long has this been?” on the spot.
• Know which tables need clearing. A settled table flashes “needs bussing” on the floor; tap it once it’s wiped to mark it ready.
• A table’s order history. Open any table’s previous settled tabs to answer “what did they have last time?” instantly.

Install DineKit as an app, keep every tablet in sync — plus a big wave of restaurant-tested fixes and polish.

• Install DineKit as an app. Add it to a phone or tablet home screen, separate from wp-admin — and it keeps loading even if the connection drops.
• Multi-tablet live sync. A change on one tablet (an order, a booking) appears on the others within seconds, no manual refresh.
• Per-round kitchen tickets. Fire starters then mains and the kitchen sees two separate tickets — each round moves New → Preparing → Ready on its own.
• Know your margins. Record a dish’s cost to see its gross-profit % (never shown to diners), add calories for the public menu, and auto-total from your ingredients.
• Allergen sub-sources & custom allergens. Drill “cereals containing gluten” down to wheat/barley/rye, or add your own — the 14 legal allergens stay protected.
• Partial refunds & editable service charge. Refund a whole order or just the items sent back, and set your own service % right on the bill.
• Smoother service. One unified booking panel, walk-ins that respect your covers cap, custom tip amounts, and a wave of till and rota polish.

A live Kitchen Display System — send orders straight to the kitchen screen.

• Kitchen Display (KDS). A live board shows orders as New → Preparing → Ready, with a per-ticket timer, item lists and kitchen notes, one-tap advance, auto-refresh, and a full-screen mode for any tablet or kitchen TV.

DineKit goes worldwide — set your country and it speaks your local language of business.

• Works in your country. Set your country and address in Settings and DineKit uses the right words — “ZIP code”/“State” in the US, “Postcode”/“County” in the UK, “Postal code” elsewhere — across the dashboard and delivery form.
• Your currency, not ours. Menu structured data now reports your real currency (it used to assume GBP for everyone).
• Better local SEO everywhere. Your address feeds Google-friendly LocalBusiness data: street, city, postal code, region and country.

A notification center that surfaces exactly what needs you right now.

• Notification bell. On every screen, a bell surfaces what needs action — orders to accept, bookings to confirm, the waitlist and pending holiday requests — each a one-click jump to resolve it. You only see what you can action.

Support, built right into your dashboard — plus screenshots, review prompts and polish.

• Built-in support. Message the DineKit team straight from your dashboard — no account or key needed. Replies land back in the same screen and your inbox; track every request and mark them solved without leaving WordPress.
• Common fixes panel. Answers the most frequent questions (QR 404s, missing emails, Stripe test mode) in under a minute.
• Attach screenshots. Paste or pick an image on the Support screen — stored in your own media library (we only receive the link).
• Polish. Support threads open at the newest reply, emoji display correctly, and a gentle one-time review prompt appears after your first order or booking.

Floor-plan polish for table bookings — safer zone edits, a restore history, and clearer table joins.

• Safer zone deletes. Deleting a floor-plan zone now asks first and lets you move its tables to another zone (or remove them) — and if any of those tables have upcoming bookings, you can reassign each one to a free table before it goes.
• Nothing is lost — a new History tab. Deleted zones and tables now live in a “History” tab on the floor plan, restorable with one click.
• Clearer table joins. Joined tables are colour-matched on the plan so you can see your groupings at a glance; a table shared by two joins blends both colours.
• Orientation markers. Tables show a small marker so you can tell which way one faces after rotating it.
• Fixes. The “Out of service” toggle responds wherever you click it, moving a table to another zone updates the plan straight away, the rotate button lines up with the zone selector, and the min/max party boxes are tidier.

The everyday-use polish release: safer menu edits, ordering that respects your opening hours, and a smoother first run.

• Dishes are never lost. Removing a dish now archives it — kept for your past orders and reports — and you can restore it any time, with a heads-up if the kitchen is cooking it on a live order right now.
• Ordering follows your opening hours. Orders are only taken while you’re open, with an optional “last orders” cut-off before closing time.
• Bookings read your opening hours too. Your service times now live in one place instead of being set twice.
• Smoother onboarding. The setup wizard walks you through your opening hours, and you can skip ahead and finish the rest from your dashboard whenever you like.
• Pages created as drafts. Your menu, ordering and booking pages are created for you to review and publish, with a clear prompt and a checklist that only ticks a page off once it’s actually live.
• Polish throughout. Tidier fields inside pop-out panels, your cursor stays put while typing, and assorted small performance improvements.

DineKit grew from menus into a complete, commission-free restaurant platform — the whole front of house, on your own website.

• Commission-free online ordering — takeaway, collection and delivery, with a diner-facing menu, dish customisations, and printable kitchen and bar tickets.
• Contactless QR “order at the table”.
• Commission-free table bookings — a drag-and-drop floor plan with joinable tables, a public booking form with live availability, waitlist, covers-per-hour pacing and deposits, plus a booking diary and printable reservation slips.
• Set-menu events with per-guest pre-orders via a share link — guests choose their courses and flag allergens, and the kitchen gets a consolidated prep sheet.
• Card payments with your own Stripe keys (encrypted at rest) — booking deposits and order payments, Apple Pay and Google Pay. You keep 100%.
• Guest CRM — repeat diners with the allergies they’ve told you about, carried across every visit.
• Staff logins with a role-to-permission matrix and an activity log, plus review-request emails to win diners back.
• Six menu templates and colour theming.

The first public release — beautiful menus and UK allergen compliance, free.

• Menu builder with menus, sections and items — photos, badges and multiple prices, drag-and-drop ordering, inline editing with autosave.
• All 14 UK regulated allergens pre-loaded with icons, tooltips and a printable allergen matrix (Natasha’s Law friendly), plus your own dietary labels.
• DineKit Menu block and [dinekit_menu] shortcode with three layouts and 1–4 columns.
• Print-ready QR table cards and A4 posters.
• Opening hours with holiday overrides and a live open/closed status.
• Menu, dish and LocalBusiness schema.org output for SEO.
• Works with block and classic themes. No dependencies.