Digital Menu for Restaurants: What It Is and How to Set One Up

What you are setting up

One menu in an editor. From it, three outputs: a QR code menu that opens in the browser, a print PDF for the tables or the window, and a page for each dish. The page is what you can paste into Google Business Profile. We do not log in to Google and we do not fill Google's menu editor.

Guests choose a language on the menu if you have published one. The menu opens in its own language first. It does not detect the phone's language for them. You can publish from 62 content languages. You write or paste the words. Nothing is translated automatically.

You are not setting up a website, a POS, or a delivery app. If those are the job, this is the wrong tool. The comparisons are Popmenu, MENU TIGER and Menubly.

1. Bring the menu you already have

Create an account. Import a PDF, a photo of the printed menu, rows from a spreadsheet, or the page where the menu lives today. A PDF can be up to 20 MB. One import builds a draft of up to 150 items. Add anything past that by hand.

Read every name and every price. The draft is not public. Fix what the import misread, set the currency, and drop dishes that should not be on the menu. Allergen marks are yours to set. The import does not invent them.

2. Make it readable on a phone and on paper

Pick a design close to the room. There are six sample menus you can open: a coffee house, a burger restaurant, a bakery, a cocktail bar, an Italian restaurant and a Japanese kitchen. They are fictional venues. Starting from one copies the design, not the dishes.

Keep sections short. Put sizes on the dish as variants when a drink or a pour has more than one price. Use a photo only where it helps someone choose. Preview on a phone. Preview is free.

The same dishes print as A4, A5 or US Letter, a table tent, a counter card or a window poster. Prices sit in their own column. You can leave the allergen note, page numbers, logo, descriptions, photos and the QR code off the paper. Downloading your own PDF is part of the paid plan. Browsing the templates is free.

3. Publish, then put the code and the link where guests are

Publishing is the paid plan: $29 a month or $199 a year per venue. There is no trial, because you already saw the preview. There is no fee per scan. The public address and the QR code exist after you publish, not before.

Print the code on the table tent or the menu. Prefer the SVG if a print shop is making it, dark ink on a light ground, at least 2 cm wide. When a price changes, publish again. The code stays. Download a new PDF when the paper should match.

Paste the menu address into Google Business Profile, under the menu link. Do not paste the homepage, a PDF, or a delivery app. The walk-through is how to add your menu to Google Business Profile. Google reviews the link on its own schedule. A ranking is not part of the setup.

4. Keep one source

After the first week, the work is edits. Change a price, mark a dish sold out, add a language, switch lunch and dinner on a schedule. Staff can set sold out with a six-digit PIN that cannot see prices or design.

If you also typed dishes into Google's menu editor by hand, that is a second menu. Editing here does not change it. Two copies will show two prices. Keep the link, and retire the second copy, or accept that you will update both.

If you are starting from a PDF only, the import steps are in turn a PDF menu into a QR code menu. What the software costs, and what the free pieces really are, is QR code menu price.

Frequently asked questions