Recommendations tuning

Recommendations tuning lets you influence which drinks me&u recommends to your guests, without giving up the personalisation that makes those recommendations work. You group drinks into campaigns, choose how hard to push or hold back each group, and the recommendation engine blends your commercial intent with what each guest is most likely to want.

This article covers what tuning does, how to build and manage a campaign, how to get good results from it, and where to find your reporting. Use it whenever you want to push particular drinks, high-margin pours, supplier-supported lines or seasonal serves, or suppress other items.

Before you start

Tuning works on drink items. It shapes your personalised recommendations, starting with the drinks carousel on your menu home and the drink suggestions in cart cross-sells
An item only appears in tuning if the category on its item details is set to Drink, Alcoholic drink, or Non-alcoholic drink. This is the field on the item itself, not the menu category it sits under
You steer recommendations, you don't override them. More and Less shift the odds. Don't show is the only setting that blocks an item outright
Nothing changes on your main menu. Tuning only affects what gets recommended, not what guests can order
You'll find it in the Manage platform under Personalisation > Recommendations tuning. If you can't see it, get in touch with your me&u contact

What Recommendations tuning is

Recommendations tuning is a venue-side tool that lets you guide the personalised recommendations your guests see. You group drinks into campaigns and set how strongly to promote or hold back each group.

It's a real sales mix lever. Use it to push high-margin drinks, supplier-supported pours, seasonal serves, or whatever else lines up with your commercial goals, all while each guest still gets a personalised experience. Picture an IPA fan walking in for the first time and being shown your highest-margin IPA, while a rosé drinker at the next table sees the rosé you've got a supplier deal on.

Importantly, tuning influences recommendations, it doesn't replace them. The engine still personalises to each guest, tuning just weights the outcome towards your priorities.

What tuning affects

Tuning applies to drinks, across the parts of the guest experience that are personalised:

The drinks carousel on your menu landing page
Cart cross-sells, where tuning shapes the drink suggestions offered before checkout

Within the carousel, tuning influences items tagged Trending and For you. It does not change Reorder, which reflects a guest's own past orders and stays true to only what they've bought before.

We're expanding personalisation to more of the guest experience over time, and tuning will extend with it.

The four tuning levels

Each campaign carries one tuning level:

More: the item is recommended more often
Less: the item is recommended less often
Don't show: the item is blocked from recommendations entirely. It still appears on your main menu as normal, guests just won't see it suggested
Default: no change, the same as leaving an item untuned. Useful for building a campaign before you're ready to run it, or pausing one without deleting it

Campaigns

A campaign is a named collection of drinks that share one tuning level. Think of them as commercial themes, for example "Signature cocktails", "Summer spritzes" (More), or "Takeaway beers" (Don't show).

A few things to know:

Campaign names and descriptions are internal only. Guests never see them
Each campaign has one tuning level that applies to every drink in it
A drink can sit in one campaign at a time. If you add a drink that's already in another campaign, we'll move it into the new one
There's no cap on how many campaigns you run or how many items you tune, though it's worth tuning deliberately (see Getting the best results)

How to create a campaign

Go to Personalisation > Recommendations tuning
Select Create campaign
On the Items tab, search for a drink by name or narrow the list using the Category filter
Tick each drink you want in the campaign
Open the Campaign details tab and give the campaign a name, for example "Signature cocktails"
Add a description if you want one, this is optional
Choose a tuning level
Open the Review tab, check your selection, and save

💡 Tip, turn on Only show items that are not assigned to a campaign on the Items tab to see at a glance which drinks you haven't tuned yet.

Not sure where to start? A few ideas:

More for high-margin drinks, seasonal serves, supplier-promotion pours, or anything you're actively trying to push
Less for drinks you want to keep available but de-emphasise, for example items that slow down bar service or carry thinner margins than a similar alternative
Don't show for drinks that shouldn't be recommended at all, for example takeaway-only beers

How to manage a campaign

From the campaigns list you can:

Drag the slider on a campaign card to change its tuning level
Open the ellipsis (…) menu to manage its items, edit its name and description, or delete it

Remember that adding a drink into a different campaign takes it out of its old one.

⚠️ Warning, deleting a campaign removes it and its tuning for good. To pause a campaign instead, set its level to Default, which keeps the campaign and its items so you can switch it back on later.

