Menu Versioning by Date/Time (Restaurants)

Paid pluginsize Mplanned, not built

Indicative price, not an offer: €24/mo; menu scheduling, item availability by time, allergen tagging

Generated from docs/plan/paid/menu-versioning-by-date-time/PLAN.md in the AstroBaaS repository. Nothing described below is implemented — it is the written plan for it.

Menu versioning for restaurants with date/time-based activation. Lunch menu differs from dinner menu. Seasonal items appear only in specific months. Prices vary by daypart (lunch burger €8, dinner €14). Admin sets active dates for each menu version. Public menu API returns correct version by current time. PDF export for printing.

The problem

Lunch menu differs from dinner; seasonal items appear in summer only. Without versioning, staff manually swap menus or customers see wrong prices. Menu management is scattered across printed sheets, making updates error-prone.

What it does

• Multiple menu versions (Lunch, Dinner, Breakfast, Summer Special)
• Menu schedule (which version active by date/time/day-of-week)
• Item availability by version (steak dinner only, not lunch)
• Seasonal menus (valid Sept 1 - Oct 31 only)
• Limited-time specials (end date enforcement)
• Pricing per version (Lunch: €8, Dinner: €15)
• Allergen tags per item (peanuts, dairy, gluten)
• Admin: create versions, bulk-edit prices, set schedules
• Public menu API (customer sees correct version by time)
• PDF print export (per version, formatted for printing)

What it deliberately does NOT do

Each boundary carries its reason. A boundary without a reason gets crossed by the next person who reads this.

• Recipe/ingredients for nutritional calculations — third-party nutrition DB needed. Reason: licensing complexity.
• Food-safety compliance APIs — jurisdiction-specific liability. Reason: legal variability.
• Auto-pricing based on ingredient costs — business logic, not our scope. Reason: merchant owns margin rules.

Data model

New tables: menu_versions (versionId, name, isActive, valid_from, valid_to). menu_items (itemId, versionId, name, description, price (minor units), allergens (array), available (boolean), category). menu_schedules (scheduleId, versionId, dayOfWeek (array), startTime, endTime, season). Product schema: add menuItemId (fk). Audit: all menu changes. Migration: add tables + denormalized schedule index for fast lookup.

API

• GET /api/menu
• GET /api/menu/{versionId}
• GET /api/menu/schedule
• POST /api/admin/menu-versions
• POST /api/admin/menu-items
• PUT /api/admin/menu-items/{itemId}
• POST /api/admin/menu-schedules
• GET /api/admin/menu/{versionId}/print-pdf
• DELETE /api/admin/menu-versions/{versionId}

Every route added here must also appear in src/pages/openapi.json.ts — a test fails the build if it does not.

Admin

Menu editor (create/edit versions, items). Schedule builder (set active times: lunch 11am-3pm weekdays). Bulk editor (change all dinner prices by 5%). Allergen tagger (checkboxes). Menu preview. Print PDF generator. Version history (restore old menu).

The seam — why this is paid

Core owns: menu + item schema, schedule engine, public API, generic PDF export. Paid pack owns: version scheduling, allergen tracking, PDF formatting, menu templates.

Support commitment: menu version history, allergen tracking, food-safety compliance

Dependencies

• Time-based scheduling engine
• PDF generation library
• Item categorization system

Acceptance checks

Each of these must be able to fail. Before claiming this is done, break the code deliberately and watch each one go red.

• Lunch menu active 11am-3pm weekdays; shows burger €8, pasta €10
• Dinner menu active 6pm-11pm; burger €14, pasta €16
• Item ‘Pumpkin Soup’ marked valid Sept 1 - Oct 31; not shown in June
• Item tagged ‘peanuts’; appears with allergy warning on menu
• Pricing per-version correct (Lunch burger €8, Dinner €14 on retrieval)
• Deleting ‘Summer Menu’ version removes items, past reservations unaffected
• Menu schedule shows all active versions by day/time (visual grid, no gaps)
• Public API returns only currently active items (no future items leaked)
• PDF menu shows allergen icons, prices, descriptions (printable A4)
• Restoring menu version from history restores all items + prices

Risks

Menu item in multiple versions; price edited in one version only (inconsistency). Schedule gap (11am-6pm no menu active): customer sees no items. Allergen tag missing: surprise allergy incident. PDF generation fails: staff can’t print 10 min before opening. Schedule not re-evaluated on time boundary (old menu stays active past end time).

Commercial context

The anchor is what the nearest equivalent charges on Shopify or Magento today. It is context for a pricing decision, not the decision.

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Generated from the commerce plan. See docs/COMMERCE-PLAN.md for the full catalogue and ../../AI-GUIDE.md for how to work on this repository.