Menu proofreading
Menu proofreading: check the menu before it prints
For restaurants, hotels, cafés and bars, and the people who design their menus. LYNCE reads the finished menu against the price list and master copy, and flags every line that disagrees.
Menu proofreading is the last check on a finished menu: the PDF going to the printer, the image going on the website, the board going up above the bar. LYNCE does it on the file itself. Upload the menu as a PDF or an image, add the approved price list and master copy as references, and LYNCE compares every price, dish name, allergen mark, opening time and phone number on the menu with them. Findings come back in under a minute, pinned to the menu and ranked must fix, inconsistency or worth checking, each with a suggested fix.
It is the same reader as the AI PDF proofreader, pointed at a document that is unusually dense with facts. Bilingual menus are checked side against side; the wider case is on translation QA.
Mains · Κυρίως
Kitchen 12:00–22:30 · Closed Mondays
G gluten · M milk · E egg · F fish · V vegetarian
Read on the menu
18.50 — the price list says 16.50
Fix Change the octopus to 16.50, or update the price list if 18.50 is the new price.
Moussaka is marked G M E in English and G M in Greek
Fix Check both sides against your allergen reference and make them match.
What restaurant menu proofreading has to cover.
A menu is mostly facts, and every one of them has a source somewhere else: the price list, the master copy, the kitchen’s allergen sheet, the opening hours. The menu has to agree with all of them.
Prices
Every price against the approved price list: the main that went up in the spreadsheet and not on the menu, the set-menu supplement, the wine by the glass on a page nobody reopened.
Dish names and descriptions
Spelling and grammar, and the names themselves against the master copy: the renamed dish, the producer spelled three ways, the garnish the kitchen dropped in September.
Allergen and dietary marks
The marks next to each dish, against the allergen reference you upload and against the other language side. A difference is flagged on the dish. Read the limits below before relying on it.
Hours, days and dates
Opening and kitchen hours, closing days, and day names that stopped matching the date when last year’s menu was reused.
Phone, address, email and web
The phone number, the address, the email and the web address under the QR code: the details everybody copies from the old file.
Translations and layout
Each language side against the master, not proofread on its own. And what a text check never sees: a line cut off at the column edge, a price that wrapped beside the next dish.
Checked against the price list, not against memory.
A spell checker is happy with “18.50”. So is everyone who has looked at the menu six times this week. The price list is not.
What was approved
What the menu says
Upload the price list, master copy and allergen reference as PDFs, Word documents (.docx) or images. Reference files are read for comparison only and don’t use credits. Without them, LYNCE still proofreads the menu and flags where it contradicts itself; with them, it flags where the menu contradicts what was approved, which is the mistake that costs money.
Allergen marks: what it checks, and what it can’t.
This is the part of a menu where a mistake can hurt someone, so the limits are stated as plainly as the feature.
What it checks
That the allergen and dietary marks on the menu match the reference you upload, and that every language side of the menu agrees. A difference is flagged on the dish it belongs to.
What it doesn’t know
Your recipes. LYNCE has never been in your kitchen: it does not know what is in the moussaka, whether the fryer is shared or whether a supplier changed the bread. If the reference is wrong, the menu is checked against a wrong reference.
What it is not
A food-safety, allergen-management or legal compliance check. It does not tell you which allergens must be declared or how, and a clean report is not evidence that a menu complies with anything.
What it is for
Catching transcription errors: the mark that fell off when a dish moved section, or the side of a bilingual menu that never got the change. The person responsible for allergen information still signs the menu off.
How a menu check runs.
Export the finished menu
The print PDF, or the JPG, PNG or WEBP for the website or the delivery app. Or import it from a shared Google Drive folder.
Add the sources
The current price list, master copy and allergen reference. Optional, they don’t use credits, and they are the point.
LYNCE reads and compares
Every line on every page, against the references, the other language side and the rest of the menu.
Fix, re-scan, send
Findings are pinned to the menu with a suggested fix. Share the report by link; nobody needs an account to read it.
Who checks menus with LYNCE.
Restaurants and cafés
The seasonal change, the price rise, the specials card. Whoever wrote the price list rarely typeset the menu, and the mistakes live in between.
Hotels
Restaurant, bar, room service, breakfast, banqueting: the same prices in five documents, often in three languages.
Bars
Wine and cocktail lists, where the glass, carafe and bottle prices all have to agree with the price list.
Agencies, designers and printers
The people who make menus for other people, and get the call when a price is wrong. The report link is a record of what was checked, against what the client sent.
What it does not do.
No QR codes or links
LYNCE reads the words and numbers on the menu. It does not open links or scan QR codes, so test the code with a phone and make sure it opens this menu, not last season’s.
No print pre-flight
Bleed, trim, colour profiles and embedded fonts stay with your print tools. Where that line sits is explained on artwork proofreading.
No approvals, no guarantee
No pass or fail and no lock on the file: LYNCE reports, and a person decides. No proofreader catches everything; it is at its best with the price list and master copy attached.
Prefer to do it by hand? The method is in the menu proofreading checklist: ten steps, printable, no software required.
One menu page = 1 credit, as a PDF page or an image. Reference files are free. Plans from €11 a month ex VAT, each starting with a 7-day free trial.
See plansMenu proofreading, answered.
The final check, before it goes live.
Give the finished creative one more QA pass before publish, send or print.
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