Creating your LeafLink menu is the most important part of on-boarding. By adding your inventory to LeafLink, you will not only create a menu shoppable and discoverable by retailers, but you will also have the ability to create manual orders on their behalf using that inventory.
Planning Your Menu
Before you create your inventory, it’s important to think about how you’d like to set up your menu for shoppers so that it’s easy for them to navigate. There are three key “levels” of a menu that you can use to organize your menu:
- Product Lines: This is the highest level and represents a product category or grouping. (i.e. Cookies or Premium Flower)
- Products: This is at the mid-level, and represents an individual product or strain. (i.e. Chocolate Chip Cookie or OG Kush)
- Varieties: At the lowest level, varieties are “sub-products”, or types of an individual product. (i.e. 100mg Individual Cookie or 1 ounce)
Most menus on LeafLink have Product Lines and all have Products. Varieties depend on the type and sizing of the products you carry. During on-boarding, your Client Experience representative will give you guidance on how to best set up your menu. It’s recommended that you bring a copy of your existing PDF menu to the call to show your representative so that they can make a recommendation.
The following examples illustrate some ways you can build your menu.
- No Varieties - Each product has its own photo, description, and link on the menu.
- Sizes as Varieties - Each product has different packaging and sizes available.
- Flavors or Strains as Varieties - Each product has different packaging and sizes available.
Varieties per Product are limited to 15. If you have more than 15 varieties, you may need to be more specific with your product-naming conventions, or you will need to break products out further.
Be sure to label varieties specifically ("Blue Dream Resin 1/8th" rather than "1/8th") In LeafLink Reports, the variety is reported as a single line item. Varieties with non-specific names ("1/8th") are more difficult to track in reporting.
Adding Products
Create Product Lines
Once you have decided on your menu setup strategy, you can create your Product Lines.
To add a product line, click Inventory on the LeafLink navigation panel. Then, follow these steps:
- Click the Product Lines tab in the horizontal navigation bar.
- Select the associated brand for the new product line. If you only operate one brand, this brand will be the default selection.
- Name the new product line.
- Save by clicking Create Product Line.
The product line will now appear in Existing Brands and Product Lines on this page. It will also be available as an option when adding products.
Create a Product Template (Recommended)
If you are creating multiple products in LeafLink, we recommend creating a Product Template first. A Product Template allows you to automatically pre-populate fields that would have the same information. This will save you a great deal of time, especially during on-boarding when you are adding a lot of products at once.
To create a Product Template, click Inventory in the LeafLink navigation panel. Then, go to Templates in the horizontal navigation bar. Next, follow these steps:
- Click Create New Product Template.
- Enter the Product Template name in the Template Name field.
- Fill out any fields that will be the same across multiple products that will use this template. You will most likely want to add the Brand and License fields, but the other fields you fill will depend on how many similarities there are in the products you will be adding. For example, if this template is for your line of edibles, you may wish to add Product Inventory information (whether the product is Unlimited, Managed, or Inherited, and defining units) and Product Category (Edible).
- Once you’ve entered the desired fields, click Save.
The template will now be available when you select Create a Product or in Bulk Add. It will populate the fields you selected, so you only have to fill in the missing fields.
Add Products via Add New Product or Bulk Add
Once you have created your product lines and product templates, there are two main ways to add products to LeafLink:
- Add New Product
- Bulk Add
You can access these by clicking Inventory in the LeafLink navigation panel. The Add New Product is on the top-right of the page. The Bulk Add/Edit button is one of the sections under Inventory.
If you chose to add varieties while building your menu, it’s important when using either method to choose This product has Varieties. That will reveal additional fields for creating your varieties.
Full details for how to add Products can be found here.
Final Steps
Previewing Your Menu
When adding new products to your menu, you can toggle back and forth between Inventory and Preview Menu to see how you changes will appear to retailers.
Click on Preview Menu in the LeafLink navigation panel. You can leverage the following tools on the page to improve your menu:
- Menu Checklist: Review the our Menu Checklist to ensure that your menu has everything it needs to flourish in the LeafLink marketplace.
- Simulate Shopper Type: Use this drop-down to toggle between recreational and medical menus (if applicable).
- Missing Information Alerts: The menu will display alerts if you are missing product images, a featured product, and do not have sample requests enabled..
- To add a Featured Product, click Inventory in the LeafLink navigation panel. Find the product you’d like to feature and click the vertical ellipsis to its left. Select Edit. Then, select the Featured Product checkbox and click Save.
Enabling Vendor Menu (optional)
Sellers with multiple brand menus have the option to enable the Vendor Menu feature, which aggregates all of their brand menus into one larger menu with a single URL. This allows buyers to easily shop and add products across all your brands to their shopping cart without ever having to leave the page. If you're interested in enabling this feature, please reach out to your Account Manager.
Menu Review
Once your menu is complete, schedule a call with your Account Manager for a menu review. If your menu is complete and account meets the requirements included in the Go-Live Checklist, they will take you live in the LeafLink marketplace.