How to create a digital menu for your restaurant in Iraq

What a digital menu is in Iraq — and why a photo of the menu isn't one

A digital menu is a web page with a permanent link in your restaurant's name. It shows your categories and products with photos and prices, and opens straight in the customer's phone browser — nothing to download. In Iraq, most restaurants still post a photo of their paper menu to Instagram stories or send it on WhatsApp. That photo can't be searched, is hard to read on a small phone, and has to be redesigned every time a single price changes.

The difference shows up in your messages. With a menu photo you get scattered questions — "how much is this?", "is it available?" — and then an order spread over several messages. With a digital menu the customer browses everything, sees prices in Iraqi dinars, and sends the order in one go.

In Iraq the menu link matters more than the QR code. Customers discover restaurants on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, so the link belongs in your profile bio. The QR code is for the tables inside the restaurant, so guests can look at the menu before the waiter arrives.

The six steps

1. 1

   Put your products on one sheet first

   Before opening any website, write your categories (starters, mains, hot drinks, cold drinks, desserts) and under each one the products and today's prices in dinars. Most delays in building a menu come from prices nobody has decided yet, not from the technology.

2. 2

   Pick a short link in your restaurant's name

   The link is your restaurant's address online and it stays with you. Keep it short, in Latin letters, and matching the name people know you by — for example alkhair.rasil.store rather than alkhair-restaurant-baghdad-2026. Customers may type it by hand or read it off a table stand.

3. 3

   Photograph products with your phone, consistently

   You don't need a professional photographer, you need consistency: the same time of day, natural light from a window, the same background and the same angle for every product. Consistent average photos look far better than a mix of great and bad ones. Start with your ten best sellers and add the rest later.

4. 4

   Order categories by what sells, not by the kitchen

   Put what people actually order at the top. If most of your revenue is one dish or drinks, make that the first category a customer sees. A digital menu is read with a thumb on a small screen, and every extra scroll loses someone.

5. 5

   Write in Arabic, then add the languages your customers read

   Write each product name and a short description in clear Arabic. If you serve customers who read Kurdish, Turkmen or English — in Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, Duhok, Kirkuk or Mosul that is most of them — a menu in their language removes a real barrier. In Rasil you write in Arabic and translate into all four languages with one tap.

6. 6

   Publish the link where your customers already are

   Put the link in the website field of your Instagram, Facebook and TikTok profiles, pin it, and send it as the reply to every "what are your prices?" message. For the tables, print a QR code that opens the same link.

Taking orders: WhatsApp, not an app

Almost every customer in Iraq already has WhatsApp, and most restaurants already take orders on it. The problem isn't the channel, it's the shape of the message. When the order comes from the menu itself, the customer adds products to a cart, sees the total in dinars, and taps "Order on WhatsApp" — a chat with your restaurant's number opens with the order written out: every product, its quantity and the total.

If you deliver, you can also collect the customer's name, phone, governorate and address before the message is sent, with a delivery fee you set per governorate added to the total. The order still arrives as one WhatsApp message on your existing number — no new device, no order screen, no commission.

What a digital menu costs in Iraq

There are four common routes. A free menu tool costs nothing but usually shows someone else's branding or limits what you can add. A designed PDF menu is a one-off design fee, but it is still a file that has to be redone on every price change. Menu platforms charge a subscription — often monthly and often in US dollars by international card. Delivery apps charge a commission on every order and keep the customer relationship.

For comparison, a mid-sized restaurant in Iraq pays roughly 200,000 IQD to print one run of its paper menu, and reprints two or three times a year when prices change. Rasil costs 100,000 IQD for a full year, paid once with no monthly bills (about 8,300 IQD a month) — less than one print run. There is also a monthly plan at 12,000 IQD and a three-year plan at 250,000 IQD. Every plan has the same features, with no setup fee and no commission on orders, and a 7-day free trial with no credit card.

Mistakes we see most often

• Two hundred products on day one. Start with what you actually sell; a long menu tires the customer and you have to keep it updated.
• Stale prices. A digital menu with a wrong price is worse than an old paper one, because the customer treats it as a promise. Change the price the moment it changes.
• Photos taken from the internet. Customers compare what arrives with what they saw, and the gap costs you trust, not just the order.
• Hiding the link. If the link isn't in your bio and in your WhatsApp greeting, nobody uses it and you're back to answering prices by hand.