Getting the best results

Tune as few items as you can. Think of the push behind More as a fixed amount shared across everything you tune, so every drink you add takes a slice from the rest. A short, deliberate list moves your sales mix. Tune most of your menu and you've effectively tuned none of it
Tie each campaign to a goal. Push high-margin or hero drinks, hit a supplier target, move seasonal stock. Clear intent makes campaigns easier to manage and easier to measure
Keep campaigns specific. A tightly themed campaign is easier to understand later than a broad catch-all
Prefer Less to Don't show. Less holds a drink back without taking it out of the mix. Blocking items entirely can harm the guest experience, so save Don't show for drinks that genuinely shouldn't be recommended at all
Give it a few weeks before you judge it. Tuning shifts your sales mix gradually, across a lot of guest sessions. Make a change, let it settle, then look at your reporting rather than blindly re-tuning every day

Tuning at multi-vendor venues

If you run a multi-vendor venue (like a food hall), there are two layers of control. Each child venue tunes its own items as described above, and the parent operator tunes whole child venues up or down. The two combine to shape the shared recommendations to the guest.

Recommendations tuning sits on each child venue, not the parent, so you won't find it on your parent venue. Parent operators get Child venue tuning instead, and can link through to a child venue's item tuning from there using Tune menu items, as long as they have access to that venue. See the Child venue tuning help article for how the parent-level control works.

Reporting

You'll find reporting in Manage under Personalisation > Recommendations metrics. There are three tabs:

Overview: how guests are engaging with your me&u recommendations, across the carousel and drink cart cross-sells
Tuning campaigns: performance for each of your campaigns
Tuning items: performance item by item

We're continuing to expand this, so if there's something specific you'd like to see, let your me&u contact know.

Troubleshooting

A drink is missing from the item picker

Cause: the category on that item's details isn't set to a drink category. Items synced in from your POS often arrive with a category of "Other", which is the most common reason a drink doesn't appear
Fix: open the item in your menu, set its category to Drink, Alcoholic drink, or Non-alcoholic drink on the item details page, then go back to tuning. The drink will be selectable

You can't find a Daily Special to tune

Cause: Daily Specials have to be set up as a nested item, and nested items can't be tuned
Fix: there's no way round this one. Tune the other drinks you want to push instead

A tuned drink doesn't look like it's showing more often

Cause: tuning shifts the odds across many guest sessions, it doesn't pin an item into the carousel. Every guest sees something personalised to them, so checking the menu on your own phone won't tell you much
Fix: give it a few weeks, then check Personalisation > Recommendations metrics. (Don't show is the exception as you can verify that one directly after a couple of minutes)

FAQ

Do I need to set anything up for tuning to work?

Tuning is optional. Your guests already get personalised recommendations without it, tuning just lets you influence them. Set up a campaign whenever you want to push or hold back specific drinks.

Will "More" guarantee an item always appears?

No. Tuning weights the recommendations towards your priorities, but what each guest sees still depends on their own preferences and context. More and Less shift the odds, they don't force or block an item. Only Don't show fully removes an item from recommendations.

Can I tune food items?

Not at this stage. Tuning applies to drinks for now.

Does tuning change my main menu?

No. Tuning only affects what's recommended in the carousel or on cart cross-sells. Every item stays available to order on your menu exactly as before.

Does tuning affect "Reorder" tagged item suggestions?

No. The Reorder tag on items in the carousel reflects a guest's own past orders, so it isn't influenced by tuning. Tuning applies to the Trending and For you recommendations.

Can a drink be in more than one campaign?

No. Each drink sits in a single campaign at a time. Adding it to a new campaign moves it out of the old one.

How many items or campaigns can I have?

There's no cap. That said, tuning works best when it's focused, so lean towards a deliberate set of campaigns for specific items, rather than tuning everything.

Can I schedule campaigns to run at certain times?

For now, campaigns stay active until you change them. If you want to pause one, set its level to Default rather than deleting it, that keeps the campaign and its items intact so you can switch it back on later.

Is this the same as the Upsells feature in Manage?

No. The existing Upsells feature lets you manually set fixed suggestions which show up against menu items, and it's unchanged. Recommendations tuning influences the personalised, AI-driven recommendations instead.

Why do I only see one size of a drink?

Where sizes are set up as upgrade options on a drink (e.g. a Pint with a Jug as an upgrade option), tuning shows the main item only, not each of the size options. Tuning the main item applies the tune to every size in that upgrade group.

You can now group your drinks into campaigns, tune them up or down, and watch the effect on your sales mix in your reporting.

Any questions? Reach out to us via email at support@meandu.com

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