Getting started

5 guides

Create your account & restaurantSigning up takes a few minutes and starts your 14-day free trial. A short wizard walks you through setup — only the first step is required, so you can skip the rest and fill it in later.Add your logo, hours & contact infoYour logo, opening hours, and address appear on your storefront and receipts — set them once in Settings.Find your way around the dashboardEverything lives in the left sidebar, in three groups: Today is what you use during service, Restaurant is what you sell and who serves it, and Business is the back office.Set your business hoursBusiness hours do more than show on your storefront — once set, they control exactly when guests are allowed to place an order.Manage multiple restaurants from one accountRun more than one location? One login can belong to several restaurants — switch between them without signing out.

Your menu

9 guides

Import your menu from a photoAlready have a printed menu, or a menu in another system? Photograph it — or drop in a spreadsheet — and AI turns it into a real menu you can check and edit before it goes live.Create menu categoriesCategories are the sections of your menu — Starters, Mains, Drinks. Guests browse by category, so create these first.Add a menu itemEach item needs a name and a price — photos and descriptions are optional but items with photos get ordered noticeably more.Add options & modifiersModifiers let guests customize an item — sizes, toppings, doneness, sides. Each modifier group can be required or optional.Reuse one option group across many itemsIf ten pizzas share the same "Size" group, build it once. The modifier library holds reusable groups you attach to any item — edit the group once and every item that uses it updates.Add allergens, diet tags & ingredientsThese three fields are what make the guest AI genuinely useful — and what lets guests filter your menu themselves. They take a few seconds per item and answer the questions your staff get asked all night.Upload, reuse & delete photosEvery image you upload — logos, dish photos, website banners — is kept in your gallery. Anywhere you can upload, you can also pick something you’ve already used.Back up or move your menuExport writes your whole menu — categories, items, options, shared groups — into one file you can keep as a backup or load into another restaurant you run.Mark an item out of stockRan out of something mid-service? Mark it out of stock — it stays on the menu but can’t be ordered, and comes back with one tap.

Tables & QR codes

2 guides

Design your floor planThe Tables & QR page is a drag-and-drop map of your room. Every table you place gets its own QR code, and during service the Floor page shows live occupancy on that same map.Print table QR codesEach table has its own QR code that opens your menu with the table pre-selected. The QR studio designs print-ready cards for you.

Orders

8 guides

How guests place an orderGuests never install anything. They scan the table QR, browse, and order from their own phone — here’s what they see.Manage incoming ordersNew orders appear on the Orders page and the floor plan instantly — no refresh. Confirm, track, and close them from one place.Set up the kitchen displayThe Kitchen page is a full-screen ticket board: orders grouped by table, with timers. Any cheap tablet in a browser works.Close a bill & split paymentsWhen a table is done, close the bill from the Floor page. Split it evenly or by item, mix payment methods — Higgs does the math.Take an order yourself (POS)Guests don’t have to order from their phone. Your staff can ring up a table, a walk-in, or a delivery straight from the Floor page — on a phone, tablet, or the desk computer.Cancel an order or issue a refundKitchen ran out, guest changed their mind, wrong dish went out — you can cancel an unpaid order, or refund a paid one in full or in part.Turn dine-in, take-out & delivery on or offYou decide which of the three ways to order your storefront offers. Switch off what you don’t do and it disappears from the guest checkout immediately.Work faster with keyboard shortcutsIf you take orders on a computer, the keyboard is much faster than the mouse. Press ? anywhere in the dashboard to see the full cheat sheet for the screen you’re on.

Payments, tax & payouts

4 guides

Choose which payment methods you acceptYou control three switches: online payment, cash, and card terminal. Turn each on or off any time — orders keep working with whatever is enabled.Connect your own Stripe accountIn Canada, the US and Australia, guest card payments are charged on your own Stripe account and land in your bank — we never hold your money. Connecting takes about five minutes and you only do it once.Get your money — payouts & your balanceHow money reaches your bank depends on where you are. Either way, cash and card-terminal sales never leave your hands — only online payments are involved.Set up taxHiggs knows the tax rules for your region — you just tell it where you operate and whether you’re registered. Get this right on day one so every order is rung up correctly.

