Create a menu with AI

Upload your existing card — a PDF, a photo, or plain text — and Waiterr builds the menu for you: categories, products, prices, allergens, ingredients and option groups.

Nothing is published until you validate it. The AI produces a draft. You check it, correct anything it misread, and only then does the menu appear in your catalogue — switched off, so it never changes service by surprise.

What you can upload

A PDF of up to 20 pages is read in one go. For a longer card, import it in two parts.

How it works

1. You hand over the document. Go to Menu → Create with AI, choose your source and start the import. The reading happens in the background: you can close the window, leave the page, or lock the tablet. Twenty seconds to two minutes later, depending on the number of pages, your draft is ready.

2. You check the draft. The review screen shows everything the AI read, grouped by category. Prices, names and descriptions are editable in place. A panel at the top lists the points worth a second look.

3. You create the menu. One button. The menu, its categories, its products and their option groups are created together — and the menu is inactive. Publish it when you are ready, from the usual switch in the menu list.

What the AI extracts

Categories and products

Each section of your card becomes a category, each line a product with its name, description and price. Prices are read in whatever form they are printed: 15,00 €, £8.50, 15.-, 12 / 15.

Allergens

Wordings are matched onto the 14 EU regulatory allergens, in any of the seven languages Waiterr speaks — so a French card read into an English Manager still lands on the right allergen. A negation is understood: “gluten free” does not add gluten.

An allergen that is not one of the 14 is kept as written and flagged, so you can decide what to do with it.

Ingredients

Ingredients printed for a dish become ingredient lines. Those the card presents as optional (“without onions on request”) are marked removable, which is what makes them appear in the customization dialog at the till.

Quantities are never invented: a printed card says “tomato”, not “40 g of tomato”. Stock consumption stays yours to configure.

Option groups

This is where the AI earns its keep. A formula like:

Burger menu — 15 € Choice of drink: Coke, Coke Zero, Fanta Choice of burger: Classic, Cheese, Chicken Dessert: Tiramisu, Cheesecake Sauces (up to 5, repeats allowed): Ketchup, Mayo, BBQ

becomes one product of type formula with four option groups, each with its own selection rule. Printed wordings such as “choice of”, “mandatory”, “maximum 3”, “up to 5” are read into a minimum and a maximum. When the card says nothing, a rule is deduced and flagged as deduced so you can confirm it.

One group, not fifteen copies

If “Choice of drink” appears under ten formulas, you get one group and one “Coke” product, shared by the ten. Existing products of your catalogue are reused too: if you already sell “Coke”, the import attaches to it instead of creating a second one. Your stock counts stay in one place.

Points to check

The review screen flags what deserves your eyes. The most common:

• No price found — the line had no readable price. Type it.
• Several prices printed — for instance a glass and a bottle price. The first was kept; split the line in two if you need both.
• Selection rule guessed — the card did not say how many choices are allowed. Confirm the minimum and maximum.
• Hard to read — a blurred or slanted line. Compare with your card.
• Already appears in another category — a dish listed twice. Keep one.
• Not a regulated allergen — a wording that is not one of the 14. It is kept as written.

Traceability

Every import is recorded: the source file, the model that read it, when, and by whom. Each category, product and option group it created is linked back to that import, so months later you can still answer “where did this product come from”.

The imported menu carries the mention that it was produced by AI.

Privacy

Your document is stored privately — never on a public address — and is deleted after 72 hours, along with the draft, whether you applied it or not. An import you abandon leaves nothing behind.

Getting a good result

• One page per photo. A photo of an open two-page card halves the resolution of each side.
• Flat and square on. A card photographed at an angle loses the line endings, which is exactly where the prices are.
• Avoid flash on laminated cards. The reflection erases a whole block.
• Prefer the PDF when you have it. Text in a PDF is read, not guessed.
• Pasted text: one dish per line, price at the end. That is the shape the reader is best at.

If it does not work

“The document could not be read as a menu” — the image is too blurred, or the document is not a card. Retake the photo, or paste the text instead.

“This file is over 15 MB” — export the PDF at a lower resolution, or import page by page.

You closed the page before checking the menu. Nothing is lost. Open Create with AI again: imports still being read, or waiting for your check, are listed at the top with a button to reopen them. If one has been reading for more than two minutes, a Restart button appears next to it.

“You have used this month’s AI imports” — every venue can run 3 AI imports a month. A plan that includes AI menu import raises that to 60. The count resets at the start of the next month, and a failed import never counts.

Nothing is ever added to your catalogue by a failed import.

Learn more → Categories · Create a menu manually