AI menu import from PDF

At a glance

Retyping the menu by hand, item by item, is the most tedious job in the world. AI import takes it off your plate: upload your menu PDF — even photographed — and Carteia brings it into the dashboard already split into categories, with dishes, prices and suggested allergens. You review each item in a guided flow, fix what's needed, and publish. From hours of copy-paste to a few minutes of checking.

carteia.app

You'll find it under Menu → Import PDF.

How it works — from paper to digital

1. 1

   Pick the PDF language — mandatory. The AI needs it to read names properly and to prepare the translations into the other languages.

2. 2

   Upload the file — a PDF up to 10 MB. Drag it in or click to select. Upload only turns on once you've picked the language.

3. 3

   The AI reads the menu — you see a little console telling you what it's doing: it opens the pages, recognises the language, reads titles, sections and prices (even from photographed menus), separates starters, mains, desserts and drinks, checks prices and flags possible allergens.

4. 4

   You review every item — the important, mandatory step: scroll through all the dishes, fix name, price, description and category, confirm the allergens. The first time a tutorial walks you through.

5. 5

   Choose how to integrate — merge, replace or wipe (see below) and confirm.

6. 6

   You publish — the menu is ready. On paid plans, the translations into the other languages start by themselves in the background.

The three import modes

When you confirm, you choose how to put the new dishes together with the ones you already have:

Mode	What it does	When to use
Merge (default)	Adds the new dishes to the existing ones	First time, or to expand the menu
Replace	Redoes only the involved categories, leaves the rest intact	Seasonal change of one section
Wipe & replace	Clears all categories and dishes, then rebuilds from the import	Full menu change (e.g. new management)

What the AI recognises

On a clean text PDF the reading is near-perfect. Here's what it extracts, and how much to trust it:

What	Typical accuracy	Notes
Dish name	very high	Almost always perfect on text PDFs
Price	very high	Recognises €, $, £ and reports them in the venue's currency
Category	high	Sections and groupings inferred from the titles
Description	high	May get cut on very narrow columns
Declared allergens (with legend)	high	Recognises the EU 1-14 numbering
Allergens inferred from ingredients	medium	Always verify by hand
EU mandatory origin (meat, fish, honey, oil)	medium	A suggestion, to be confirmed

The review: you have the final word

The review screen isn't a simple "check and go". For each dish you can:

• fix name, price, description and move it to another category (or create a new one on the fly, renameable);
• add and remove allergens from the suggested chips;
• fill in the extra fields: EU mandatory origin, frozen indication, ingredients and recommended pairing (useful for the dish's SEO page too);
• tick each item as "Reviewed": you must do it on all of them before you can import.

If you've assigned at least one allergen, a mandatory confirmation appears at the end: you tick that you've verified the allergens by hand. It's a legal requirement, not a nuisance: it protects you and your guests.

The tutorial for starting from scratch

The first time you enter the review, a guided tutorial starts (you can skip it): it shows you what to change per dish, where to click to switch category, why the "Reviewed" tick matters. You can replay it anytime from the Tutorial button at the top.

What it costs per plan

The rule is the same as the other AI tools: as long as you have imports left in your month, you spend no credits. Once you use up the allowance, each extra import costs Senza costo aggiuntivo.

Plan	Imports included per month	Notes
Assaggio Assaggio	—	AI import not included: menu by hand
Osteria Osteria	2	All 3 modes, snapshot, translations in the plan's languages
Bistro Bistro	10	+ cellar recognition (wines/beers), 4 languages
Ristorante Ristorante	35	+ EU origin suggested, up to 8 languages, AI dish FAQ
Insegna Insegna	120	The full package
Insegna Plus Insegna Plus	200	The full package, maximum capacity

Credit costs, in short

Operation	Cost	Included quota
AI import beyond the quota	Senza costo aggiuntivo	Osteria 2 · Bistro 10 · Ristorante 35 · Insegna 120 · Insegna Plus 200 per month
AI-generated dish FAQ	Senza costo aggiuntivo	Available from Bistro
Automatic translations	Senza costo aggiuntivo per language	Included from Bistro

Technical limits

• File up to 10 MB per PDF.
• Dish photos are not imported (only recognised): you add them by hand afterwards.
• Very complex layouts (more than 3 columns, overlapping text, writing over text) may need a few more fixes.
• The non-destructive import (Merge) is the default: the other modes always ask for confirmation.
• Carteia checks the file really is a menu before reading it: if you upload an unrelated document (an invoice, a flyer) it tells you without using up the quota.

Next steps

• Menu management — clean and complete after the import
• Multilingual translations — take the menu into other languages
• Publishing — the menu's ready, go live
• Food cost — link recipes to dishes for margins
• Plans and credits — included quotas and credits