What is LTO food? It is a limited time offer: a dish, a bundle, or a price you will sell only until a date you can say out loud, or until the pan is empty. The letters show up on menu boards, on window clings, and in group texts. They mean the same thing in a dining room as they do on a website. The offer ends.
This post is how to run that offer on online ordering. You will put it on the menu as an item, schedule when guests can buy it, and tell the right people without handing the reorder to a marketplace. A Halloween plate and a November tray are examples, not the method. Those calendars are Halloween restaurant special offers and November food holidays. A longer list of plates, sorted by daypart and season, is restaurant specials ideas. Stay here for any week you invent.
What LTO food means at the counter
A limited time offer is a promise with a stop. The guest should be able to answer three questions before they pay: what they get, what it costs, and when it goes away. If any of those is a shrug, you do not have an LTO. You have a maybe.
Restaurants use one when a dish is tied to a season, a game, a holiday, or an ingredient that will not be here next month. They also use one to try a plate without carving it into the permanent list. The trial is the point. If the item earns a permanent button, promote it later. Until then, label it as temporary so regulars are not surprised when it vanishes.
An LTO is not a discount on the whole menu, and it is not a secret price you only mention if someone asks. A lower price can be the offer, but the food still needs a name. "Twenty percent off everything" trains people to wait. One named plate with a last day trains them to decide.
Decide the offer before you touch the website
Write the item the way the cook would call it. Name the portion. Name the price in dollars, not in a code. Name the last service, such as Sunday dinner, or the moment the pan is gone, whichever comes first. If the kitchen cannot fire it on the night you named, pick a different plate. A slow special on a Friday is how the rail falls behind the regular menu.
Keep modifiers to the questions you already ask. A size, a heat level, or a side that changes the ticket is enough. A limited item with eight new choices is a new menu wearing a star. How many standing items you should publish at all is small restaurant menu. An LTO sits on top of that short list. It does not replace the argument about what belongs every night.
Say whether pickup, delivery, or both can take it. If the dish will not survive a car, do not offer it for delivery. Pickup and delivery share the menu you publish. A note that says "dine in only" on a button people can still tap is how you comp food. Leave it off the delivery path, or leave it off the site and keep it as a counter rule you can see.
Put the LTO on the menu as an item
Online, the offer is a menu item guests can add to a cart. A photo on Instagram is an advertisement. A line on a PDF is a reading assignment. Neither one prints a ticket. In restaurant admin you add a special, set the price, and the storefront updates. The same save is how you take it off.
Give it a photo of the real plate, a one or two line description, and the last day in that description. Required choices should show before optional ones, the same as the rest of the menu. Price a modifier when the price changes. Do not hide the upcharge in the notes box.
Where the item should sit
If one dish is the whole offer, put it first in a short category named for the week, or first in the category people already open. Do not bury it under drinks. If several plates share the same last day, give them their own category so you can retire them together. Categories and the cart itself are covered on online ordering menu. This page only decides that the limited item is a real button.
Use the words on the window. If the cling says "brisket melt this week," the button should not say "chef's seasonal feature three." Staff who answer the phone and the guest on the phone should be talking about the same plate. Online ordering is the storefront those words live on.
What not to publish
Do not publish a zero dollar item unless every person who can open the link is allowed to claim it. A free plate that is only for people standing at the counter will get ordered by someone in a car. Say the rule at the counter, or charge the real price online and comp in the room.
Do not leave last month's LTO on the page because the photo still looks good. Guests learn the menu is a scrapbook. When the offer is over, remove the item. If it sold out early, mark it unavailable so the button stops. The closer needs a staff login that can edit the menu. If they have to text the owner, the item outlives the pan.
Schedule when guests can buy it
Scheduling an LTO means the cart matches the clock you already run. It does not mean a second calendar of coupon codes. MicroSky Food does not add a separate promo scheduler on top of the menu. You use the hours tools you already have, and you remove what those tools do not cover.
