Delete a menu, category, item, option group, or option from the Owner Dashboard. When you delete something, you can also clean up the unused pieces underneath it in the same step.
✅ Short on time? Ask Owner Agent to delete an item, category, or option for you. Open Ask Owner in your Owner Dashboard or Owner App.
How deleting works
When you delete a menu, category, item, or option group, the confirmation window shows a checkbox asking whether to also delete anything underneath it that isn't used somewhere else.
Unchecked (default): deletes only what you selected. Everything underneath stays and can still be added to other menus.
Checked: deletes what you selected plus any categories, items, option groups, or options underneath it that aren't used by another menu.
The box is unchecked by default, so you have to opt in each time. There's no risk of accidentally removing items you wanted to keep.
What "orphaned" means
A piece is orphaned when it's no longer attached to anything after its parent is deleted.
Example: you have a Breakfast menu and a Lunch menu, and you delete Breakfast.
Pancakes only lives on Breakfast, so it's orphaned and gets deleted if the box is checked.
Coffee lives on both Breakfast and Lunch, so it's not orphaned and stays either way.
In the Owner Dashboard
The steps are the same whether you're deleting a menu, a category, an item, an option group, or an option. Only the tab at the top of the Menu page changes.
⚠️ Deletes cannot be undone from the dashboard. There's no undo button. If you delete something by mistake, re-create it manually or contact Owner Support to submit a menu update request to rebuild it.
Click Menu in the left-hand navigation.
At the top of the page, click the tab for what you want to delete: Menus, Categories, Items, Option Groups, or Options.
Find the row you want to delete and click the trash can icon.
In the confirmation window, decide whether to check the Also delete orphaned… box (see above).
Click the red Delete button to confirm.
What the checkbox says on each screen
The checkbox label changes to match what's being deleted:
Deleting a menu: Also delete orphaned categories, items, option groups, and options
Deleting a category: Also delete orphaned items, option groups, and options
Deleting an item: Also delete orphaned option groups and options
Deleting an option group: Also delete orphaned options
Deleting an option: Also delete orphaned nested option groups
Good to know
Keep these points in mind when you delete menu content.
Menu-sync locations (Clover with Clover Menu Sync, or Otter not using open item injection): make menu changes in your POS, not the Dashboard. Changes made in the Dashboard may be overwritten on the next sync. POS-connected menus are also protected from removal when a brand-level menu is deleted.
Toast and Square locations have no menu sync, so the Dashboard is the source of truth and dashboard changes are never overwritten.
Anything used somewhere else is safe. The Also delete orphaned box only cleans up pieces that have no other parent. If an item or category is still attached to another menu, it stays where it is.
Brand-level menus: if you delete a brand-level menu (shared across all your locations), the dialog warns how many connected location menus will be removed, for example "Deleting this will also remove 18 connected location menus." This is separate from the orphaned checkbox.