Show Only What’s Available: Time‑Based Menu Visibility for Olo

Your Olo menu now shows guests only the items your kitchen can actually make at the time they're ordering for — whether they're ordering right now or scheduling ahead for later.

What is it?

Thanx now reads the availability rules you've already set on your items in Olo — time of day, day of week, and date ranges — and filters your Thanx ordering menu against the time the guest wants their food, not the time they happen to be browsing.

A guest ordering ASAP at 8am and a guest at 8am scheduling a 7pm pickup will see two different menus, and both are correct. If every item in a category falls outside its window, the category is hidden from the menu navigation entirely, no empty "Happy Hour" tab sitting there at 10am.

Why it matters

If you run a day-parted kitchen, you've had to pick between two bad options: show everything and let guests hit an error at checkout, or hide time-limited items and make your scheduled-order menu invisible. You no longer have to choose.

• Order-ahead shows the right menu: a guest booking a 7pm pickup at 2pm sees the happy hour menu that will be live when they arrive.

• LTOs and seasonal items run themselves: set a start and end date in Olo and the item surfaces and disappears on schedule, with no menu rework on your side.

• One source of truth: you configure availability once in Olo. The Thanx ordering experience follows it.

How it works

What you set up in Olo

Availability is configured per item in your Olo menu — the same place you manage it today:

1. Time of day — the hours an item can be ordered (e.g. 6:00am–10:30am)

2. Day of week — the days an item is offered (e.g. Tuesdays only)

3. Date range — a start and end date for LTOs and seasonal items

Olo's guide: Adding Availability Hours, Days and Dates

What your guest sees

1. The guest chooses ASAP or picks a scheduled pickup or delivery time — same experience as today, no new steps

2. The menu is filtered to that time; items outside their window are removed from the menu, not greyed out

3. Categories with no available items at that time are hidden

4. If the guest changes their time, the menu re-filters against the new time

Where to find it in Thanx

There's nothing to turn on in your Thanx dashboard. Getting this live for your brand takes two steps:

1. Ask your Olo rep to enable showunavailableitems on your Olo account. Olo only sends availability data when this is on. It isn't self-service, and it isn't something Thanx can flip or see on your behalf.

2. Let your Customer Success Manager know once it's on, and we'll switch time-based menu visibility on for your brand.

Until both are in place, your menu behaves exactly as it does today — nothing changes on its own.

Available for: brands using Olo integrated ordering with a Thanx-built web or app ordering experience. No Olo version prerequisite. Brands ordering through Olo's own front end aren't affected.

A few things to know

• Both settings have to be on. If showunavailableitems is off in Olo, switching on the Thanx side won't change anything you can see. Start with Olo.

• Items are removed, not greyed out. An item outside its window disappears from the menu entirely.

• This is a different setting from 86'd item visibility. That one governs items the kitchen has run out of; this one governs items outside their scheduled window. They sit near each other and do similar-looking things, so it's worth being clear which you're asking about.

• Cart items aren't cleaned up automatically yet. If a guest builds a cart and then changes their order time, items that are no longer available stay in the cart and are still caught by Olo's checkout validation. Automatic cart clean-up is on the roadmap.

FAQs

Q: I turned this on but nothing changed. What should I check first?

A: Whether showunavailableitems is enabled on your Olo account. Without it, Olo doesn't send the availability data, so there's nothing for Thanx to filter. This is the most common cause and it's worth confirming with your Olo rep before anything else.

Q: Can I turn this on myself in the Thanx dashboard?

A: Not today. Your CSM enables it per brand once the Olo side is ready.

Q: How is this different from what Toast brands already have?

A: The outcome is similar; the mechanism isn't. Toast brands schedule entire menus, and Thanx shows the menu whose schedule covers the guest's time. Olo brands set availability on individual items, and Thanx filters items, then hides categories that end up empty.

Q: Does this apply to scheduled orders as well as ASAP?

A: Yes — that's the point of it. ASAP orders are filtered against right now; scheduled orders are filtered against the pickup or delivery time the guest selected.

Q: Do I need to rebuild my menu or migrate anything?

A: No. Thanx reads the availability rules already on your items in Olo. Nothing changes for your brand until you and your CSM turn it on.