BentoBox

BentoBox is a CMS and website platform focused on hospitality brands, especially restaurants, hotels, and lifestyle venues. At Terra, we use BentoBox in JFR Restaurant projects, where the platform’s built-in features and integrations are more important than full layout or technical flexibility.

This guide explains how BentoBox works in practice, what the main building blocks are, and what to be careful with when making changes.

Overview

Bentobox works different from other CMS. Instead of freely designing layouts, you work within a structured system based on:

predefined page types
content blocks
modules and settings
global brand styles

Pages & Media

Media Gallery

The Media Gallery is used to upload and manage all assets, such as images and files, that are later used across the site.

Page structure

When editing a page, you’ll typically find two main sections:

The Header acts as the hero section of the page.

Because BentoBox layouts are quite limited, we usually:

Add custom hero sections via code
Avoid relying on default templates for complex layouts

However, it is still possible to:

Add a simple title and text
Add one or multiple images
Apply image options such as dark overlays

What you see in the editor is generally what you’ll get on the site (WYSIWYG), within the constraints of the template.

Flexible Content

Most of the page content lives inside Flexible Content sections.

This is where we build the actual page structure using reusable blocks.
Instead of relying on BentoBox’s predefined templates, we usually:

Use a general-purpose template
Build everything inside flexible content blocks
Style and customize everything via code

This approach is especially important for restaurant projects, where each venue may have a different branding.

Inside the page settings, you can:

Choose where the page lives (main nav, footer, standalone)
Select a template

Templates

BentoBox templates are:

Very specific (menus, galleries, etc.)
Not very customizable
Limited to a single use case

For example:

A Menu template can only display menus
A Gallery template can only display galleries

Flexible content blocks

Some common flexible content blocks include:

One-column text
Split overlay sections
Galleries
Instagram feeds
Embed sections

Boxes by location

One of the most commonly used blocks is Boxes by location.

It allows you to display:

Menus
News
Press articles
Events

Workflow:

Select Boxes by location
Choose a location / lineup
Select the content type (menu, news, press, etc.)
Adjust layout and feature options as needed

The items shown here correspond to the same items available in the content dropdowns (e.g. news, press, menus).

News & Press content

News and press articles are managed separately and then displayed inside pages via flexible content blocks.

For older content, some items may not be linked to a lineup yet.
In those cases:

Assign the correct lineup
Select the corresponding section in the page to display them

Publishing workflow

BentoBox usually works directly on production content.

What this means

There is often no staging environment.
Changes go live immediately or after a simple publish action.
Always review carefully before saving.

Recommended workflow:

Make small, incremental changes.
Refresh the front-end after each update.
Avoid batch edits unless necessary.

Best practices

Understand the page type before editing.
Use a general template and build everything inside flexible content instead of relying on these restrictive templates.
Know whether a change is local or global.
Be cautious with modules and global settings.
Test changes immediately on the live site.
When unsure, ask before making structural changes.

Knowledge Check

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