Multilingual menus for tourist towns
In a tourist town, a good share of your guests may not read the language on your menu. A menu they can follow means more orders, fewer awkward questions and better reviews. You don't need a full translation for everything, just the right few languages done well.
Pick the right languages
- Look at where your visitors come from: your card payments, your hotel partners, your local tourist office's data.
- Two or three languages is plenty for most places. Add English first if you don't already use it.
- Use native speakers, or a professional, for food names and descriptions. Machine translation is a good first draft, not the final text.
Keep the menu easy to scan
- Keep dish names in the original language where they're well known (for example, "carbonara"), and add a short description in each language.
- Show prices in the local currency with the same layout on every language version.
- Use the same icons for allergens and dietary labels, so people can read them without the words.
- Keep a simple, short menu. Long lists are harder to translate and harder to read on a phone.
Let the QR code do the work
A QR code on the table takes guests to your live menu on their own phone, so the menu is always the right size and always up to date. Language switching on the live menu is part of our Pro plan as it launches, so one QR code can serve every language you offer.
Check it with a visitor
Before the season starts, ask a friend who speaks each language to order from the menu. Anything they can't understand, or any price that looks wrong, is worth fixing.
Start your menu free and get a live QR menu on your tables this week.