Analytics & insights

3 guides

Understand your Reports & analyticsReports turns your raw orders into a picture of how the restaurant is doing. Overview shows how business is going, Sales shows where the money is, and Tax prepares your tax return.Read your Payments reportReports → Sales shows where the money is: what came in by each way of paying, what was refunded, and what you kept. Use it to cash up the drawer and to match bank deposits.File your tax return from ReportsReports → Tax prepares the figures a sales tax, GST/HST or VAT return asks for: your sales before tax, the tax per rate, the tax refunded, and the one number to pay.

Promotions

3 guides

Create a couponCoupons are discount codes guests type in at checkout — a percentage or a fixed amount off. Create one in under a minute.How guests use a couponGuests redeem coupons themselves at checkout — nothing for your staff to do. Here’s exactly what they see.Pause or delete a couponEvery coupon can be paused (kept but not redeemable) or deleted. Usage counts show you how each code is performing.

Reservations

1 guides

Take table reservationsGuests book a table from your storefront; you confirm and manage bookings on the Reservations page, tied to your real floor plan.

Website & domain

3 guides

Customize your websiteYour storefront is a real website. The builder lets you pick a style, tweak colors and sections, and publish — the preview is exactly what goes live.Connect a custom domainReplace your-name.higgsmenu.com with your own domain like myrestaurant.com. You need a domain you already own.Get found on Google & by AI assistantsSearch engines and AI assistants both need the same handful of facts about you: what you cook, roughly what it costs, and exactly where you are. Fill them in once and Higgs publishes them in the formats each one reads.

AI tools

4 guides

Use the AI assistantThe assistant is your fastest way to run the restaurant: it edits the menu, answers analytics questions, and restyles your site — from one chat.Configure the guest menu AIGuests can ask your menu questions — "what’s spicy?", "any vegan mains?" — and get answers grounded in your actual items, with tappable dish cards.Generate images with AINo photographer? Generate a logo, banner, or food photos right inside any image uploader. Available on Professional and higher plans.Manage your restaurant from TelegramOn the Enterprise plan you can run the same AI assistant right from your staff’s Telegram group — @mention the bot and it edits the menu, checks orders, and more, without anyone opening the dashboard.

Team & hardware

8 guides

Invite your staff with rolesEach staff member gets their own login and sees only what their role needs. Four roles come ready to use: Manager, Waiter, Cashier, and Staff — plus you, the Owner.What your staff seesStaff log in at the same address you do, but land somewhere different: a stripped-down dashboard with only the four things they need during a shift.Build the staff scheduleThe Schedule tab is your weekly roster: who works which day, from when to when. It also drives clock-in, so it’s worth keeping accurate.Clock in, clock out & track hoursStaff punch themselves in and out from their own dashboard. Higgs matches each punch to their scheduled shift, so the Hours report shows what was planned against what was actually worked.Connect a receipt printerHiggs prints straight from the browser to an Epson network printer on your Wi-Fi — no print server, no computer in between. (Printer plugged into your till by USB instead? See "Connect a USB receipt printer".) Here’s the full setup, including the two things people get stuck on: finding the printer’s IP address and trusting its security certificate.Which printers work & where to buyHiggs prints to two kinds of receipt printer: an Epson TM on your network (Ethernet or Wi-Fi, using ePOS-Print), or an ESC/POS printer such as SNBC plugged into a device by USB. Every device can share a network printer; a USB printer prints only from the device it’s plugged into.Connect a USB receipt printerA receipt printer plugged straight into your till’s USB port — such as an SNBC — prints from Higgs too. The browser talks to it directly, so there’s no print server and no IP address to find.Stay on top of alerts with NotificationsNotifications is a live feed of everything that needs your attention — new orders, ready items, table requests, low stock, and reservation activity.

Plan & billing

2 guides

Upgrade or change your planYour 14-day trial includes everything. After that, pick the plan that matches the features you actually use — you can switch any time.View invoices & billing historyEvery billing cycle creates an invoice you can review — including your trial period.