Hours, a category, and a closing
Ordering opens and closes with the hours you posted. After close, guests should see that you are closed instead of paying for food you will not cook. You can schedule a closing for a holiday or a short day. You can hide a category when its hours end, which is the clean way to run a lunch-only LTO or a late-night menu for extended pickup. A category that ends at 2 p.m. should not still be tappable at dinner.
Put a multi-day offer in that category and write the last calendar day in the description. The hours hide it each afternoon if that is the rule. They do not know that Sunday is the last Sunday. A person still deletes the category, or the items, when the week is over. How it works is where hours, zones, and the staff login sit in the setup.
The manual stop is part of the schedule
A single special parked on the regular menu does not expire because you thought about Friday. Add it when service starts. Remove it, or mark it unavailable, when the pan is done or the date arrives. Say that job out loud at lineup: who turns the item off, and what they do if the owner is not in the building.
Check the page from a phone that is not logged into admin. Owners often see a draft and think guests see it too. If you can still order the LTO after you meant to stop it, the schedule is not finished. Place one paid test during the window, read the ticket, and refund it. If the cook has to call the front to learn it was the special, the item name is wrong.
Promote the offer without giving away the guest
A promo is the sentence you use to point at the item: the dish, the price, and the last day. The same sentence belongs on the window, in the item description, and in any message you send. Three versions of the deal is how the counter argues with the website.
On your own site, the button is the promotion. Put the category where a thumb hits it first during the week of the offer, then move it back. How that page should be arranged, including the order button and a layout that loads, is restaurant website design. Do not design a new theme for one weekend. Move the item.
Who you are allowed to message
Tell people who already eat with you. Email and SMS campaigns to that list are on Growth Plus, at $999 per month plus 10% of net sales, after 3 months on Standard. Standard and Growth do not include those campaigns. Push to a branded iOS app is on Growth, at $499 per month plus 7% of net sales, also after 3 months on Standard. One note is enough: what it is, what it costs, when it ends, and the link to your menu.
If you are not on that plan yet, you can still run the LTO. The window, the counter, and the item on the site are the offer. The text is a convenience. Do not skip the plate because you cannot text, and do not text a personal phone list you cannot stop. Which channel fits a normal week is mobile marketing for restaurants.
Keep the reorder on your checkout
A marketplace coupon can fill a tablet and teach Friday to happen in someone else's app. DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub often charge 15 to 30% of the sale. If you still use them for strangers, do not hide the limited price only inside their apps. The guest who already knows you should be able to buy the LTO on your domain.
Loyalty points accrue on storefront purchases on every plan, and you set what they are worth. A one-week item can still earn points. You do not need a separate punch card for the special. The order link on your Google Business Profile should open your site, so the search for the special does not dead-end on a listing with no cart.
A week to run one LTO
On day one, name the plate, the dollar price, and the last service. Cross it off if the station cannot fire it beside the usual orders. On day two, add the item, the photo, and the description with that last day. Put it in a category if the hours should hide it. On day three, pay for a test order and read the print. Fix the modifier that showed up as a riddle.
Tell the counter the one sentence. Tell guests only after the ticket looks like something you would hand a new cook. On the last day, sell what you prepped, then remove the item before close so tomorrow's menu is honest. If it sold out at noon, mark it unavailable at noon.
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What an LTO will not fix
A limited time offer will not repair a menu that is already too long, a price that is wrong on the standing items, or a checkout people abandon. It will not invent demand for a dish the neighborhood did not ask for. It will not dispatch drivers or draw a fence around the block. Delivery stays the zone, radius, and fee you configure. MicroSky Food does not offer driver dispatch or geofencing.
It also will not apply itself. If nobody has the login to add the item and take it down, the offer is a poster. Restaurants already on the platform are on the clients page. Questions about a special you want to run this month go through contact. Open the live demo if you want to see a menu on a phone before you judge the draft of yours.