The biggest hurdle to going digital is retyping years of menu items. Scanqur’s AI menu scanner removes it. Photograph your existing menu, and the AI turns your categories, dishes and prices into a structured digital menu you can publish in minutes.
Trattoria Nova
Menu imported · 42 items
A typical restaurant menu holds 40 to 80 items, each with a name, a price, and often a description in more than one language. Typing all of that into a form, on a phone, between service rushes, is the reason so many merchants postpone going digital for months, or settle for uploading a blurry photo of the paper menu instead.
Scanqur’s menu scanner uses AI to read a photo of your existing menu and convert it into structured data: categories, product names, prices and descriptions. You review everything before it goes live, fix anything the photo made ambiguous, and publish. The tedious part is automated; the decisions stay yours.
AI menu scanning (sometimes called menu digitization or menu OCR) is the process of extracting menu data from an image. Where basic OCR just produces a wall of text, Scanqur’s scanner understands menu structure: it recognises that "Starters" is a category, "Burrata with heirloom tomatoes" is a dish inside it, and "12.50" is its price, and it files each piece in the right place.
The scanner is built for anyone starting with an existing menu on paper or PDF:
What merchants run into when the only path to a digital menu is a keyboard.
A 60-item menu takes a focused afternoon to enter by hand, and most merchants do not have a free afternoon. So the project stalls indefinitely.
Manual entry at speed produces errors, and a wrong price on a live menu costs money or an awkward conversation at the till.
Skipping data entry by uploading a photo of the menu produces the worst guest experience: slow loading, endless pinch-zooming, and nothing the guest can search, translate or order from.
Snap your printed menu, a chalkboard, or upload an existing PDF or image. The AI handles multi-column layouts, mixed fonts and multi-page menus.
Categories stay categories, dishes stay inside them, and prices land in the price field instead of the description.
Every extracted item appears in an editable list. Confirm, correct or delete items before anything goes live.
Once your items are structured data, adding menu languages later is a field-by-field edit, not a second retyping project.
From paper to published in four steps. Most menus take under ten minutes end to end.
Log in to Scanqur and choose Scan Menu. It is available on the free plan, from a phone or a computer.
Take a photo of each page in decent light, or upload an existing image or PDF export of your menu. Flat, well-lit and straight-on shots give the best results.
Tip: Shoot in daylight and avoid shadows across the page. If your menu has several pages, scan them one at a time.
The scanner returns your menu as a structured list: categories, item names, prices and descriptions. Skim through it, correct anything the photo made unclear, and remove items you no longer serve. It is also a good moment to prune the menu.
Confirm the import and your items land in your Scanqur menu, organised by category. Add photos to your bestsellers, pick a theme, and your QR menu is ready to publish.
Scan the newest version of your menu
Digitizing last year’s card means correcting prices twice. Grab the version behind the bar, not the one in the drawer.
Treat the review step as a menu audit
You are seeing your whole menu as a list, which is the perfect moment to cut dishes that never sell and tighten wordy descriptions.
Add photos after importing
The scanner brings the text; photos of your top ten dishes bring the appetite. Do them as a second pass.
Don’t photograph at an angle in dim light
Skewed, shadowed photos are the main cause of extraction errors. Ten extra seconds framing the shot saves ten minutes of corrections.
Don’t skip the review
The AI is accurate, but a photo can genuinely be ambiguous: a smudged price, a folded corner. Always skim before publishing.
Don’t re-scan for small edits
Once imported, your menu lives in the dashboard. Change prices and items there. Scanning is for getting started, not for maintenance.
Marco’s pizzeria has a four-page menu: antipasti, 30 pizzas, pastas and desserts. He has wanted a QR menu since a tourist asked for an English menu he didn’t have, but the thought of typing 68 products killed the project twice.
While the dough proofs, he lays each menu page on the counter by the window and photographs them with his phone. The Scanqur scanner returns his full menu in structured form: four categories, 68 items, prices attached.
The review takes him eight minutes. Two handwritten specials came through with uncertain prices, so he fixes them, deletes a discontinued dessert, and imports everything. By the time the first lunch guests sit down, his QR menu is live. Adding English names to his bestsellers that evening is a matter of filling in fields rather than starting over.
68
items imported from 4 photos
~10 min
from photo to published menu
0
items typed by hand
Your items are in. These features turn them into a polished, working menu.
Replace your paper menu with a digital one: add your dishes, pick a theme, print the code. The complete guide, free.
Read articleStructure your catalog, hide sold-out dishes in seconds and keep every price current, all from your phone.
Read articlePublish your menu in six languages with true right-to-left Arabic support, and every version stays in sync.
Read articleSkip the typing. Photograph your menu, review what the AI found, and publish your QR menu with Scanqur today.
Merchants have imported thousands of dishes with the Scanqur menu scanner.