Category hidden yet items still display in "separate ITEMS" section below

[GraniteAssoc]

We recently noticed that when we HIDE categories, that the items in these categories end up appearing in an "ITEMS" section on the site, below all the categories.  And then when we set the categories to visible, they "ITEMS" section at the bottom of the online store disappears, and the items appear back to the categories that we placed them in.  (Our Internal Cafe Site LINK)

We have screen shots to help illustrate this:

Screen shot 01 - Here the categories are visible (they are the top two categories, "Breakfast for the day" and then the "Menu" for the day's lunch) And they are displaying as they should 

Screen shot 02 - Here the same top two categories are now "Hidden" and they disappear, and the remaining categories show up. As we intended.

Screen Shot 03 - Here is the screen shot as to how the site ACTUALLY looks, as you can see, all the items that are in the first Two categories, now are "uncategorized" at the bottom of the site, and available.  And when we enable these categories on the site, once again, they go back to how they appear in Screen shot 01 - and no longer in the "ITEMS" section, uncategorized, in Screen shot 03.

This was not the case previously, and am curious as to what may have happened that may have changed, as we have had a couple surprise orders appear back around March 20th, and then once again this morning, on April 2nd, and which is what alerted us to a potential issue.

Screen shot 01Screen shot 02Screen shot 03

[ryanwanner · Accepted solution]

Hello @GraniteAssoc !

Unfortunately hiding categories won't remove the items within those categories from being visiblie online. You'll have to go in and manually disable each item you don't want seen if it's a permanent menu change. I'm not sure when the change happened, and it threw me off for a bit until I figured it out.

If you're looking to only have categories available at certain times of the day, I'd recommend looking into Timed Categories. Those will only show when you tell them to, and items listed in those categories won't show up in a vague "Items" section when that category is hidden.

[GraniteAssoc]

Good morning, @ryanwanner, 

Thank you for your quick message and insight.  Yes, I see the option for time-based categories/sub-categories, and will update the powers-that-be to consider upgrading their plan if this is the method they want to keep for separating the Menu each day. 

Yes, It likely was a change that happened (semi-recently, or earlier) and no one noticed it until some of the items that they wanted to hide (as they hide the breakfast items after 9:30AM, so that only lunch items can be ordered, until the store's shutoff time) were being ordered after the intended cut-off time.  It likely was just the fact that it the category's items appeared well below the website's fold, that some customers found it accidentally by scrolling once the category at the top went "hidden."

Unless, the decision makers decide to change our building's Cafe back to how it was 4+ years ago, pre-pandemic, removing pre-ordering and go back to the original "made-to-order" process and paying at the Square POS terminal.

Thank you, very much, once again for your assistance.

Best regards,

-James Granell

IT Dept.

Granite Associates, Inc.