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Until now, a menu on EatNow was a PDF: guests tapped the Menus link on your booking portal (or scanned a QR code) and opened your file. That still works — but you can now go further with interactive menus. An interactive menu is a web page hosted on your booking portal, in your restaurant’s colors, that presents your dishes by category with prices, photos, allergens and dietary tags. It reads beautifully on a phone, is translated into your portal’s 6 languages, and is understood by search engines.
An interactive menu on mobile, themed with the restaurant's colors

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Why switch from a PDF?

PDF menus are still fully supported — nothing changes for them. You choose the type when creating each menu, and you can keep both kinds side by side.

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Create an interactive menu

1

Open the Menus page

In your dashboard, go to Menus and click Create a digital menu.
2

Choose “Interactive menu”

Two types are offered: PDF menu (the classic behavior) and Interactive menu.
The menu creation form with the interactive menu type selected
3

Import your PDF — or start from scratch

If you already have your menu as a PDF, choose Import my PDF menu: our AI reads it and pre-fills your categories and dishes — names, descriptions, prices (including glass/bottle variants), and any allergens, vegetarian/vegan marks or chili icons explicitly printed on your menu.Extraction takes a minute or two. Prefer a blank slate? Choose Start from scratch.
4

Review before publishing

The extracted menu is a draft: nothing is visible to guests until you turn on Published. Read every dish — especially allergens, which the AI only picks up when your PDF explicitly declares them. You remain responsible for allergen accuracy.

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Edit your menu

The editor shows your categories (Starters, Mains, Desserts, Drinks…) with their dishes. You can:
  • Reorder anything by drag & drop — categories and dishes.
  • Add, edit, hide or delete categories and dishes. Hiding a dish removes it from the portal entirely (off season).
  • Mark a dish unavailable in one tap (the ⊘ button on its row) when it runs out mid-service: it stays on the menu, greyed out with an “Unavailable today” mention, until you flip it back.
  • Publish with the switch at the top right — that’s what makes the menu visible on your portal.
The interactive menu editor with draggable categories and items
Each dish can carry:
The dish form with prices, photos, allergens and dietary tags

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Translations

Every text field has the usual language selector and ✨ auto-translate button. For a whole menu, use Translate all in the editor’s toolbar: it fills the 6 portal languages for every dish in one go.
Translate all only fills empty languages — it never overwrites a translation you’ve written or corrected yourself. Run it once after the import, then fix the few wordings you care about.

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What your guests see

On your portal, the Menus link now opens the hosted page instead of a PDF. Guests get:
  • Category tabs that stick to the top while scrolling,
  • Filters: show only vegan dishes, or hide everything that declares a given allergen,
  • Photos (tap to enlarge), prices, badges and spice levels,
  • The page in their language, with a Book a table button that leads straight to your booking flow.
Guest-side dietary and allergen filters
The allergen filter only hides dishes that declare the excluded allergen, and the page carries a disclaimer inviting guests to inform your team. It’s guidance, not a guarantee.
Each menu keeps a permanent public link and QR code (from the menu’s card in the dashboard). QR codes you’ve already printed keep working: if you convert to an interactive menu later, the same link now opens the hosted page. The QR code and the shareable link are subtly different on purpose: a QR code is usually scanned at the table, so the page it opens hides the Book a table button — your guest is already seated. The link (for your website, Instagram bio…) keeps the booking button visible.

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Search engines & AI assistants

The menu page is built for visibility:
  • It’s a real web page (not a PDF), server-rendered and indexable by Google,
  • It embeds schema.org structured data (Restaurant → hasMenu → MenuSection → MenuItem, with prices and diets) so search engines — and AI assistants recommending restaurants — can actually read your menu.

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Re-importing a PDF

Menu changed? In the editor, click Import a PDF at any time. You choose whether the import replaces the current content or is appended after it. As always, the result is a draft to review.