Your menu is a photograph, so nobody can search it.
The dish you are known for is written down somewhere no machine can read, which is the same as not having written it.
The short answer
Somebody hungry types a dish, not a restaurant. If your menu is a photograph or a PDF, the words on it do not exist as far as search is concerned, and neither do you.
A menu written as text on a page is the cheapest thing on this list and almost nobody does it.
How somebody actually picks where to eat
The decision is made on a phone, usually within a few minutes, often while already walking. What gets seen is the map: photographs, hours, how far away, and what other people said.
The website is rarely the thing that decides it. The listing is, and the listing is free.
Why a picture of a menu costs you
A search engine reads text. A photograph of a menu contains no text, only pixels arranged to look like some. So every dish you are known for is invisible, and the search for that dish goes to somebody who typed theirs out.
An assistant asked to recommend somewhere for a specific dish has the same problem, for the same reason.
The photographs are doing more work than the design
People look at pictures of the food and the room before they read a word. Photographs taken in your own place, in daylight, outperform anything bought from a library, because a customer can tell the difference and is checking whether the place is real.
What to do this week
Type the menu out as text on a page, with prices, and keep the pretty version as well if you want it. Fill in the hours, including the ones that change in summer. Put up photographs from your own kitchen.
None of that is a project and all of it is the part that gets read.
Questions worth asking
Do I need a website if I already have Instagram and a Google listing?
For a lot of places the listing does most of the work. What it cannot do is hold a menu that search can read, or a page for the dish you are known for. Start with the listing, add the menu as text, and worry about the rest of a site after that.
The menu changes every week. Do I have to retype the page every time?
No. It is built so you change the dishes and the prices yourself, from a phone, the way you would edit a note. We will do it if you would rather, but a menu that depends on somebody else is a menu that goes stale.
I cannot afford a photographer. Is that a problem?
Less than you think. Photographs taken in your own kitchen in daylight beat bought ones, because the customer is checking whether the place is real. A phone from this decade near a window is enough. A dark plate under a yellow bulb is not.
Does being on a delivery app cover this?
It covers delivery. It does not put you in the map when somebody nearby searches for the dish, and the app keeps the customer rather than handing them to you. Treat it as one more shelf, not as your presence.
What decides the price of this?
How long the menu is, how many languages it needs, and whether the photographs exist yet. A one page menu in Albanian is a small job. A hundred dishes in three languages with a booking form is not. You are told which one you are before you agree to anything.
Send us your menu the way a customer finds it, and we will tell you which dishes are invisible. Get a free audit.
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