Why Your Restaurant's Biggest Problem Isn't the Food. It's the Menu Update Process.

When I first started working with restaurants back in 2021, I wasn't thinking about menus. I was thinking about cameras. I walked into Paliotti's — an Italian restaurant in my city — because that's what I do. I create authentic brand videos, content, and documentary-driven stories for businesses. I'd come on site, film the staff, capture the energy, post to social at least once a week. That was the job.

But invariably, the days that sucked were the days when Michael — the chef and owner — had to update his menu. Every time I showed up and he was working on the menu, those were the tough days where I barely got anything done. It turns out Michael was actually my star of the show and he needed to be on film. He was the heart of the restaurant, but I couldn't get him in front of the camera because he was too busy trying to update his menu.

Picture this. He's up in his office. And if you've spent any time behind the scenes of a restaurant, you know exactly what I'm talking about: the sweatiest, most cluttered little room you've ever seen. Usually no windows. More closet than office. Half the time he's watching the security cameras to make sure the team's running smoothly downstairs. The other half? He's trying to navigate Canva.

He'd have handwritten notes with new prices. Maybe a spreadsheet if he was feeling organized. He'd rebuild the menu layout, think about printing it, then try to figure out how to get it onto the WordPress site. Every single time. And that was my introduction to all the little moving parts an owner is juggling that have absolutely nothing to do with cooking.

The Online Experience Gap

Here's what I noticed across nearly every restaurant I've worked with since. The owners want people to have the same experience online that they have in the dining room. But unless you're a franchise with a corporate team behind you, most restaurant websites are — and I'll be honest — pretty lame. They barely speak to the food. If there are photos, sometimes it's better that there aren't. They rarely capture the culture of the business. And when they do have a video, it's from 2006. Which, hey, if you've been open for 20 years, that's actually a testament to something. But it's not a testament to the website.

Now let's talk about where your menu actually lives today. It's not just the printed sheet in the dining room. Your menu is on Uber Eats. It's on DoorDash. Skip the Dishes. Probably a couple of other platforms I haven't even heard of yet. Then there's your website, which may or may not have the ability for someone to actually order from it. And your POS — whether that's Square, Clover, Touch Bistro, Lightspeed — each one handles the online ordering experience a little differently.

The POS Landscape (It's Complicated)

I'll give credit where it's due. Square has built a fantastic ecosystem. The front-facing online menu, the payment system, loyalty programs — it's close to an all-in-one solution. Probably one of the best at making sure everything feels encompassing. Clover is solid. Touch Bistro has its strengths. Lightspeed has some nice abilities. But here's the thing: everything is tied to a payment flow, and sometimes that cart system cheapens what should feel premium. Restaurants are brick and mortar. People go to sit in them. They employ single parents, aspiring hospitality managers, incredible waitstaff who've figured out that the right restaurant means real money. Restaurants are culture. They're not shopping carts.

And every one of these tools? Either super closed with a million options, or kind of open and clunky. Finding something that's truly democratized — where updating your menu doesn't feel like rewiring a building — that's rare.

124 Menu Items, Two Languages, and a Neighbourhood That Orders by Number

This all hit me hardest when I took on the menu for a phở restaurant I love working with. Incredible food. Absolutely delicious. But the menu was a beast. 124 items. Vietnamese and English. Modifiers on almost every dish — protein choices, sizes, add-ons. And here's the kicker: the neighbourhood had been ordering by number for years. "I'll have a number 23 with extra meat, a 34, and a number six to drink." That doesn't tell you anything unless you know that's a rare beef noodle soup with a Vietnamese coffee — which happens to be one of my go-to orders.

The first person who set up the menu in Square got the numbering wrong. When I went in to fix it, there was no master file. No updated Excel. No current PDF. Just the physical, bound menus sitting on the tables. I had to photograph them, transcribe them with AI, push them through Antigravity — which I use as a work hub — and then send them into Square through the API.

The Real Solution: A Back-End Menu Updater That Speaks Human

That experience is what crystallized the idea for me. Every time we set up a restaurant, what they actually need isn't another dashboard with forty tabs. They need a back-end app — a menu updater that's prompt-driven. You tell it what to change. The AI goes in, updates the prices, swaps the items, replaces photos if you have them, and pushes those changes across your systems. Your Square account, your Wix site, your delivery platforms — as long as there's API access, one prompt can update everything at once.

That's the key: API control into your systems means you can inject changes everywhere simultaneously. The back end does the heavy lifting. The front end just works.

1. You tell the system what changed — by voice, by typing, or by uploading a spreadsheet
2. AI processes the change, maps it to your menu structure, and stages the update
3. The update pushes to your POS, your website, and your delivery platforms through their APIs
4. You review, confirm, and you're done — back on the floor where you belong

Stop Adding Bells and Switches

Here's what I think a lot of software companies are getting wrong right now. They know they need to go the AI route. But instead of simplifying the experience, they're bolting AI features onto interfaces that were already complicated. More tabs. More toggles. More support tickets. What they should be doing is putting plates over the wires. Instead of patching calls through one at a time like an old switchboard, it's time to at least upgrade to a rotary phone and get the job done with some ease.

That's already here. That's what I'm building with P/LATFRM® AI. We run on world-class leading software and combine our stack to make a one-stop login for all the tools—from hosting your site, running your AI agents, viewing your CRM, and managing your team, as well as invoicing, contracts, and even running ads and managing your social media. Having a unified experience saves you well over $1,500 in platform fees. This time with the "O," replacing them with one login with P/LATFRM AI. Oh yeah, that's right, we said it! If you want to know more, we can talk to you about that on a discovery call or onboarding. It's a little bit of our secret sauce, but we're open to sharing on a discovery call.

I'm curious to see what happens with ClickFunnels. I'm curious about Webflow — they're design-forward, but some of the AI-generated sites I'm seeing now rival anything hand-built in Webflow. The game is changing fast.

Prompting Is the New Literacy

Here's my honest advice for any restaurant owner — or any business owner, really. The biggest skill you can develop right now isn't learning a new platform. It's learning how to prompt.

Knowing what to ask for is everything. And to know what to ask for, you need to peek under the hood a little. Take a basic course on how code works. Not to become a developer — just to understand what you're asking the machine to do. Ask the AI to explain APIs to you. Have it draw you a diagram. Claude actually does that now. If you're a visual learner, you can get the AI to test you, quiz you, build your understanding brick by brick.

It's the same with prompting. "Make my menu look better" gets you something generic. "Update items 14 through 18 with the new pricing from this spreadsheet, keep the Vietnamese item names, and push to both Square and the website" — that gets you exactly what you need. Your prompt becomes refined. It has detail. It has richness. And the result matches.

Get Back on the Floor

If you're a restaurant owner reading this, here's what I want you to walk away with. The barriers that stop you from updating your menu, refreshing your website, keeping your delivery platforms current — those barriers are clerical. They're administrative. And they're eating into time that you should be spending on the floor selling, training your front-of-house team, working with your sous chef on the next seasonal dish, or calling your produce suppliers to negotiate better ingredients.

The menu piece of your business should work like a staff member. Like someone on your team who just handles it when you say what needs to change. We're getting to that place. We're basically there.

Designers, developers, restaurant owners — the way to stay in the game is to know how to express what you need through language. Through words. Through prompts. That's the shift. And if you're reading this, you're already ahead of most.

Hope you enjoyed this one. Share it with someone who needs to hear it. And I'm genuinely grateful to be building in the age of AI.

Ready to stop fighting your menu and start running your restaurant?
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