Why your restaurant menu shouldn’t be a PDF
A PDF menu is hard to read on a phone, hard for Google to use and hard to keep current. Here’s what to do instead, and when a PDF still makes sense.
The menu is the most visited page on almost every restaurant website. It’s also the page most often uploaded as a PDF, usually because the menu was already designed for print and a PDF was the quickest way to get it online.
That’s understandable, and it costs more than it looks.
It’s hard to read where people read it
Most guests look at your menu on a phone, often on the way to deciding where to eat tonight. A PDF made for a printed page opens tiny on a phone screen. Depending on the phone, it downloads to a file, opens in a separate viewer, or asks the guest to pinch and zoom across every line.
A menu written as a web page fits the screen, loads quickly and reads like the rest of your site.
Google can read it, but can’t do much with it
Google does index PDFs. But a PDF is one long document with no structure Google can use. A menu page, written properly, tells Google exactly what you serve: the dishes, the sections, the prices.
Your menu is also the page most likely to match what people search for. Someone looking for a tasting menu, an omakase counter or a particular dish is searching in the words that are on your menu. In a PDF, those words are much harder to surface.
It goes out of date in more places
When the menu changes, a PDF has to be re-exported and re-uploaded. Old versions often stay online at their old addresses, and Google can keep showing them for months, so guests arrive expecting a dish you stopped serving in the spring.
A menu page has one address. Change it once and it’s current everywhere, including the menu link on your Google Business Profile.
It shuts some guests out
Screen readers, which blind and low-vision guests use to browse, struggle with PDFs unless they’ve been carefully tagged, and most restaurant PDFs aren’t. A menu page built with real headings and text works with them by default. In New York, where restaurant website accessibility lawsuits are common, that’s worth getting right for legal reasons as well as hospitality ones.
What to do instead
- Put the menu on its own page, with each section (or each course, for a tasting menu) as a heading and every dish as text.
- Write prices and dietary notes as text, not as part of an image.
- If the menu changes daily, say so and date it: “Tonight’s menu, Wednesday, November 4.” Guests trust a dated menu more than an undated one.
- Make it easy to change. If updating the menu means calling someone, it won’t happen often enough. Whoever writes the menu should be able to update the page in a few minutes.
- Link to the page from your Google Business Profile. It has a menu link field, and the link should go to the page, not a file.
- Add structured data. A few lines of code that describe your restaurant and menu to search engines in a format they understand. Your web designer should do this as standard.
When a PDF still makes sense
Keep a PDF as an extra, not as the menu itself. A printable version is useful for private dining packages, event menus and wine lists that guests want to study before they come. Offer it as a “download” link at the bottom of the menu page, so it’s there for the people who want it.
The short version
Your menu page should load on a phone in a second or two, read without zooming, and be updated the same day the menu changes. If yours is a PDF, it’s probably the easiest improvement you can make to your website this year.
Every site Studio Cloche builds comes with a menu you can update yourself. See what’s included, or read what a fine-dining restaurant website needs.