This section walks through the shortest path from a freshly installed FW Food Menu to a live, viewable meal on your site. The whole thing usually takes under 10 minutes.
In your Joomla admin, open FW Food Menu → Meals. This is where every meal you create will live.
Click New (or the + New button). The meal editor opens with all the fields you'll need on a single form. Title, price, and a category assignment are the minimum for a usable record. Photo, description, ingredients, and badges all elevate the listing but aren't required to publish.
Fill in the basics and click Save. Don't worry about getting everything right the first time; every field is editable, and there's no hidden penalty for incomplete records during setup.
Set Published to Yes on the meal edit form. The meals list also supports inline publish toggling.
Create a Joomla menu item of type FW Food Menu → Menu, choose layout and category filter, and visit it. The new meal appears in the menu using the active theme.
That's the minimum. Everything from here is layering: more meals, more layouts, more add-ons. The Common Tasks section links to the next things most users want to do.