Menu change rollout checklist: recipe card, cost, allergens, POS and staff tasting

A seasonal launch gets a plan. The small changes don't: the bakery switches bread to a sesame-topped roll, the chef adds a pesto drizzle to the soup, the oat milk brand changes, the turkey sandwich goes up a dollar. Each one is a menu change, and each one can leave the POS, the allergen chart or the person at the register a step behind.

For a full seasonal menu with an eight-week calendar, use our seasonal menu guide. For deciding what to charge, see raising menu prices. This post is the one-page checklist for any single change, big or small, so nothing changes in the kitchen without changing everywhere else too.

This is general information, not legal advice. Your health department may enforce an older Food Code edition or add its own allergen rules.

The five kinds of change

Every menu change is one of these. The kind decides which steps you need.

The column people skip is the ingredient or supplier swap. It doesn't feel like a menu change, but a new brand of bread, sauce or chocolate chips can bring an allergen the old one didn't have.

The allergen step, done properly

The nine major food allergens are milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame; sesame became the ninth on January 1, 2023 (FDA: food allergies).

Since the 2022 edition, the FDA Food Code also says: "The PERMIT HOLDER shall notify CONSUMERS by written notification of the presence of MAJOR FOOD ALLERGENS as an ingredient in unPACKAGED FOOD items that are served or sold to the CONSUMER" (§3-602.12(C), 2022 FDA Food Code; the 2026 edition has the same paragraph). Its explanatory annex lists ways to do it: "brochures, deli case or menu notifications, label statements, table tents, placards, or other effective written means". Your state may not have adopted the 2022 edition yet, but a changed item with a stale allergen note is a problem under any edition.

For every change:

1. Read the new label, not the old spec sheet. Check the ingredient list and the "Contains" statement on the actual product that arrived.
2. Check the sub-recipes: the dressing, the bread, the garnish, the fryer it shares.
3. Update the allergen matrix the same day, and date the change.
4. Update the written notice your guests see: menu, board, case label or binder.
5. Tell the team what changed, in one sentence: "The ciabatta now has sesame on top."

The rollout checklist

Fill one in for each change. One owner per line, and a date.

Change ________ Kind ☐ New ☐ Recipe ☐ Swap ☐ Price ☐ Remove Launch date ________ Owner ________

Lines 1 to 5 happen before anything is printed or posted. Line 5 is the one that can't be late.

Staff tasting in ten minutes

Do it at the pre-shift huddle (coming Nov 3):

• Everyone tastes it, or sees and smells it if they can't eat it.
• The one-sentence description, the same words for everyone.
• The three questions guests will ask: what's in it, is it sweet or spicy, does it have (allergen)?
• Who makes it demonstrates the build once, and the station's training sign-off sheet gets a new line for it.

Launch day

Common misses

• The swap nobody announced. Purchasing changes the brand; nobody reads the new label. Make "label read" a receiving step for any substitute.
• Delivery apps a week behind. The price changed in the POS but not in the apps, or a removed item is still orderable online.
• The modifier that still costs the old way. A new milk or syrup needs its modifier updated too.
• Recipe card updated, but the old one is still taped to the wall. Take it down when you put the new one up.

Where Mays fits

• Cost before you print. In Inventory → Setup → Recipes, a recipe's ingredients each have a Qty, Unit and Yield %, and with a Serving price $ Mays shows the Cost % and Margin from your vendor prices. Put the item in a Menu list with a Target cost % to see the whole list's blended cost. See Recipes and plate costing and Menu lists and modifiers.
• Mapped to the POS. Map the new Square or Union POS item to its recipe under Inventory → POS, and each night Mays takes its ingredients out of stock for what sold. See POS mapping and automatic depletion.
• The recipe card where the team can read it. A Knowledge Base article per item, with the photo and the allergens, readable in the phone app; staff can ask the AI Assistant in chat about it. See Knowledge base basics.
• The checklist as tasks. Tasks → Create Task gives each line of the rollout to its owner (set a Due Date when you create it in the app), or build the checklist once as a template and send it From Template for each change. See One-off tasks.

What Mays doesn't do: it reads your Square catalog, but it doesn't change items or prices in Square, so step 6 is done in the POS. Allergens aren't fields you can edit on a recipe, so there's no allergen chart that updates itself when a recipe changes: keep the matrix in the knowledge base and update it by hand.

One change, one page

Pick the kind of change, follow its column, read the new label, update the POS and the allergen notice before launch, and taste it with the team. Small changes stop being surprises.

Start your free trial: 30 days, every module, no card needed. Or book a walkthrough and we'll cost your next menu change with you.