Menu Brain: AI Allergens and Nutrition for Every Dish.
Upload your menu in any format. AI adds calories, protein, allergens, and dietary tags to every dish. Customers search by typing what they want, like "something spicy under $15," and find it instantly.
Enrich Your MenuWhat is Menu Brain?
Quick Answer: Menu Brain is the AI that turns any restaurant menu (PDF, photo, or POS feed) into a search-ready menu with calories, allergens, dietary tags, and natural-language search. Customers ask for what they want in plain English, and every dish stays editable by your team.
How a takeout menu becomes a search-ready menu
You hand us your menu in any format. We make every dish findable everywhere your customers ask. In minutes, not weeks.
Hand us your menu, in any format
Trifold takeout PDF, phone snap of the daily-specials chalkboard, or your live POS feed. We handle whatever you have got. No retyping, no template forms, no setup hours.
Tuna Tartare
$18.50Just a name and price.
Menu BrainTuna Tartare
$18.50340 cal · 28g protein · 12g carbs · 18g fat
AI adding data...
Every dish gets price, allergens, dietary tags, and a search-friendly description
Watch a real dish go through Menu Brain. Plain name and price on the left. Fully enriched on the right. Calories, allergens, and dietary tags surfaced before the customer ever asks.
Anything your customers ask for, surfaced instantly
A guest types something spicy under 15 dollars or asks anything peanut-free. Menu Brain matches by what the dish IS, not just by exact words on the menu.
Every AI-tagged field stays editable. Every chef-locked field stays locked.
Lock a description and AI never overwrites it. Confidence under 90 percent flags for chef review before it goes live. You see who changed what, when, and why, in one audit log.
Where every field comes from, and who can change it
Our extraction is auditable. Every field on every menu item carries its source and confidence. Chef-locked fields are never overwritten by the model.
| Field | Source | Status |
|---|---|---|
| price | POS feed | synced |
| calories | GPT-4o estimate | extracted |
| allergens | Vision + ingredient lookup | extracted |
| diet tags (V/GF) | Rule-based + LLM verify | extracted |
| modifiers | POS feed | synced |
| description | Operator-edited | operator-locked |
Allergen and dietary tag coverage
Menu Brain detects the FDA-recognized major allergens plus dietary categories. Each detection carries a confidence score and is editable by your team.
Allergens auto-detected
- Gluten (wheat, barley, rye)
- Dairy (milk, cheese, butter, cream)
- Tree nuts (almond, cashew, walnut, pecan)
- Peanuts
- Shellfish (shrimp, crab, lobster)
- Eggs
- Soy
- Sesame
Detected from ingredient lists, dish names, and cooking method. Confidence score visible. Override per dish.
Dietary categories
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
- Keto and low-carb
- Paleo
- Gluten-free (separate from gluten allergen)
- Pescatarian
- Halal and Kosher (when ingredient sourcing is recorded)
Inferred from full ingredient profile. Halal and Kosher flagged only when you confirm sourcing, since they hinge on supply chain, not just ingredients.
Operator overrides and confidence scoring
Menu Brain is AI-assisted, not AI-final. Every estimate carries a confidence score, every value is editable, and your override beats the model every time.
Confidence score on every value
Calories, allergens, dietary tags, and nutrition macros each carry a 70 to 95 percent confidence rating based on how cleanly the source data extracts. Low-confidence values are flagged in your dashboard so you know what to review first.
One-click override
Open any dish, replace the AI value with your verified number, and the system locks it. The lab-tested calorie count for your signature burger overrides the model. The contains-shellfish flag you added by hand sticks even after the next menu refresh. Overrides survive re-imports.
Customer-facing transparency
AI-estimated values display with a small AI-estimated label so customers know what is modeled versus operator-verified. Operator-verified values display without the label. This protects you legally on allergen claims and gives health-conscious guests the precision they want.
Menu Brain shows up everywhere
- The search bar on your menu page uses it
- When someone calls and asks "anything gluten-free?", Voice AI knows the answer
- When ChatGPT recommends your restaurant, it cites your rich menu data
- When a customer DMs you on Instagram or WhatsApp, the AI knows your full menu
- Nutrition facts display on your website automatically
Minutes
To enrich your entire menu (weeks by hand)
93%
AI accuracy on nutrition estimates
7
Allergen types detected (gluten, dairy, nuts, shellfish, eggs, soy, sesame)
Smart
Search that understands "something light" means salads
Built DirectOrders after a decade running operations and engineering for restaurant tech. Talks to operators every week.
What's included
Frequently Asked Questions
Menu Brain adds calories, protein, carbs, fat, fiber, sodium, and sugar estimates to every dish. Each value carries a confidence score (70 to 95 percent) and is clearly marked as AI-estimated, so you stay transparent with customers and can override any number with your verified data.
Menu Brain is the intelligence layer behind every channel. It powers your menu search bar, smart cart suggestions, Voice AI dietary answers on the phone, the chatbot on your website, and the JSON-LD that Google and AI search engines read. One source of truth, every channel.
Menu Brain reads ingredient lists, cooking methods, and portion sizes to estimate nutrition. Accuracy lands at 70 to 95 percent depending on dish complexity. Confidence scores are visible to customers. For dishes where precision matters, you can replace the AI estimate with your verified value in one click.
Yes. Menu Brain reads dish names, descriptions, and ingredient lists to detect common allergens: gluten, dairy, nuts, shellfish, eggs, soy, and sesame. It also identifies dietary categories like vegetarian, vegan, keto, and paleo. Every detection includes a confidence score and is editable by your team.
Menu Brain's calorie estimates fall within 70 to 95 percent accuracy depending on dish complexity. Simple plates like grilled chicken breast score higher. Multi-ingredient items run wider. Every estimate ships with a visible confidence score so customers can judge reliability. You can override any value with verified data at any time.
Always. Menu Brain saves you time, it does not take control. Every AI-generated value (calories, macros, allergen flags, dietary tags, description) can be manually edited in your dashboard. Once you override a value, Menu Brain marks it as verified instead of AI-estimated. Your overrides are preserved across menu updates.
Yes. If your POS is connected to DirectOrders, Menu Brain pulls items directly from your POS catalog and enriches them automatically. You can also upload a PDF, photos of your printed menu, or a spreadsheet. No matter how the menu reaches the system, the AI enrichment process is the same.
Customers type queries the way they talk instead of browsing rigid categories. A guest can type 'something spicy under $15,' 'healthy low-carb options,' or even a misspelled query like 'chiken parmsan,' and Menu Brain returns matching dishes. The search engine understands synonyms, dietary terminology, price filters, and conversational phrasing.
Explore More Features
Website Builder
SEO-optimized, mobile-first restaurant websites with online ordering built in.
Online Ordering
Checkout as smooth as DoorDash, but you keep 100% of every order.
Delivery
Profitable delivery without the 30% cut. Your drivers, Uber Direct, or DoorDash Drive.
Voice AI
Phone orders handled by AI, plus Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant ordering.
MultiChannels
Instagram, WhatsApp, voice, Google. Every conversation becomes a direct order.
Discovery
Rank on Google and get recommended by ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity.
Marketing
Email, SMS, push notifications, loyalty rewards, and abandoned cart recovery on autopilot.
Payouts
Your money, fast. No waiting weeks. Get paid when you earn.