LimeOrigin for restaurants
Most restaurant websites go out of date within a season — not because anybody stopped caring, but because updating one costs an evening nobody has. LimeOrigin is built for the part that comes after launch: one link that never changes, hours you set once, and a new menu you can upload and check rather than retype. The same site takes the table booking, lets a big group choose before they arrive, runs your loyalty scheme and gift cards, and puts Christmas up and takes it down on the dates you gave it.
You do not have to type your dishes into anything. A PDF menu is a complete answer on its own: it gets a permanent address, printed codes point at it, you replace it when it changes, and every previous version is kept.
Building the menu properly — dishes, sections, prices, allergens — buys you things a PDF cannot do: search engines that understand what you serve, a menu that reads well on a phone, and prices you can change from the kitchen in a minute. It is a choice, and you can make it later, or never.
Both paths, fully supported
Have a look at it
Four menus, a phone, and filters for what somebody can and cannot eat. Try it — it works here exactly as it works on a real site.
Salt-baked celeriac
£9.00
Hazelnut, aged sherry
VeganDairy free
Cured sea trout
£11.50
Cucumber, dill, rye
Dairy free
Whipped goat's curd
£9.50
Honey, thyme, focaccia
Vegetarian
Sea bass, pan-fried
£24.00
Brown shrimp, samphire
Gluten free
Mushroom risotto
£18.50
Aged parmesan, truffle oil
VegetarianGluten free
Dry-aged sirloin
£32.00
Beef-fat chips, watercress
Gluten freeDairy free
On a real site this takes the diner straight into the booking, on the same page.
An illustration, not a real restaurant. The dietary marks a filter reads are the restaurant’s own, entered and checked by them — never decided by reading a document. A filter narrows what is shown; it is not a safety guarantee, and anybody with an allergy should still tell the kitchen.
Your side of it
Their side of it
A year of it
None of this is a separate product to buy or a plugin to keep alive. It is one account, one bill, and the same website all year.
In week one
Your menu — the PDF you already have, or a menu you build here — is published at one permanent link. Put it on the flyers, in your Google listing, on the window. It is the last time you have to change any of them.
Permanent Links →Before the print run
Make a scannable code for that address and download it ready for a print shop. Name each one — table tent, window, flyer — so you can see which is actually used before printing more. Because they point at the address rather than the file, replacing the menu never breaks a code.
Smart codes →Once, and then never again
Your usual week, the bank holidays, the fortnight you close in January. Set them once and your website, your structured data and your booking form all read the same answer — so they cannot drift apart while you are busy.
Menus & Opening Hours →In November
Build the festive menu, the new photographs and the changed hours now, group them together, and give the group a date. It goes live at opening on the first and takes itself down after Twelfth Night, with nothing to remember on either day.
Scheduling & Campaigns →Before it is public
Look at your website exactly as it will look on the day, and send that view to a business partner or a manager. They can read it without an account and without being able to change anything.
Preview and approval →In March, when prices move
Send the new menu to your printer, then upload the same file here. You get a short list of what is different — not forty dishes to check by eye — and nothing on your website changes until you approve it.
Menu Import →Whenever it matters
Burst pipe, early close, kitchen closed for a wedding. Put a notice up, give it an end time, and it takes itself down — so the website is not still apologising on Thursday for something that happened on Monday.
Notices →On a Tuesday evening
A diner picks a time on your own website, with no account to create. The booking is held against a real table on your floor, they get a confirmation that reads as being from you and replies to your inbox, and the full booking arrives at whichever address you nominate. Turn on a reminder and it goes out however long before the table you choose.
Table Reservations →Before a table of twelve
Send each guest on a large booking their own link to pick their courses, with a deadline you set and a nudge to anyone who has not. You order the food knowing what the table is having, instead of finding out at eight o’clock on the night.
Group bookings →On the first of December
Give the season a window in November. On the first morning your site takes on the colours and settles its motion; on the last night it puts itself back exactly as it was, because nothing was overwritten. Your theme is still underneath the whole time.
Seasonal Experiences →After they have eaten
A completed booking is what earns a point — not a promise to come back — and the reward is priced by you. Meanwhile somebody who has never been in buys a gift card for Christmas Eve, and the counter takes part of it in January when the room would otherwise be quiet.
Loyalty & Gift Cards →Quietly, in the background
“This menu was last confirmed against a document seven months ago.” “A newer document has been read and nobody has reviewed it.” Facts about what actually happened, so nothing rots without somebody being told.
Freshness →What a menu update looks like
Upload the new PDF and you are shown what is different against the menu you already have. A dish that has only been reworded is not a change you need to think about. A price or an allergen is.
When the menu has been redesigned but the food is the same, it says so — “No material menu-content changes detected” — rather than handing you forty differences that are really one new typeface.
The menu below is an illustration, not a real restaurant. LimeOrigin does not publish accuracy figures, because it does not measure one — what it does instead is ask you when it is not sure, and change nothing until you approve it.
Example — an illustration, not a real customer
Sea bass — £19.50, was £17.95
Price and what is on saleA price you will want to read
Mushroom risotto — now marked as containing dairy
Allergen and dietary informationRead this one on its own
Salt-baked celeriac — new dish
Price and what is on saleNot on your website yet
Pea and ham soup — no longer on the document
Price and what is on saleGone from the printed menu
“Pan-fried sea bass” is now “Sea bass, pan-fried”
Wording and layoutSame dish, new wording
You can accept the wording changes together. The prices and the allergen still come to you one at a time.
When it cannot read your file
LimeOrigin reads menus made on a computer, where the words are really inside the file. A photograph or a scan is a picture of a menu — reading one would mean inventing your dishes and your prices, and we would rather tell you the truth:
“This looks like a scan or an image, so there is no text for us to read. Your PDF menu is published and working as it is.”
Nothing on your website changes, and the PDF menu at your permanent link carries on working exactly as it was. An honest “no” costs you a minute. A confident guess about an allergen costs a great deal more.
Upload the PDF, get a permanent link and a code for the tables, and build the rest when you feel like it. Start free.